Europe gets HD DVD Promotion Group
At a press conference at the CeBIT 2007 show, several film studios and companies including Studio Canal, Universal, Toshiba, and Microsoft, announced the formation of a new European trade organisation: the European HD DVD Promotional Group Ltd.
Much as the established North American and original Japanese equivalent, it will comprise film studios, content distributors, consumer electronics companies, IT companies, PC makers, disc replicators, and authoring houses, but focus particularly on the European market.
"After a strong year in North America and Asia, HD DVD is drawing attention in Europe, with unrivaled quality and affordable prices," said Ken Graffeo, Executive Vice President, HD Strategic Marketing, Universal Studios Home Entertainment. "HD DVD is the most recognized brand name worldwide for high definition packaged media and we now have a strong group of companies behind it, from hardware manufacturers to studios and distributors."
The official web site is at HDDVDEurope.com and comprises a number of country-specific pages.
A European group for Blu-ray has been around for about 6 months now.
HD DVD currently outsells Blu-ray 4 to 1 in the UK, with HD DVD hardware outselling Blu-ray Europe-wide, so the group will have a pleasing start. It will be interesting to see what the two groups can throw at each other, and the public, over the coming months, particularly with Sony's PS3 on the way.
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