HD-DVD – Page 2 – CyberSurge

Another Feather in the Cap for HD-DVD

The next generation format war is still raging on with no end in site. My opinion on the matter, when asked by others what I thought, was always to just buy one or the other, in other words, PICK YOUR SIDE. The problem with everyone waiting is that no one is buying either, which means it will just take longer for it to end. If you pick your side and help promote that side by telling your friends and family to do the same it is more likely for it to end (not much but enough to say so).

But now we find out some statistics about HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray from Netflix. According to the stats Netflix users browse Blu-Ray movies 1.8 times more than HD-DVD, but those browsing HD-DVD are 4.4 times more likely to make that their default. Now, keep in mind that only 0.3 percent of Netflix users check out HD titles but it is still another feather in the cap for HD-DVD.

I have always been a little partial towards Blu-Ray because of the studios backing the format, but I have to say that now that you can buy an HD-DVD player for a measly $299 I think that HD-DVD is the format to go with.

CrunchGear

Toshiba Cuts Price of HD-DVD Player to $299

Well DigiTimes was wrong and I was wrong to rebroadcast their information. Toshiba has announced that their HD-A2 HD-DVD player will be priced at $299.

This is a big step in the format wars. The prices have been going down since the initial debut of these players but I believe that the $300 mark is where it is at. I believe that once the players hit that price point you will really start to see some adoption of the formats.

I have always been a Blu-ray fan but disliked its high price tag. The real reason I like Blu-ray is because of it’s scratch resistant coating on discs and which studios have signed on. HD-DVD however I have began to grow fond of because of it being the cheapest way to get truly good looking video into your living room for an extremely low price.

Toshiba HD-A2

[via TG Daily]

Blockbuster Favors Blu-Ray

According to Pittsburghlive.com, Blockbuster will lay its trust in the hands of Blu-ray over the hi-def war. 1,450 stores will begin stocking Blu-ray discs, not HD-DVD discs.

“This could be the end for HD-DVD” is what many in the blogosphere are saying. Let’s look at it this way, Blockbuster is a huge company but I’m not sure if they have the weight that many people think that they do. Most stores selling movies are selling both, Netflix has both, and most people just want to buy the cheaper player. I am usually on the side of Blu-ray in most of these discussions because I love to play the devils advocate. But, HD-DVD isn’t exactly going to see too many hits from this, there have been many companies who have publicly sided with either HD-DVD or Blu-ray and later on decided to either change their mind or become neutral signing deals with both formats.

People love to have headlines like “Blockbuster sides with Blu-ray, the end for HD-DVD?” but the problem is it is just way too soon to tell which format will end up winning, the thing is, both formats could still “win.” There are plenty of consumers out there to go around and it seems like just as many movies. A dual-format player for $500 or the ability for the consumers to buy and HD-DVD player for $250 and a Blu-ray player for $250 could make this format war mean nothing anymore.

Let’s just all take a deep breath look at what movies you want and the price of the players/discs and just buy something already. I’m tired of everyone getting upset over this. Just buy a player and some movies, without customers neither one will win, do your part by purchasing something and making your “vote” count in this format war.

HP to Offer Dual HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Drive in Desktops

HP will soon be offering a single drive option for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray needs in upcoming desktops. Giving customers the ability to burn and read CD’s, DVD’s, and Blu-Ray discs. Strangely the drive will only read HD-DVDs and not write to them.

May 9th is the date (according to CNet) when they will begin selling this option. This will make them the first company to sell a single drive solution for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The Pavilion Media Center m8010y and the Pavilion d4890y will be the models with this option and are both Intel powered.

HP started out on the HD-DVD side and because of this seems to have changed their mind about that decision and now is going to be neutral in this war. Not very good for the HD-DVD side but great for the Blu-Ray side.

$299 HD-DVD Players Unlikely to Happen this Year

DigiTimes is claiming that because of Blue-laser diodes yields being so low. They said that any HD-DVD player being sold at that price would be being sold at less than production cost.

The thing is the makers of the diodes including Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic) have assigned their production capacities for own use first. If this is true then if Sony could just get things together they could be the first to have a low cost next-gen DVD player.

This also means that for some time the cheapest way to get High definition content into your home theater is the XBox360 HD-DVD drive or the Playstation 3.

DigiTimes

Digg going crazy with HD-DVD Stories

Digg.com is a great social news website where the users choose which content they want to see on the front page.

Yesterday the digg community went crazy when a user profile and a couple of stories submitted contained the decryption key for HD-DVDs. Within hours digg was flooded with stories about the decryption key and about digg taking it down

This is a picture of the top stories in all categories during the fiasco:

Every single story is in relation to the problem.

I think that what they did was a little dumb and I think that if they had any problem with it they could be safe legally under dmca safe harbor but I’m not a lawyer.

Well, here are the 3 stories at the top from all categories from this picture:
What’s Happening with HD-DVD Stories?
“Digg Banned me for Typing a Number!”
Was it Worth it, Digg?

Digg had to make a statement about what they are going to do about it and what they think about the situation. They said in the top story above that they were sent take down notices and decide to comply. Then later in the link below they decided to not take down any more stories including the key, saying:

“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

Digg’s Decision

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.

DMCA Takedown Notice for BackupHDDVD

The software that is used to help decrypt and backup HD-DVD’s has been taken down from SourceForge after a DMCA take down notice was recieved. The reason that the software was had to be taken down is because the software did contain decryption keys, SourceForge said that they would be willing to host a version of the program that didn’t contain the keys.

SlySofts AnyDVD HD is still available from slysoft.com although it does cost money.

SlySoft AnyDVD HD Released $79

I mentioned a few days ago that SlySoft released a beta for an HD version of their program AnyDVD. Well, now it is official and you can buy it for yourself for $79 unless you buy it bundled with some of their other apps, they’ll give you a discount in price per application if you do that.So if you need to backup some of your HD-DVD’s you can head on over to SlySoft.com to get AnyDVD HD.

SlySoft AnyDVD HD backs up HD-DVD’s

SlySoft makers of AnyDVD, CloneDVD, CloneDVD Mobile, and CloneCD have released a beta of AnyDVD HD which now supports backing up of HD-DVD’s. This comes right on the heels of arnezami’s announcement on the Doom9 forums of the processing key. You gotta wonder how they are backing up those HD-DVD’s.I haven’t tried the software myself but I have heard that it does work. You can download it for yourself 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.

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.