Microsoft awards HDi grant to filmmaker

PARK CITY, Utah--Jason Kohn, director of last year's prize-winning Sundance documentary Manda Bala, shot his every frame to be seen on the big screen, but now realizes "most people are going to experience it in DVD."

Given the latter, he said he was excited to have been awarded a new grant from Microsoft, announced here Sunday night, that will allow him to create a disc using the software giant's HDi technology. HDi enables him to complement the movie with interactive and Web-enabled features such as viewer polls, song downloads, or picture-in-picture commentary and character biographies.

"We never would have been able to afford this," he said at a press conference at the Microsoft House, a Sundance Film Festival venue created to show off the company's digital media technologies.

"It fills a weird little niche that I didn't even know existed," he added, noting that in documentary filmmaking in particular, you often have lots of extra footage, which HDi can help showcase.

The grant, worth about $100,000, also includes support for production of the finished product on HD DVD.

HDi is Microsoft's implementation of the interactive layer in the HD DVD format, the company said in a statement. It takes advantage of mandatory features in every HD DVD player, including a secondary video decoder and an Internet connection.

The HDi grant, awarded in conjunction with the Sundance Institute, follows Microsoft's other efforts to support independent films, the company said. Another example is the 1,000 HD DVD Indies Project, which gives indie filmmakers free access to HD DVD authoring and on-demand replication. Microsoft is also offering digital rentals of festival short films on its Xbox 360 platform.

[ralfthedog]

Who will distribute it?

By the time it hits the duplication services, no studio will support HD DVD.

[Anon-Y-mous]

M$ resorting to bribing filmmakers to support a DEAD non-standard

HD Sales are tanking, 71% of the studios are going Blu-Ray, and M$ is now bribing filmakers to support their proprietary DEAD "non"-standard. Seems about par for the course.

[i_am_still_wade]

Better than DRM infested Blu-Ray

The BDA paid Fox $400 million this year (and there is proof) to not go to HD DVD.

[ewelch]

That's rich

Microsoft backing one more failed technology. Web TV, WIFI <br />hardware, WinFS, HD-DVD, the list goes on and on. It's getting to <br />the point where you can guess something is going to fail by it <br />getting the Microsoft kiss of death.

[rcrusoe]

I'll wait for the download

IMO, MS is wasting their (stockholder's) money - again.<br /><br />HD DVD is already under a death sentence, and Blu Ray will <br />never be as wide spread as the standard DVD is today. The <br />future of movies is downloads and/or pay per view. <br /><br />Blu Ray will probably be a successful format for data storage, <br />but HD DVD appears destined to be the (first) BetaMax of the <br />21st century.