[photopress:brdhd.jpg,full,center] Flickr’d Now with HD DVD out of the picture, the Blu-ray camp is free to promote the format’s cutting edge technology, no matter how dull that edge may be. USA Today has a puff piece today on Blu-ray’s upcoming Profile 2.0, known colloquially as BD-Live. The new standard, which is scheduled to debut this fall, requires that Blu-ray players have… → Read More
[photopress:bbuyrebate.jpg,full,center] Flickr’d Best Buy joins Circuit City (and a Japanese retailer) in giving customers who fell for that whole HD DVD scam a little something for their troubles. The electronics retailer will send a $50 gift card to everyone who purchased an HD DVD player (by February 23) from it. The cards, which won’t expire, can be spent on anything in the store. → Read More
Previous rumors indicated that Toshiba would eat a $1 billion loss from the demise of HD DVD, but that seemed to have been exaggerated as Toshi has reported a loss of $653 million. They’re still turning a profit this year, though. Toshiba Cuts Profit Target 31% on Chip Prices, HD DVD (Update2) [Bloomberg] → Read More
Two versions of WB’s hit ‘Batman Begins’ will be rereleased this July on Blu-ray. The HD DVD version was released in October of 2006 and Warner held back a Blu-ray version because the format was unable to support the “In-Movie Experience” PIP feature. HD DVD never had that problem. Along with a standard Blu-ray version there will be a “Limited Edition Gift… → Read More
Toshiba has posted a profit of 250 billion yen, but it could have tacked on another 50 billion to that total had it not been for the demise of HD DVD. The company was already slated to post a 50 billion yen loss for the year, but the demise of its high-def format means production lines changes and other augmentations, which will amount to a 100 billion yen ($1 billion US) loss. I’m personally… → Read More
Let the chiseling begin! I think we all saw this coming: now that Blu-Ray has no competition, the distributors can raise prices back to what they probably should have been in the first place. As you can see in the chart above (courtesy of/shamelessly stolen from Tom’s Hardware), every company but LG has raised the average price of their player by $75-100 from what it cost at or near the… → Read More
I guess he’s a pretty realistic guy. He acknowledges that “the world moves on,” and of course so have the manufacturers and buyers. He says they’ve already been working on driver support and the like, and his comments put weight behind expectations that Microsoft will release a Blu-Ray peripheral for the 360. MS and Sony are already in talks, so it seems like a sure thing… → Read More
[photopress:ccitybr.jpg,full,center] A little birdie wearing the red of Circuit City whispered into Giz’s ear, saying that the electronics retailer will let consumers exchange their recently purchased HD DVD player for a shiny new Blu-ray one. Only players sold within the last three months qualify—Christmas shoppers would be right on the border of qualification—and Circuit City… → Read More
[photopress:twbbbr.jpg,full,right] There may be blood, but it won’t be on HD DVD. Paramount clarified earlier reports concerning its upcoming HD DVD release schedule. The final two HD DVD releases will be Into the Wild (anyone see that? Opie seemed to like it.) and Things We Lost in the Fire. They are currently scheduled to be released next week. Paramount isn’t expected to release… → Read More
Flickr’d Either DreamWorks is stupid or there are some things going on behind closed doors that no one knows about because there’s really no other explanation as to why they’re still clinging to HD DVD. “We have a partnership with Toshiba and have an obligation to see this through,” DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said on Tuesday. “As you know, we… → Read More
[photopress:kozuka_.jpg,full,center] According to Panasonic’s Masayuki Kozuka, HD DVD’s implosion is all Toshiba’s fault. He argues that by flooding the market with cheap, unprofitable players for the holiday season last year it discouraged other vendors from producing their own players. And he doesn’t mean Panasonic, he means the Cobys, Mistushitas, and Sorny’s of… → Read More
[photopress:twbb.jpg,full,right] There’s confusion surrounding the pending high-def release of There Will Be Blood. The movie, which will be released here in the U.S. by Paramount on HD DVD, was scheduled for an April 8 release. Then it disappeared from Paramount’s site. Axed? No. Hardly. Apparently Paramount was just restructuring its Web site to reflect a new March 4 release detail… → Read More
Looks like the rumor was true. Product Page [Best Buy] → Read More
[photopress:churchsigngn0.jpg,full,center] The old man CmdrTaco over at Slashdot has a notion that Toshiba’s final dropping of HD DVD was due to a little old-fashioned backscratching. Sony is selling parts of some of the chip plants it owns in Japan to Toshiba, giving Tosh 60% interests in an RSX and a Cell chip plants. This is money in Toshiba’s pocket. It’s not a direct… → Read More
Microsoft has just discontinued their HD DVD players for the XBox 360. Microsoft chose… poorly. As a result of recent decisions made by Toshiba, Hollywood studios, and retailers, Microsoft plans to withdraw from HD DVD. Xbox will no longer manufacture new HD DVD players for the Xbox 360, but we will continue to provide standard product and warranty support for all Xbox 360 HD DVD Players in… → Read More
[photopress:hdbrexchange.jpg,full,center] A retailer actually giving a damn about its customers? It can’t be an American one, right? No. It’s not. Japanese corp Edion, which owns a bunch of electronic stores over there, will exchange customers’ now obsolete HD DVD players for Blu-ray players. The corp will accept Toshiba players for one from Sony, Panasonic or Sharp. Edion… → Read More
[photopress:36050.jpg,full,center] Flickr’d Rumors point to a massive price drop for the Xbox 360′s HD DVD add-on. As a result of the format’s death, Microsoft will tell retailers to let the drive go for $50, a full $80 off the previous price. Why exactly you’d spend $50 on an outdated, dead technology I don’t know. You’re better off playing Mega Millions or… → Read More
The above picture pretty much explains it all. CompUSA is clearing everything out and here’s your chance to cash in. It’s only the 720p player but when you factor in the seven movies it’s not too bad a deal at $90. But you want the 1080p player don’t you? Yeah, I thought so. There’s even a deal on a 1080p Vizio. Check it out after the jump. Thanks for sending this in… → Read More
Oh John C. Dvorak, I could read your stuff all day long. And your weekly web show, Cranky Geeks, keeps me looking forward to Wednesdays now, if only to catch a fleeting glimpse of the crankiness that’ll undoubtedly ensue. Now the crankiness has spilled over into the HD DVD versus Blu-ray thing. The very thing that I, believe you me, am sick of writing about, hearing about, and reading, yet I… → Read More
[photopress:sonybrrrrr.jpg,full,center] Hold your horses, sports fans. Don’t go declaring Blu-ray the winner of anything just yet, despite the fact that Toshiba original story titlethrew in the towel this week. Sony and the rest of the Blu-ray camp still has one more foe they need to tackle—perception. The perception that regular DVD is “good enough” and that Blu-ray is too… → Read More
[photopress:gshd.jpg,full,center] GameStop will stop accepting all HD DVD trade-ins later today. It’ll stop accepting the 360′s HD DVD player for trade-ins, too. Story. This past Christmas I traded in unopened HD DVDs that I had received throughout the year and traded them into Best Buy, getting some store credit in the process. Good thing I did that when I did because with the death… → Read More
[photopress:hd_dvd_videos.jpg,full,left] Now here’s something to think about: Now that HD DVD is dead, do you see anything wrong with HD DVD disc owners breaking the DRM on their discs to make backups of the media that they’ve bought in an effort to future-proof their investments? Think about it: when you buy a disc, whether a DVD or CD, you’re really paying for a copy of… → Read More
Holy crap, this almost seems like more trouble than it’s worth but if you’re looking to convert your “old” HD DVDs to Blu-ray, Wired’s How-To Wiki has got you covered. You’ll need a fast Windows machine, an HD DVD drive, a Blu-ray burner, 30GB of hard drive space, money, and a bunch of software. → Read More
Kick ass cover by Willie, BTW LG will not give up on selling hybrid players says UK’s pocket-lint, following in the footsteps of folks like Samsung. Expect more of these “announcements” to come out in the next few days as HD DVD backers scramble to retool their factories to produce hybrid or Blu-Ray only players. “With the recent announcement from Toshiba, Blu-Ray will now… → Read More
Okay you guys, listen up for a second. I’ve got some bad news. It’s been a long and winding road and we’ve all fought really hard, but it appears that HD DVD might actually be on its way out for real. We just got word that Onkyo has decided to stop making HD DVD players. I know you feel. I feel like I got punched in the gonads, too. → Read More
Not that Sony needed to respond to Microsoft’s press release over the demise of HD DVD, but they did anyway. Dave Karraker, senior director fo corporate communications for Sony Computer Entertainment America, had this to say: “It’s unfortunate that Microsoft’s external HD-DVD drive will not enhance the experience at all for the gamer. Sony realizes that to truly take gaming… → Read More
It’s in our inbox, so that’s good enough for us to call it. At 12:14AM PST, HD DVD is no longer supported by Toshiba, effectively killing the format. The release says that Toshiba will focus instead on “championing consumer access to HD content”. No more players, no more disks, no more HD DVD. So now we can all buy our PS3s and wait for the day when Transformers shows up on… → Read More
We’ve covered this extensively already and know that Blu-ray has won the physical HD media war, but it’s being reported that Toshiba may make an official announcement as early as tomorrow. All Toshiba HD DVD hardware including stand alone players and optical drives will become non-existent on retailer shelves by March. In the same realm of news, Samsung has announced they will shift… → Read More
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