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Crave: As much as we complain about the high prices of standalone Blu-ray players, in some ways the high prices of Blu-ray movies are even more frustrating. This week, Warner Home Video has taken a step in the right direction, by announcing that the company will offer discounted pricing on select titles this fall.

While there isn’t a complete list of movies that will be available at this lower pricing, Video Business reports that The Fugitive, Enter the Dragon, Clockwork Orange, The Shining, The Aviator, Road Warrior and Swordfish will get the discount. Additionally, some newer movies will get a smaller price cut, including 300, The Departed, I Am Legend, Ocean’s 13 and We Are Marshall.

While this certainly won’t make everyone run out and buy a Blu-ray player, it’s definitely good news that studios are hearing complaints that Blu-ray movies are just too expensive at their current levels.

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ITProPortal: Nokia’s “Comes With Music” service has managed to recruit Warner Music Group, the third major music company, leaving only EMI.

Sony BMG and Universal had already signed for Nokia’s much talked about scheme; Warner Music will also distribute its song library through Nokia’s Music Stores.

Comes with Music should allow users to have access to music through their mobile phones for a year while giving them unlimited access to their own personal libraries as long as it is kept on the phones.

Nokia will get a share of whatever purchase is done on the phone – which will necessarily include DRM protection – and that will include everything from tickets to paraphernalia and online tracks obviously.

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Blu-ray.com: During the keynote address at the Entertainment Supply Chain Academy conference, Darcy Antonellis, President of Warner Technical Operations noted that the studio would begin utilizing BD-Live features as early as this winter. The yet-to-be-named title would include real-time viewing, library tools, a search engine, a recommendation tool with e-mail reminders, ringtones and wallpapers.

Originally set aside for HD DVD releases, these advanced web-based features will dramatically increase Warner’s ability to compete for consumers’ time. Antonellis commented, “I think it has the ability to compete [with MySpace and YouTube] for a user’s time because you are taking them online and you’re able to create a community that we have never been able to do before. That’s huge for us.”

Antonellis also feels that advanced Blu-ray features will be widely adopted by consumers faster than advanced DVD features.

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eNews 2.0: The Nokia Corporation has launched a new Internet music store under its new Ovi brand this week, with more than 2 million songs from all the major record labels, besides Warner Music Group Corp, due to a dispute about illegal downloads, casting a shadow on the launch, according to media.

Warner, who is home well known bands such as Greenday, Linkin Park and Red Hot Chili Peppers, refused to sell its music through the Nokia Music Store Web site, being more interested of protecting the author rights and fighting against illegal downloading.

Nokia was accused of allowing the distribution of copyright material through another of its Web site called Mosh, a site designed for the mobile usage in the first place, although it can be accessed from a PC, too.

Officials from the two corporations were not immediately available for comments.

However, Kari Tuutti, Nokia spokesman, has confirmed for Forbes newspaper that Warner Music Group withholds its music content from the new Web store launched by Nokia, but added that they are still in talks with Warner representatives on the matter and still hope that they will reach an agreement in the near future.

He added that Nokia was doing everything in its power to prevent copyright infringement on Mosh.

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BetaNews: Warner Home Video’s answer to the rift in the high-definition DVD industry, will not arrive in the second half of this year as planned, instead reaching the market in 2008. 10-20 movies will be initially offered using the “Total HD” technology, which includes both HD DVD and Blu-ray on a single disc.

Total HD made its official debut at CES 2007, with the promise of sandwiching two data layers atop one another, with each layer capable of being read by its respective player.

Most importantly, a Total HD disc would not need a hybrid player such as the one LG unveiled at CES, and may solve the problem of media retailers having to divide their high-def shelves into separate segments.

Instead of crowding the market with multiple versions of the same movies , Total HD would mean one movie disc for both high-definition formats and, in turn, reduce the required expensive retail shelf space in the process.

The studio says it’s not in a rush to bring Total HD to the market, and will do so only when the technology is ready.

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The Guardian: US music company Warner, home to Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, has signed a deal with an online TV company to make its vast catalogue of video available online for free.

Warner will work with Premium TV, the group behind Premiership football club websites including Chelsea and Newcastle United, to create a series of video sites.

Users will be able to log their favourite music and stream video for free from Warner’s catalogue. The sites will also offer previously unseen footage.

Warner says the deal will make it the first of the world’s four main music companies – the other three being Universal, EMI and Sony BMG – to supply its whole video archive online under a new business model that raises money via advertising.

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Yahoo: (…) The first shots between Blu-ray, backed by a Sony-led consortium, and HD DVD, whose group is led by Toshiba Corp., were fired last year when the formats made their splashy debuts at the International Consumer Electronics Show.Analysts and executives thought that by this year’s show, there would be a clear winner, especially after Sony in November released its Playstation 3 video game console, which comes standard with a Blu-ray disc drive.

Instead, both sides have hunkered down for what could be a long fight and some are even conceding that both formats may be here to stay.

“In an optimal world you would have one format,” Kevin Tsujihara, president of the Warner Bros. home entertainment group said this week. “But there are many industries where multiple formats have existed and flourished.“

Tsujihara noted that in video gaming, three incompatible formats — Playstation, the Microsoft XBox and consoles from Nintendo, including the recently released Wii have existed for years. (…)

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New York Times: (…) Warner Brothers, which helped popularize the DVD more than a decade ago, plans to announce next week a single videodisc that can play films and television programs in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the rival DVD technologies.

Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner, plans to formally announce the new disc, which it is calling a Total HD disc, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Two rival camps introduced high-definition DVD players last year: a consortium called Blu-ray, backed by Sony and others, and a group called HD-DVD, backed by Toshiba and Microsoft. Retail and media executives say this clash of corporate titans and their incompatible machines has left some consumers bewildered and has slowed the introduction of what is intended to be the next great thing in home entertainment.

(more…)

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Engadget: Most studios have picked a side in the HD DVD / Blu-ray format war.  However, Warner engineers have been working on a way to get all three formats (HD DVD, Blu-ray and DVD)on a single disc, and have recently filed a patent to that effect.

This is made possible by the fact that Blu-ray uses a 405nm laser to read its 0.1mm deep info layer, while HD DVD uses the same blue laser wavelength at the depth of 0.6mm. The hybrid disc works by making the Blu-ray layer act like a two way mirror, reflecting enough light for Blu-ray playback, but letting enough light through for HD DVD operation.

As for DVD, that layer can be found on the flip side of the disc. Of course, the new format will cost more to produce than your standard next-gen disc, and we’re not quite sure this isn’t all madness to begin with, but we suppose we’ll have to play the game if we don’t want to end up buying every title in triplicate.

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