Warner, Paramount Announce First BD-50 Blu-ray Discs

With whiplash speed, the BD-50 is enjoying rapid adoption by the major studios, with Warner and Paramount today announcing their first dual-layer Blu-ray disc releases will hit stores by the holiday season.

As reported yesterday, Warner will release the classic westerns 'The Searchers' and 'Unforgiven' on Blu-ray on October 31, with the studio confirming today they will also be BD-50 releases.

Paramount also told Video Business that it plans to unveil its first BD-50 title, Oliver Stone's controversial 'World Trade Center' in the coming weeks, though no actual street date has yet been announced.

The news comes on the heels of announcements from Sony, Fox and Lionsgate of their first BD-50 Blu-ray disc releases. In total as many as a dozen BD-50s could be on shelves by year's end.

"We discovered that once you optimize the picture and the sound, on a lot of movies that just eats up most of the room," 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment marketing EVP Peter Staddon said at the Media-Tech conference Tuesday in Long Beach, California. "In order to give the full Blu-ray experience, you need the extra 25GB, particularly on any long movie."

Hollywood's ready acceptance of BD-50 can only be good news for Blu-ray. We've always thought that any next-gen format has to offer a wealth of supplemental content and interactive features as well as full-resolution HD video and audio if it is going to succeed with mainstream consumers. With dual-layer Blu-ray discs at last becoming commonplace, it can finally go toe-to-toe with HD DVD in terms of supplemental content.

We'll keep you posted on the latest BD-50 announcements, and we've updated all the BD-50-related listings in our Blu-ray Release Schedule. Stay tuned!