Digital Trends presents this article, in which they declare HD-DVD the clear winner of the next gen battle. Even with far fewer studios currently supporting them, HD-DVD still has considerably more releases (see here) and is much more affordable. Digital Trends' original prediction was Blu-ray would win, partially because of what the PS3 would do for it. That was before both the price of the PS3, and the delays, were announced. Given the current circumstances of the PS3, e.g., it's a complete joke of a system that no one wants, it's understandable how things have changed.

Warner Bros has filed a patent for a new type of hybrid disc that would work in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players. This is a simliar concept to the often-rumored but never-confirmed hybrid players from the likes of LG and other manufacturers, that would play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs.

Considering the current situation of the HD movie market, this may be considered "neat" and/or "cool" by some HD fanatics. But remember that the studios have dug this hole themselves, and I'm finding it very humorous to watch them scramble to get out of it. If they had been patient and reasonable (can you imagine? ha!), only one format would exist, and it would probably be selling a lot better than the dismal pathetic failures that we know as Blu-ray and HD-DVD. While I obviously advocate that you join me in giving the studios the finger, I won't deny that the HD movie market would be a LOT more tempting if there wasn't a 50% chance that you were throwing your money right down the toilet.

Those resourceful Europeans! Engadget writes

Both high definition optical disc formats have already seen their share of setbacks in the form of delays and hardware problems, and now they may be facing some nasty anti-trust allegations pending the results of a recently-launched EU probe. Having already flexed its authoritative muscle against Microsoft, the European Commission has now moved on to investigating the terms that the major backers of Blu-ray and HD DVD are exerting upon their respective licensees. Since the investigation is still "unofficial" at this point, the Commission refused to specify the particular companies being probed, although Sony publicly confirmed that it has received one of the letters in question and that it's cooperating with regulators.

If these same regulators decide that nothing fishy is going on, then the matter will be dropped; but if they're displeased with the responses they get, a full anti-trust probe is likely. Best case scenario: only one of the camps ends up being subjected to further scrutiny, leaving the other as clear-cut victor in the format war and saving us all the hassle of choosing sides.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/20060728/tc_macworld/eu20060728

Arguably one of the best features of HD-DVD is the fact that it lacks region encoding (more info at wikipedia). DVD's have had this since introduction, much to the dismay of all foreign film and anime fans. Blu-ray also will have it. But, HD-DVD currently lacks this "feature", leading some to believe that maybe HD-DVD actually "got it", that they understood region encoding does nothing but frustrate movie fans everywhere. Well, nevermind. In a DVD Forum meeting held earlier this week, it was decided to move forward with a region encoding scheme. Obviously this won't happen overnight, but it's yet another reason not to support this technology. With all players capable of being connected to the internet, it can probably be assumed that this will be downloaded to all existing players as a forced update. Thanks, DVD Forum! You're the best!

CNET has posted an article about the many ways HD-DVD has failed to impress. A good read.

It's still too early to judge how successful HD-DVD has been. I've been very antsy to post news about it but there are no hard facts right now. I'm really interested to hear how many Netflix users have signed up for it. Supposely they're buying 1,000 of every HD-DVD and Blu-ray title. I'm wondering how many of those have been utilized thus far.

Apple Computer is supposedly in talks with Sony to get iPod compatible versions of movies included on all Blu-ray discs. I have to say that that would be really nifty to see the studios embrace something like that. With 50GB to blow through, there's certainly room. I do wonder how the DRM for that will work, however. (Because you know that's going to be locked up tighter than a nun's.... you know).

Unrelated to the HD sector, but certainly within the scope of this site, it appears that certain someones have been wining and dining their senators of choice into writing a proposal to vastly expand the powers of the DMCA. It's the usual extremely scary, my Lord I wish I didn't live in this country, type of stuff. God have mercy on our souls if the US government is stupid enough to grant such rights to private entities.

After some early leaks by Best Buy and other retailers, today is the official day of HD-DVD. There will be no way to tell how successful it is for at least a few days, but from what I have read so far, it appears there is a decent amount of excitement. High Def Digest has posted some rather glowing reviews of Serenity and The Last Samurai. As a consumer with enough money to go out and buy HD-DVD if I wanted to, the whole thing just makes me upset. I want to be able to rent and purchase high definition movies, so bad! But for various depressing reasons, I won't bring myself to do it. I cannot support an industry that hates its customers and treats them like criminals.

Please spread this site to everyone you know who may be interested in HD-DVD and Blu-ray. They need to know about the evil that the MPAA is bringing to us.

Universal just upped the already mighty impressive ante of three movies for HD-DVD launch, to four! That's right, you'll now have four whole movies to choose from if you decide to hand over $500 for that shiny new player (although we'd advise otherwise). All joking aside, the movie they decided to release (Serenity) is actually the only enticing title of the available launch selection. I'd love to see that in HD. Man, I'm starting to get upset. Hollywood, why must you be so evil? I really want to be able to rent movies in HD via Netflix, but because of your crap, I will never buy an HD player! What's a poor technophile to do?

In preparation for the imminent HD-DVD launch on April 18, Toshiba is about to barrage innocent consumers with a new ad campaign: "So real, you can feel it". The point of the ads, says Toshiba executive Tina Tuccillo, is to make consumers say "I have to get that." Unfortunately, the ads will likely focus on the only good thing about HD-DVD (the video quality), while neglecting all the absolutely horrible things, like, oh, I dunno, the fact that over 3 million people with analog-only HDTV's won't be able to watch movies in full resolution? If they want to be honest, they need to change their slogan. So horrible, you'll want to die is a bit more realistic, in my opinion.

We'll have a bunch of HD-DVD launch news coming up so stay tuned!

Today, Toshiba released their first HD-DVD player in Japan, even though there are absolutely on HD-DVD discs yet to put inside it. I guess I'm not sure what exactly they're expecting to happen. If you lived in Japan would you go out and buy this?

Most major studios have now announced that they won't enable ICT on their movies, at least for the time being. ICT is the Image Constaint Token, which instructs the player to downsample the HD video to "normal" DVD quality, unless connected through a secure digital connection (HDMI or DVI). This "feature" would affect more than 3 million people in the US who do not have digital HDTVs. Considering that the studios were all demanding this type of "security" before they agreed to release their movies on Blu-ray or HD-DVD, this is a rather surprising turn of events. Have the studios decided that maybe they've gone too far with their control over consumers? Please. It's much more probable that this move is to help ease all the confusion that they've created with regards to next generation DVD. Just remember - ICT is a permanent feature. The studios can enable it again any time they want in the future, and they very likely will.

Earlier it was speculated that Toshiba would delay the rollout of HD-DVD players until there was something available to go with them, which by all signs is April 18, the day Warner releases three whole movies on the new format. (How's that for launch selection?) Toshiba has now come out and officially announced that they are delaying HD-DVD. They did not mention April 18 specifically but I'd say it's a safe bet they will use that as their launch date.

That means we have three more weeks to spread the word! If you know someone considering an HD-DVD purchase, please send them a link to this page so they know what they're getting into.

Warner, who is supposedly going to be the first studio to release movies on HD-DVD, has delayed their first releases by three weeks from March 28 to April 18. Toshiba has said they are likely to delay the release of their players to match the launch of the first content, though they haven't officially announced it yet. HD-DVD's first-to-market advantage over Blu-ray is getting smaller and smaller, and now looks like they'll beat Blu-ray to market by only one month. (Blu-ray is currently scheduled to launch May 23). This is unfortunate because if it were life and death, and I had to choose between HD-DVD or Blu-ray, I would take HD-DVD any day of the week. I mean, considering all the crap Sony has pulled, I just don't like them anymore.

Also, Toshiba is apparently only shipping 10,000 total HD-DVD players for its intial launch, indicating they aren't exactly expecting steller sales. Of course, with only three movies at launch, it shouldn't be too surprising.

Finding myself more and more appalled on a daily basis as things have unfolded with the next generation DVD formats, I finally got fed up and decided to start a consumer advocacy and news site about it all things Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and AACS. For more information, please see the Boycott Blu-ray and HD-DVD page.

There are six aliases for this site, so choose your poison and spread the word. fuckbluray.com, fuckhddvd.com, fuckaacs.com, bluraysucks.com, hddvdsucks.com, and aacssucks.com.