Innovative implementations of HD DVD's HDi interactive, web-connected features will be highlights of the forthcoming DVD Forum Europe 2007 conference held in Berlin on 3 September. Beside the architects of the DVD and HD DVD standard specifications, leading authoring houses showcasing creative aspects of the high definition format include Imagion, Enteractive, DMP, Nixbu and CMC.

Speaking at the event will be Hans Henseleit, founder of Enteractive at Hamburg, that has become one of Europe's leading DVD pre-mastering studios, and has completed the first HD DVD game.

Lubomir Celar, director of Prague-based Digital Media Production, will be sharing his experience. In partnership with Microsoft and Sonopress, DMP created in 2004 the first European DVD with WMV High Definition Video content, Tomb Raider: Lara Croft - The Cradle of Life, for German publisher Concorde Home Entertainment.

Also, contributing to the Berlin conference will be founder and managing director of Imagion AG, Michael Becker, who produced Europe's first HD DVD title, Elephants Dream. The title recently won the Video Encoding and Technical Achievement Award at the DVD Association's 2007 DVDA Excellence Awards in the US.

Another participant to the demonstration panel will be French authoring studio CMC that has produced the world's first THX-certified HD DVD title, Pan's labyrinth, for Wild Side Video.

Speaking as well will be Niran Huesing, from publisher and producer Nixbu Entertainment. The company has already built a catalogue of 48 HD DVD titles and is pushing the envelope with a brand new MuNa (Music Navigator) HD DVD project.

Kilroy Hughes, Senior Digital Media Architect of the Consumer Media Technology Group at Microsoft, will demonstrate the range of HDi features. In the same group, Xavier Pouyat, Program Manager EMEA, in charge of the deployment of HD DVD technologies for Microsoft for the Europe region, will update delegates about the company VC-1 and the other codecs as well as HD authoring solutions.

Laurent Villaume, founder and CEO of QOL, the HD DVD replication pioneer in Europe, will identify the challenges in the manufacturing of HD discs and especially in the testing and quality control in the mastering process.

Market analyses will be provided by Helen Davis Jayalath, senior analyst for the video sector at Screen Digest who will be taking stock of the current situation in next-generation formats in Europe and points to the factors that will impact on future growth.

For his part, Ben Keen, Screen Digest's director and chief analyst, will examine the market take-up and trends in consumer HD displays.

Jean-Luc Renaud, publisher & editor-in-chief of www.dvd-intelligence.com – and the conference organiser on behalf of the DVD Forum – will take a look at packaged media in the changing markeplace and assess the impact of alternative content delivery channels on the optical discs.

Other speakers on technology update sessions will be profiled shortly.

Click here for Programme details and Registration information.

Story filed 29.07.07