Women and Children First

The Korea Times is reporting that Samsung and LG will stop making Blu-ray/HD DVD combo players. This is another blow to the fast-sinking HD DVD luxury liner. Cutting their losses, and also cutting the throats of early adopters who adopted the wrong baby, Samsung and LG will pull the plug on their combo players, able to play both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Instead, they will focus on Blu-ray from now on. This means that if you have a huge stack of HD DVDs, you have several fewer options for playing your "legacy" discs.

Nostalgic Xbox 360 HD DVD Player Update

If you're one of the unlucky souls who sprang for an HD DVD player attachment for your Xbox 360, the rest of the world may have already dismissed you, but Microsoft still has your back. Months after the format war victory officially went to Blu-ray, Microsoft sent out a software update to the owners of Xbox 360 HD DVD players — that's loyalty.

$50 for Your Trouble

Claiming to share consumers' frustrations that they were asked to make a choice in a format war, Best Buy is placating HD DVD player customers who bought players or before  Feb. 23 fire sale prices with a $50 gift certificate. Best Buy will send out certificates to customers it identifies as having purchased an HD DVD player "or attachment."

 

Circuit City Feels HD DVD Owners' Pain

According to a Circuit City employee tip-off to Gizmodo, the retailer plans to take back HD DVD players from consumers who've become casualties of the high-def format war.

HD DVDs Dropping Like Bees

Come Tuesday, the list of to-be-released HD DVDs will be considerably shorter. Perhaps HD DVD player owners should consider shopping for a stylish vase to put on that empty shelf reserved for HD copies of  Paramount's There Will be Blood, Sweeney Todd, the Jack Ryan films, Cloverfield, and subsidiary DreamWorks' animated Bee Movie.

Paramount's production of HD DVD's ends March 4, the company said last week, with the lackluster final releases of Into the Wild, and Things We Lost In The Fire. The company has pledged support for the Blu-ray format, making it the final major studio to do so, though it hasn't said when the canceled HD DVD films will be pressed into Blu-ray discs.

With HD DVD Gone, Now What?

Just how big a victory the Blu-ray Disc camp scored when Toshiba pulled the plug on HD DVD remains to be seen. Blu-ray may have won the hearts of Hollywood, which is dedicated to preserving traditional media (note Jon Stewart's jabs at viewing Lawrence of Arabia on an iPod during the Oscars), but the public may take a different route to movie playback. With Apple now renting movies via iTunes for under $5 each, in addition to selling downloads for $10 a pop, does anyone really need to buy and store a DVD with super-high resolution?

One question is whether portability will win out over quality following the iPod model for music. Another revolves around the rent vs. own picture. Will anyone other than parents looking to appease toddlers--or enthusiasts building a library--choose to go to the store to buy a disc--hi-res or not--when they can stream a movie from Netflix instead as part of their subscription?

HD DVD's Death: The Autopsy

  The high definition disc format HD DVD was killed today — the victim of abandonment.

Toshiba Corporation, the company behind HD DVD's development, announced that it was pulling the plug on the nearly two-year-old format, effectively making Blu-ray disc the victor in the great high-def format war of the 21st century.

The Fat Lady Sings: HD DVD Is Dead

Yes, Yogi, it's OVER. Check out this link, originally filed by the AP at 7:48 this morning (and re-filed at 11:05):

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Japan-Toshiba.html?ref=business

By the way, folks, for the record:

Contrary to these recent headlines . . .

"Support Grows for Blu-ray High-Def DVDs" — USA Today
"Sony's Blu-ray DVD Format Could Prevail" — AP via Yahoo!

. . . please remember that Blu-ray Discs are not DVDs. The Blu-ray format is not based on the DVD format. Look at any Blu-ray package, and you won't find the word "DVD" anywhere.

A common mistake — just like saying DVD-Audio and SACD multichannel discs are 5.1. No, they're 6.0! —Ken Richardson

Surrender Ahead for HD DVD?

HD DVD proponent Toshiba is expected to wave the white flag in the next few weeks, according to an article in The Hollywood Reporter. The move would surprise few following the announcement by Warner Home Video last month that it would support Blu-ray exclusively beginning in May.

That decision set in motion a domino effect at retail and rental outlets. Online DVD rental service Netflix said it would stock Blu-ray exclusively in the hi-def video disc category, and Best Buy said it would promote Blu-ray over HD DVD in its stores.

Toshiba still touts what it sees as the superiority of the HD DVD format, but marketing vp Jodi Sally told Hollywood Reporter that the company would continue to study the market impact of recent developments.

 

Have a Merry Glitch-mas?

According to a Dec. 31 article in The New York Times, most buyers are still on the fence when it comes to the high-def disc battle, with neither camp reporting impressive numbers. Citing data from Adams Media Research, 578,000 HD DVD and 370,000 Blu-ray players would be rung up in 2007, hardly numbers to brag about compared with, say, the 5 million iPhones rumored to be sold since last summer's launch.

While the Times projected that content could determine the ultimate winner of the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war, maybe working content will be the clincher.

In the past month alone, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and the Blade Runner Collection have been cited for glitches ranging from wrong format distribution to wrong resolution output.