Tag: hd-dvd Posts

BlueRay Not Doing So Hot

Technology

This isn’t really a huge surprise to me, but apparently BlueRay sales aren’t doing very well at all. In fact, sales of BlueRay went down last month compared to the month before. There are probably a lot of reasons why other people aren’t buying them, namely the high price of current BlueRay players. But in terms of me, I’m not buying one simply because I’m still pissed off from the whole HD-DVD/BlueRay battle. On my shelf at home is a now useless HD-DVD player, which I purchased thinking HD-DVD would be around a little while longer. Since the industry basically screwed consumers with that whole debacle, I’m fighting back a bit with my wallet. Sony hoped to have a 50% market share this year, and right now they are sitting around 8% I think. Given that internet speeds are climbing fast, and that Apple TV now rents pseudo HD films, […]

Blu-Ray Hard On Battery Life

Technology

I guess this makes complete sense, given what I know about physics. Blue lasers were actually extremely difficult to make, and they didn’t emerge until nearly a decade after red-lasers hit the market. Since the wavelength of light is inversely proportional to the energy of the photons, making blue light (which has a low wavelength) takes a lot of energy. In fact, most of the original blue lasers wouldn’t last very long because they basically burned themselves out. Also, as Hesty pointed out, the computation requirements for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are far greater than MPEG2. Slashdot is reporting that the first-generation of laptop Blu-Ray drives are all pretty good at demolishing your laptop battery. Currently you can expect to get about half-way through a movie before your laptop sputters and dies. I imagine this is something that will slowly improve with each iteration, but not a very promising first look […]

HD-DVD Officially Dead

Technology

Toshiba just withdrew their support, which basically means it’s completely empty over in the HD-DVD camp right now. Remind me never to be an early adopter again. So, stay tuned for the HD-DVD burning party at a campground near Chilliwack.

The Bell Tolls For You, HD-DVD

Technology

Yes, I think it’s true. HD-DVD, my friends, is dead, or at least in the last of its death throes. Being an early adopter, I went out a few months ago and picked up a HD-DVD player, thinking that at the bare minimum both formats would exist for a year or more. It turns out my timing was rather poor. A few of the major studios moved from HD-DVD to BluRay last month, and the move was so dramatic that the HD-DVD guys cancelled their talks at the CES show in Vegas (which actually probably did the most harm to their effort). Reuter’s is reporting that HD-DVD is basically dead, and a leak from WalMart indicates that they are no longer planning to stock HD-DVD in the future. This is yet another example how corporate greed once again took precedence over consumer satisfaction. While nobody forced me to go out […]

Heroes

 Journal

Last night, out of sheer boredom, I drove down to Future Shop and picked up Season one of Heroes, on HD-DVD. Rebecca and John have been recommending this series to me, so I figured I would just go along with their word of mouth and pick it up. I’m about half way through season one already, and so far I think it’s pretty good. A few of the characters I find a bit annoying, but the Tokyo guy who can bend space and time is always entertaining, as well as the guy who can read minds. I’m anxiously awaiting the Heroes to step up and start being cool, but maybe that’s what season two is all about.

A few weeks of HD-DVD

 Journal

A while, I posted an article on my recent purchase of a Toshiba HD-A2 high-definition DVD player. Since that time, I have slowly been figuring out just what to do with it. After purchasing it, I sort of assumed that it would be easy to rent HD-DVD movies, but it’s actually still rather tough. Blockbuster recently announced an exclusive deal with Blue-Ray so that they would only carry Blue-Ray titles. And while a few people have said that it’s most likely the death-blow to HD-DVD, I disagree. For starters, the adult film industry has put its weight behind HD-DVD, which is my mind is a rather good industry to have in your corner. And Zip.ca, one of the larger online DVD rental companies, recently said this: “The format fight will only end when the two sides reach agreement, or when consumers have voted with their dollars,” he said. “As yet, […]