Our good friend Susanne Ault, of trade magazine
Video Business, has put together
a new story posted yesterday at
VB's website, titled "CBS DVD to increase its release slate: Label plans to roll out 105 to 110 titles." In it, Susanne discusses how CBS DVD "
now retains creative oversight over series from former sibling Paramount Television, including Beverly Hills 90210 and Twin Peaks, and Showtime, home of Dexter and The L Word...(and d
)espite Viacom and CBS now being separate companies, Viacom's Paramount Home Entertainment and CBS DVD work together, with Paramount handling sales and distribution and the two companies sharing marketing duties." This, by the way, is essentially why we here at TVShowsOnDVD tend to refer to releases as being from "CBS/Paramount," due to the shared nature of the production and distribution.
Susanne's article goes over how CBS DVD intends to release 13-18% more TV-DVD titles in 2008 - roughly 105-110 planned releases - as compared to their 2007 slate. In it, she covers three major pieces of news for fans. Two of them concern HD DVD-format releases, though, and the timing of her posting for this story shows it was obviously put together before
Warner's announcement yesterday that they are stopping their support of the HD DVD format. With that in mind, we should realize that Paramount's plans as discussed in Susanne's article are also possibly subject to change, as the switchover by Warner yesterday surely proves that future plans in this industry are never necessary set in stone! In fact, the move by WB caught the industry folks by enough of a surprise, that a planned major HD DVD presentation for tomorrow at the CES show was
suddenly cancelled, so that Toshiba could discuss "
the potential impact of (Warner's)
announcement with the other HD DVD partner companies and evaluat(e)
next steps."
So, let's look at was CBS DVD had to say, but let's keep in mind that we shouldn't take it too much to heart until an official announcement gets made.
Of the two HD DVD-related pieces in Susanne's story, one concerns a possible hi-def release of
C.S.I. (which we have posted the details about separately), and the other discusses future HD DVD releases of the remastered episodes for
Star Trek: The Original Series. The specific passages say:
The label predicts that its first high-definition release, the Nov. 20 HD DVD release of Star Trek: Season One, will reach 100,000 units sold. That momentum has led the company to commit to releasing all subsequent Star Trek seasons on high-def, amounting to two more HD DVD titles. That is ambitious, as most major studios are not yet heavily mining TV DVD libraries for catalog titles to release in next-gen formats.
"I think that when we are looking at catalog and some sitcoms, we don’t see [high-def] moving the dial that much, but with some of our sci-fi and action-adventure, it can be a very positive format change for us," said (CBS DVD Executive VP and General Manager Ken) Ross.
Here at TVShowsOnDVD, we had already heard from retailers that there were
plans for a March release of Season 2 on HD DVD...plans which later were
pushed back to sometime in the Summer. Even with knowing that via the retailers, it's still good to hear directly from CBS that they (and Paramount) have been continuing to plan on getting these releases out. The first one is really good-looking...though still a bit pricier than it ought to be.
We'll keep our Vulcan ears open for more word about this, and let you know if these high-def releases do indeed continue to be on the long-range scanners. Stay tuned!
