Category: Blu-Ray

Blu-Ray May Be Selling More Than HD-DVD

According to a story on InformationWeek, Blu-Ray seems to be selling more disks than HD-DVD is.

“Since the week ended Jan. 7, Blu-ray sales have ranged from a low of 63.3% to a high of 69.6%, VideoScan said Tuesday. On the week ended Feb. 18, the latest figures available, Blu-ray accounted for 65% of the market, compared with HD DVD’s 35%.”

This is big news for a lot of you out there who have been waiting to see which one will win. I think this is great but I do think of it a little bit differently than most other people. Most people tell others to wait it out and see which one wins, this is the way that I look at it. Figure out which one you like better and then try to convince everyone you know to think the same way, and have them do the same, so on and so on. Look, no format will win if no one buys either however if you convince everyone you know to buy one over the other than more people will be buying that format. If less people by the other than it may die leaving your favorite victorious, that is if you have a lot of friends otherwise your favorite could end up losing and you could have wasted money investing in a dead format. I guess this only works if you have a lot of friends.

Anyway you can check out the full article here.

One Key to decrypt all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray

We all know that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray encryption have been cracked, but now all of the current disks have been cracked in, well, a new way.

“arnezami” on Doom9 forums announced that he has found the processing key. Previously every different disk needed a seperate key so you would need to extract the key from memory after playing the disk with a player.

Many other forum contributors used the same key to decrypt other movies on HD-DVD and then they tried the key on Blu-Ray and it worked!

Arnezami did not use a cracked player to find the keys he just watched the changes in memory while starting to play the movie. The change seemed to be the processing key. Arnezami said that he spent most of his time on this project by studying the AACS documents that are available.

It’s amazing what somebody can do armed with a $200 HD-DVD player that is bundled with a HD-DVD,  some player software, and well a whole lot of time.

First Blu-Ray movie hits Bittorrent

Torrent Freak said yesterday that the first Blu-Ray movie was up on bittorrent. I do not condone pirating movies however this is a very important moment in time to prove that no encryption can ever be left un-cracked.

The torrent is of Ice Age 2 in 1080p and is found on HDbits.org however you need to be a member to login. Check out TorrentFreaks post here.

LG Blu-Ray HD-DVD Player For Sale on bestbuy.com

Many of you I’m sure have heard of LG’s “Super Multi Blue Player” that is capable of playing both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD with only a single drive. The player is now available on bestbuy.com.

“ With the ability to play both Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs, in addition to upconverting standard DVDs, this versatile system delivers crisp and clear images with rich layers of sound that will leave you on the edge of your seat.”

If you want to get yourself a High Definition player and don’t want to end up with a dead format this may be a good option, and even though it doesn’t support all of HD-DVD’s features it isn’t enough to worry about. Most of the missing functionality could most likely be fixed with a simple firmware update.
The player is $1200 which is a bit pricey but thats the price you pay if your an early adopter.

Samsung’s 2nd Gen Blu-Ray Player

For $799 Samsung’s 2nd generation Blu-Ray player is a step in the right direction for Blu-Ray. It’s $200 cheaper than the previous version and also incorporates a Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) processor.

The BD-P1200 will output up to 1080p and has a HDMI 1.3 connection. It has a great selection of audio options including 192KHz LPCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and DTS.

The player is set to make it to retail in March.

Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Dual Player Coming

LG is going to be showing off a HD-DVD/Blu-ray Player at CES next week. LG will most likely be the first to have a hybrid player because Samsung is the only other company to talk about one and they already have a Blu-Ray player available and its not likely that they would have one before LG. The player seems pretty darn cool and I can’t wait to see it. I am now waiting to hear more about this before I buy myself a next gen player. I’m a little partial towards Blu-Ray because of the support of Disney but HD-DVD seems to be a bit cheaper than Blu-Ray, especially since I’ve found the old Toshiba players for $300.

I’m excited about CES aswell and the coverage by dl.tv who will have videos up 4 times next week. I hope all of you watch dl.tv next week because I think its one of the best video podcasts out there.