Fox Film Trots Towards Blu-ray

Twentieth Century Fox Film has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), but the Hollywood film studio has stopped short of committing to releasing its movies on the Blu-ray Disc format, the company says.

"We are not ready at this time to commit any of our content to this format," says Michael O'Neill, special advisor at the company's Fox Technology Group. He spoke at a press event before the inaugural meeting of the association that began in Tokyo on Monday.

Fox has become a member of the association to study the format and develop copyright protection technologies to prevent illegal copying of Blu-ray discs, he says.

"The only agreement is to collaborate with work to help develop the format. We are very positive about the possibilities down the road," O'Neill says.

The move lends significant support to the Blu-ray Disc format against the HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD) version as both camps seek to build alliances with manufacturers and major studios, according to Sony senior vice president Kiyoshi Nishitani.

Working Together

Monday's meeting was the first of a revamped version of the Blu-ray Disc Founders association. That body was a group of 13 companies lead by Sony. The other members were Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Mitsubishi Electric, Philips Electronics, Pioneer Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, TDK, and Thomson Multimedia.

Fox has become the 14th board member of the BDA, which replaces the founders association. The goal of the association is to promote the technology to become the de facto standard for very high capacity next-generation DVDs. Fox distributes several important franchises including Titanic and Star Wars.

"This has a very strong meaning for the BDA. Fox is a prominent member of the Hollywood world. Package media is now a key area, and that will lead to the development of other areas," Nishitani says.

The Blu-ray Disc Association says it has 73 members as of October 4.

Sony has a large back-catalog of movies that it could choose to release on Blu-ray Disc. Last month Sony bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, adding to its existing catalog. Later last month, Sony Computer Entertainment said that the PlayStation 3 game console will be compatible with the Blu-ray Disc format.

Rival Format

Against this, the rival HD-DVD format was initially backed by NEC and Toshiba. In August, Sanyo Electric said that it had also decided to produce components and players for the format, making the company the third major Japanese electronics company to join the HD-DVD camp.

Late last month these companies, together with DVD disc maker Memory-Tech, announced that they would form their own association. Toshiba said that it expected to start commercial sales of HD-DVD players and recorders in the final three months of 2005, with players to cost under $1000.

The technical specifications of the HD-DVD format are also almost complete. At the end of last month, the DVD Forum, an association of over 220 consumer electronics, entertainment, software, and related companies that determines DVD disc specifications, approved the physical disc specifications for the rewritable version of HD-DVDs, taking the format an important step nearer to mass production.