It’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment of our “TenYears” list. We already did the biggest losers in the tech industry but why not talk about the biggest product flops? Here are a few of the biggest failures of the decade, starting with one monster release from a fairly well-known company. → Read More
You may want to pull your HD DVD player’s Craigslist ad if you’re a Harry Potter fan. For only $25, you can get the first five Harry Potter films in glorous high definition with free shipping. And did you see the spectacular gift box? Why wouldn’t you spend $25 on this? Really, tell me one good reason… Deep Discount via dealnews → Read More
Remember HD DVD? The video format developed by Toshiba that lost the format war against Blu-ray? Today Toshiba held a pretty interesting annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo during which president Atsutoshi Nishida didn’t say they will revive HD DVD but that his company thinks about producing Blu-ray products. → Read More
Blu-ray was declared the winning format last year when HD DVD threw in the towel. This victory came after major studios left the HD DVD camp and joined up with Blu-ray. But just because a victory was celebrated, that doesn’t mean the format is successful. In fact, a recent Harris Interactive poll shows that many purchased an HD DVD player last year and most don’t plan on buying a Blu-ray player anytime soon.
This poll’s results might be shocking to some outside the tech community, but it clearly shows that consumers are ready to move past physical media and onto the digital downloads. In fact, secondary polls were conducted as well and found that an overwhelming number of people are “not at all likely” to purchase a Blu-ray device within the next year and many will buy fewer DVDs within six months. → Read More
http://www.videojug.com/film/player?id=a26005a0-bc6e-26e5-7773-ff0008cb16d5 Go grab that Xbox 360 HD DVD drive and give it new life with this mod. What you’re going to do is rip it apart and make a sweet-ass laser pointer/gun sight/cat teaser. It’s not like you’re ever going to use it again. Look at it. It’s just sitting there, mocking your early-adapting ass. Oh, and didja know that this laser will be strong enough to burn paper or light a match? Go get it. → Read More
The Format War is done; it has been for a while. Netflix officially stopped buying new HD DVDs back in February ’08 and starting on December 15th, the company will no longer be shipping ‘em out either marking Blu-ray’s exclusive reign. Any HD DVDs remaining in subscriber’s queues will simply be replaced with standard DVDs. No word on what Netflix is doing with the soon to be defunct high-def discs, but hopefully they will be up for sale sometime down the road. I’m sure a bunch of early adopters would appreciate the gesture and discount on the discs. → Read More
The format war may be done and even though Blu-ray won, that doesn’t mean Toshiba is going to leave its early adopters stranded with unsupported devices and so, just released firmware 4.0 for its HD DVD players. It seems the update affects every Toshiba HD DVD player and owners will want to download this update via the built-in Ethernet port for improved disc playback, along with resuming play after being paused for a long time. Isn’t it refreshing to see a CE company support products even though they aren’t produced or even needed anymore? Toshiba via About → Read More
Sony BDP-350 owners, I’ve got great news for you this Friday. Your Sony Blu-ray player can now play all the fancy-pants BD Live extras once you update your player’s firmware. The 56 MB firmware update can be downloaded directly via the players Ethernet port or you can download it on your computer and make an update disc. Either way you go, I’m happy for you. The BD Live functionality finally adds the same features HD DVD had years ago. Sony via DigitalHome → Read More
Even after HD DVD’s demise, Blu-ray still isn’t catching on, the PS3 excepted. Maybe the real format war was between DVD and Blu-ray all along? A recent survey, carried out by ABI Research, found that more than half the respondents have no intention of buying a Blu-ray player. About a quarter said they had plans to buy one, but not till next year. And why are consumers so reluctant to make the Blu-ray jump? Surprise, for many people, plain ol’ DVD is good enough. Again, DVD is good enough. 1080p and BD Live be damned, apparently. As it stands, the PS3 is one of the only bright spots in the Blu-ray arena right now, insofar as it’ll help drive down manufacturing costs of Blu-ray players. Maybe Blu-ray is too beautiful for this world? → Read More
Due for release on September 2, Transformers on Blu-ray will no doubt entertain those of you who think giant robots fighting other just-as-big robots is “cool.” Paramount has said that the Blu-ray version will feature, in some capacity, BD Live content. Better still, this version will have Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sounds; the HD DVD version only had Dolby Digital Plus. And that’s the box art, identical to the HD DVD one. → Read More
Blu-ray isn’t dead yet. Sales of Blu-ray players in Japan topped sales of regular DVD players for the first time last month, an indication that consumers are finally warming up to the high-def format. Spun a different way, sales of Blu-ray alone in April were three times the amount of both Blu-ray and HD DVD combined in January. Reasons for the sudden uptick in sales include people finally coming to terms with the end of the high-def format war to HDTVs no longer being seen as a luxury, but merely the type of TV that one buys now. Sales are expected to rise even further as manufacturers slash prices in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. I’ll get by with rips, thanks. → Read More
