Here's the nitty gritty: Warner's THD disc will appear at retail starting in the second half of 2007. The discs will contain both an HD-DVD component and a Blu-ray Disc component on the same disc, and the movie and extras content will be exactly the same on each. No price was announced, but WHV president Ron Sanders claims that while he thinks consumers would be willing to "pay a little more" for the security of having a disc that's format war proof, the price "won't be very much more than current HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs." He also added that, "We're looking at this thing to consolidate SKU counts - Warner will only release in THD once we get up and running." Warner's senior vice president for marketing management, Steve Nickerson, actually demonstrated on stage a test THD disc containing clips from Superman Returns in both an HD-DVD player, a Blu-ray Disc player and LG's new Super Multi Blue combo player, and it worked perfectly in each (the Super Multi Blue player defaulted to Blu-ray in the demonstration). Surprisingly (though this remains to be proven), Nickerson claimed that each format on the disc will be "full capacity", meaning that you can include both single layer and dual layers for BOTH formats (either 15 or 30GB on the HD-DVD side and 25 or 50GB on the Blu-ray side). We believe THDs will include the different formats on either side of the disc.
Here's the even bigger surprise: Representatives of both New Line and HBO were on hand at the event... and they pledged to begin supporting THD in 2007. New Line's Steve Einhorn commented, "We plan to completely support THD specifically. This will move our schedule ahead considerably." In response to a question from the audience as to whether this means New Line will release the Lord of the Rings films in THD, he added that the studio was "working on it now", that the titles were "high on their agenda" and that they were "looking at the right time and venue" for the release.
Kevin Tsujihara, president of the Warner Home Entertainment Group, also indicated that THD "wasn't done to create a new revenue stream for Warner." Rather they did this as a solution to retailers and consumers in response to the format war. Licensing fees will not be paid to Warner for THD - they're paid instead to the HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc groups just as they would be for releases on either of those formats. Nickerson also added that the replication costs aren't that much higher than regular high-def discs. It was also revealed that the replication equipment to create THD discs is the same as is used to create regular HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, so any replicator with both can produce THDs.
Tsujihara and Sanders produced statistics that they believe support their THD efforts, including that 49% of all consumers surveyed said they would be more likely to adopt high-definition on disc given the choice of THD. They cited projections indicating that there will be 55 million HDTV households in 2007, and 80 million by the end of 2008. They also cited HD-DVD Promotion Group numbers indicating that 2.5 million HD-DVD capable devices will be in homes in 2007, while the Blu-ray Disc Association claims that 6.2 million Blu-ray capable devices will arrive in homes in 2007 (numbers for both formats include game systems). Added to the 775,000 high def players (of both formats) that are reportedly already in homes, that makes a whopping 9 million high def players by the end of 2007... and THDs will work in all of them, regardless of format. By comparison, at the end of DVD's first year, only 1.9 million players were in consumers' homes - a sign (they believe) that the adoption of high-definition discs could be even bigger than DVD.
Like I said, it still remains to be seen if Warner can pull this off technically. With multiple layers and two formats on each disc, there's the potential for compatibility problems. One also wonders if other studios would support it (Tsujihara claims other studios are "evaluating" the format). But just the fact that THD brings New Line into the high-def fray alone is a big deal. As Warner admits, even if THD is only a temporary solution for consumers in the format war... it will still help to pull those consumers in from the sidelines sooner. And if it ultimately turns out that either Blu-ray or HD-DVD wins the format war... those consumers will still have THD discs that work on the winning format's hardware.
if it can play in a Blu-Ray or a DVD player. I don't give a 
