Last week, as reported in Variety, IFC Entertainment signed an agreement to give Blockbuster a 60-day exclusive for all of their DVD releases.

This plan will surely boost profits for IFC, but at what cost to the consumer? Jim Emerson took apart pretty much everything that’s wrong with this deal in his scanners blog on Saturday, a well-researched piece that also captures the utter hypocrisy of Blockbuster’s contradictory policies on unrated films. (Sex comedies like Superbad and American Pie knock-offs? Yes. Sex dramas like Lust, Caution and Bertolulcci’s The Dreamers? Sorry, gotta cut these down to an R rating.) But it bears repeating that this is no help to the audiences that generally seek out these titles.

The Weinstein Company (TWC) struck a similar but more limited deal with Blockbuster over a year ago. They gave Blockbuster a rental exclusive but continued to sell their DVDs through traditional outlets, thus giving any rental store with even the most limited initiative to purchase copies (often at wholesale costs) they could then rent out. TWC responded by putting a warning on the disc that told viewers what they were watching was “For purchase only,” even though the warning carried no legal weight of any kind.

IFC is making their deal with Blockbuster much tighter, giving the store an exclusive 60-day window for both sales and rentals. Competitors can still purchase copies from Blockbuster (at retail price) and rent them in their own stores, though they will likely do so in smaller numbers than TWC titles. After 60 days, the sales window opens to all other outlets, though Blockbuster will still have an exclusive 3-year rental window (which, as the TWC shows, is unenforceable in any legal sense).

But the deal is ultimately a slap in the face to the very stores that have been supporting indie and alternative titles all along: the independent neighborhood stores, the alternative-minded regional mini-chains, all those rental outfits that serve diverse audiences and nurture the interests in titles beyond the blockbuster. IFC senior VP of sales says: “It gives millions of customers increased access to our movies.” (quoted in the Variety report on the deal)

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Or so it looks.

I’m not one to make sweeping pronouncements (really, it’s not in my character), but the momentum is pretty indisputable. Netflix and Best Buy threw their support behind Blu-ray earlier this week, and on Friday Wal-Mart announced they would stock Blu-ray as their exclusive high-definition video format. Here’s the Wired report on the announcement. The New York Times has already provided HD DVD’s obituary.

I like to think of it in terms of the primary campaigns. Just a couple of months ago, the format war resembled the Democratic campaign, with studios split between the Blu-ray and HD DVD. When Warner and Fox committed to Blu-ray exclusively, it tipped the balance and the metaphor jumped parties. Now it’s akin to the Republican primaries with Blu-ray as the John McCain campaign. Now everyone’s just waiting for the HD-uckabee to toss in the towel and give in to the inevitable momentum.

A few friends have been keeping much closer tabs on the politics of high-definition. Seattle film critic Jeff Shannon sent me this link from the US News and World Report blog about the Netflix decision earlier this week.

Nils von Veh followed up with this E-mail, which I reprint with his permission. Read more »

Have you been waiting for the industry to settle on a standard before committing to a new high definition DVD system? Warners, the last of the studios to release its HD offerings in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, has tipped the balance (ostensibly past the point of return) by announcing its commitment to the Blu-ray format solely. They will honor their HD DVD commitments through the end of May, and then drop the format, leaving only Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Dreamworks Animation supporting HD DVD.

“The high-definition DVD war is all but over,” opens the New York Times piece by Brooks Barnes.

Hollywood’s squabble over which of two technologies will replace standard DVDs skewed in the direction of the Sony Corporation on Friday, with Warner Brothers casting the deciding vote in favor of the company’s Blu-ray discs over the rival format, HD DVD.

In some ways, the fight is a replay of the VHS versus Betamax battle of the 1980s. This time, however, the Sony product appears to have prevailed.

“The overwhelming industry opinion is that this decides the format battle in favor of Blu-ray,” said Richard Doherty, research director at the Envisioneering Group, a market research firm in Seaford, N.Y.

You can also get more information in this Variety article:

Warner Bros. will throw all its weight behind Blu-ray later this year, a decision that could serve as a death blow to the rival HD DVD format.

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