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In an interview with BetaNews, Universal Studios executive vice president and co-president of the HD DVD Promotional Group Ken Graffeo has said that despite rampant rumors the struggling format is here to stay. He did however leave the door open for putting an end to the format war if Blu-ray is willing to make an agreement.

When asked by the interviewer how Universal felt about Warner’s move to Blu-ray exclusivity, Graffeo had this to say: “Well, we heard about the whole move when everyone else did — when a lot of us were on planes flying to CES in Las Vegas. To be very honest with you, we have not addressed that yet — Warner is still releasing HD DVD titles up until May. Warner has always been in two formats, and prior to Paramount’s switch, they had been in two formats, so now that Warner is exclusive… we just haven’t addressed it yet.

Continuing with the trend of CES and Warner, Graffeo was asked to use hindsight and report if canceling HD DVD’s press conference at CES was the right move. “It’s very easy to look back and say “I could have” because you always know the result. But at the time… imagine the orchestration of a press event with the presenters, the scripts, the entire presentation, videos that were produced — everything. The crew was already setting up and we were on a plane on Friday, so not being able to get back to everyone to say “how do we make a change for Sunday” was very difficult. And what are the answers? We had no idea because we were reading and hearing about Warner’s move the same time everyone else was,” he responded.

The interview then naturally moved towards whether Universal and Paramount would be leaving HD DVD for Blu-ray which Graffeo strongly denied. “This is business as usual for us and there are no plans to make any changes. We just made an announcement of our new HD DVD titles yesterday, with American Gangster. We also have a lot of other things planned. It’s business as usual,” he repeated.

There were a few more interesting notes from the interview as well.

When asked about attach rates for set top players as compared to Sony’s PlayStation 3, Graffeo’s answer was quick. “If you look at the attach rate of how many movies are bought for dedicated HD DVD players versus how many movies were sold for the PS3 and the Blu-ray set-top players combined, it’s a 4 to 1 gap. Which says that people who own game machines are not buying at the same rate as someone who owns a set-top…If you go to a store and buy an HDTV and then you want to get your movies to look better, you go to the DVD section — you don’t go to the game section.”

Finally when asked whether there was a possibility that HD DVD and Blu-ray could unify the standards at some point to end the war, Graffeo left the door open but noted that talks had broken down in the past. “Well, I’m never going to say it never can be done. I think everyone would like to see things work out, and I don’t think anyone has any ill intention in this. It was a year and a half ago when we tried to put things together and it was unfortunate when it fell apart before. I think anything is possible, and again it comes back to the consumer who has the final voice.”

HD DVD is here to stay and the consumer will have to choose eventually where there loyalties stand.

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http://geoff-caplan.com, email geoffcaplan@comcast.net

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