HD-DVD Will Make Illegal Downloading 'Inconvenient'

The potential pirating of movies remains a major concern for Time Warner, and that's one reason the company is advocating the new HD-DVD platform, according to Chief Executive Richard Parsons.

Speaking at the UBS Media Week Conference, Parsons told the gathering that the film and video industry can be much more effective than the music industry in dealing with file sharing.

While Napster and other file-sharing programs allowed users to grab just the songs they wanted off albums, undermining CD sales, movies are entirely different, he said.

"First of all, movies ... are a unitary product: Either you want the [whole] movie or you don't want it. And there are multiple ways to see them already. You can go to the theater; you can watch it on pay-per-view; you can watch it on cable, DVD and so forth.

"Secondly, it's a heavier download. That's why we're pushing to get HD-DVD in place," added Parsons. The new technology -- developed by Toshiba and backed by Time Warner's Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, Viacom's Paramount Pictures and NBC Universal's Universal Pictures -- has far greater storage capacity than DVDs currently on the market.

"Right now, you can probably download a DVD in two, three hours," said Parsons. "This HD-DVD product is a day's download. And that'll be a big step [for the industry], to make downloading just super, super, super inconvenient."

Time Warner still intends to forge ahead with plans to allow "reasonable" paid downloads of its video content, he added.

Story source: marketwatch.com.