Stories about: Warner Home Video

Well, that was quick. Last week, consumer electronics giant Toshiba announced it was pulling the plug on its high-definition video disc format, HD DVD. Within days, Toshiba's partners announced that they were now Blu-ray shops, and HD DVD players and movies were reduced to fire-sale prices.

Samsung looks ready to make good on its plan to release a dual-format Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD player in time for the year-end holidays.

Supporters of the Blu-ray Disc format came to Berlin armed with key announcements to underscore their commitment to the next-generation movie disc.

Just as in the 1980s, when the Betamax and VHS video formats were battling it out for supremacy, the pornography industry will likely play a big role in determining which of the two blue-laser DVD formats -- Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD -- will be the winner in the battle to replace DVDs for high-definition content.

No one believes Patrick Grady at first. Why should they? He comes out of nowhere, radiating confidence, claiming his company, Rearden Commerce, has pulled off the IT coup of the new century. His triumph: a working b-to-b marketplace, fronted by an ultracustomizable application and based on SOA (service-oriented architecture). Delivered through the browser, Rearden's EBS (Employee Business Services) is capable of automating the purchase of many everyday services, including shipping, conferencing, meals, entertainment, and even travel.

It's the greatest job in the space-time continuum, and I get to watch," intones a tripped-out Stephen Dorff in a voice-over to his new movie, Quantum Project. The actor's latest film, a 32-minute sci-fi love story that will be screened this week at Cannes, France, represents a milestone on the old-to-new-media continuum. Unlike most films that will be shown at the festival, Quantum Project's producers won't have to land a distribution deal before audiences can watch the movie. The tale of a physicist's passion for a painter is the first direct-to-Internet feature film. It hit computer screens May 5.

Hollywood. People come here from all over the world in search of fame and fortune. Some find both. Most find neither. But scrape off the Tinseltown stardust and there's a plain old biz beneath the show: a film industry that in recent years has experienced both feast and famine. Paramount's 1997 Titanic raked in $600 million at the box office and put director James Cameron on top of the world. In 1998, Universal Studios Inc.'s Babe: Pig in the City took in $18 million, cost a porky $85 million to make and (along with a few other underperforming titles) cost Universal Chairman Casey Silver his job. In Hollywood, the technical term for that kind of ROI is bomb.