Two Studios to Support HD DVD Over Rival
,----[ Quote ]
| But money talks: Paramount and DreamWorks Animation together will receive
| about $150 million in financial incentives for their commitment to HD
| DVD, according to two Viacom executives with knowledge of the deal but
| who asked not to be identified.
|
| The incentives will come in a combination of cash and promotional
| guarantees. Toshiba, for instance, will use the release of “Shrek the
| Third” as part of an HD DVD marketing campaign.
|
| Paramount and DreamWorks Animation declined to comment. Microsoft, the
| most prominent technology company supporting HD DVDs, said it could not
| ^^^^^^^^^
| rule out payment but said it wrote no checks. “We provided no financial
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| incentives to Paramount or DreamWorks whatsoever,” said Amir Majidimehr,
| the head of Microsoft’s consumer media technology group.
`----
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/technology/21disney.html?ei=5088&en=d4e1f285e2f41437&ex=1345348800&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1187698143-B5wO3L/F+4r1NyAsum87vQ
This affects Sony's PS3 as well. Remember OOXML? Microsoft paid obscene amounts
of money to Linspire, Xandros, and Novell in order to support it. Similar
story. And now they lie about compatibility:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/08/dog-that-didnt-bark.html
,----[ Quote ]
| Everyone is in the same boat with this: KOffice, Corel, Google, IBM, anyone
| who has applications that work with Microsoft documents. We’re all faced with
| the prospect of significant expenses to rewrite our file format support with
| no net benefit to our customers. This is the toll we all must pay to
| Microsoft just for the ability to fight for the scraps their monopoly may
| leave behind. If Microsoft jerks their format around, we all must run and
| chase after it, reallocating resources away from feature work, becoming in
| the process less competitive in the marketplace, while Microsoft forges ahead
| with new features. They can easily repeat this game every few years, just to
| keep competitors busy. This is what a death spiral looks like.
|
| Giving absolute control of a standard document format to a monopolist that is
| notorious for abusing their control of file formats in the past is insanity.
| It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/08/dog-that-didnt-bark.html
Microsoft also continue to spread its Silverlight infection and HD (MSDRM
candidate?) using partners like the MSBBC and some other programs
and 'extensions' (XAML-tied). Welcome to the new families of lock-in.
Microsoft buys support for lock-in.
Microsoft Offers HD Photo Plug-in for Photoshop
,----[ Quote ]
| This beta plug-in enables those versions of Photoshop to support HD Photo
| images.
`----
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136259/article.html
Gee, why not use it? Vista can read it. Other can't. Microsoft controls it.
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