Friday, February 08, 2008


I decided to do a little Youtube rant about this too. just thought i'd share.

So this week Microsoft cut the price to the HD-DVD disc drive add on for the Xbox 360. This hd-dvd drive was by far the most popular way to watch HD-DVDs on your HDTV. Microsoft cut the price froem $179.99 to $119.99. Many people, including myself, are reading this as a sign that Blu-Ray has truly won the format war.

After the CES (Consumer Electronic Show)announcement that as of June 2008 Warner Brothers studios would only be supporting the Blu-Ray disc format, many industry analyists said that the writing was on the wall for HD-DVD, now it looks like that time is finally coming. not only has the Xbox 360's HD-DVD drive dropped its price, all of Toshiba's HD-DVD players have come down in price too, some as low as $149.

Even those who make movies have said they want Blu-Ray. Transformers director Michael Bay, was very public that he felt it was unfair that Paramount Pictures only distributed HD-DVDs, going so far as to say that it's all one big Microsoft conspiracy.

I personally thought that HD-DVDs looked really interesting, the amount of use interactivity that they allowed was incredible, whether it was actually seeing the actors in a Picture-in-picture box giving their commentary to something as simple as being able to access the menu while watching the movie, it looked very cool.

Alas, it is sad that HD-DVDs must go the way of the Jaguar, Beta-Max, and Laser Disc, but it's all in the name of technological advancement.

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