cool

yes. now the lemonparty is almost complete.

So glad right now that I didn't buy that xbox360 HDDVD player...

Poor HD DVD,

I skipped the war and choose this,

[www.lockergnome.com]

Thats sucks. Competition breeds lower prices and innovation. The only competition now will be the 3rd party manufacturers.

Poor HD DVD, I am glad I choose VUDU

[www.lockergnome.com]

And this is why we wait for format wars to end...

Yes! Please! Do it Paramount, let's end this thing and start enjoying BluRay for all releases!

This makes me happy only to see an end of this stagnant and extremely boring format war.

so paramount already dropped? or are you assuming they will?

no one wants to be on the loosing end of a format war. I say paramount is practically guaranteed to switch

I think that being on the tightening end of a format war would be more uncomfortable.

Sweet.

I think everybody is tired of the battle. Blu-ray is the better option just from the specs IMO. It's got more DRM which hasn't been cracked yet, the studios are going to love that one AND blu-ray has more storage space!

Bring on the $300 upscaling hybrid player and be done with it. And eventually $99. It's amazing how early adopters just get burned. This whole format war is going to be like the DVD+R/DVD-R days, remember those?

I too am glad to see this happening. Now I can finally begin investing in some HD content without worry.

This is PRECISELY what I was curious about (not to mention hoping for)!

I would love to review that contract.

"Undoubtfully"? Don't you mean "doubtlessly"?

@mullingitover:

No kidding. I bought an HD-DVD player as a Christmas present for my mom and sister. It's been broken since they opened it (I know...should've tested it when I got it...). It just came back from repair today, still broken. And now there's not a snowball's chance in hell it's going to be the winning format. So needless to say, I don't have much in the way of cuddly feelings toward Toshiba and the HD-DVD world.

As much as I preferred HD DVD, I'd be happy for this bullshit to just be over.

See, I said blu-ray was the better format statisticly, and cause I bought the ps3.

@mullingitover: Yeah, I still have a dvd-r drive in my desktop computer, and I think this laptop is dvd+r, but I cant get it to burn anything.

BTW BR DRM has been cracked, a long time ago. Can you say AnyDVD?

"Die HD die, the HD must die. Die HD die, the HD must die!" - Corky and the Juice Pigs

Now all they need are writers and they can make new movies and put them on Blu...

looks like I'll be picking up a PS3 soon, and a copy of Blade Runner Final Cut on Blu-Ray.

I'm glad this fucking format war is at an end. I've had my HDTV for a year now and haven't been willing to pick a side, lest I end up with the loser.

this just in.....

"Sony is gearing up for an announcement. Insider news suggests that Sony plans on upgrading the Blu-ray Disc format next year to the 'Electric-Blu-ray' format. Stating that the regular Blu-ray Disc is just not fast enough for taking all your money to the bank."

...don't hate the messenger, hate the game...

The original post says that this would leave universal and dreamworks as the only HD-DVD supporters. But wouldn't dreamworks be likely to follow paramount, Spielberg not withstanding?

How much can I make if I spread FUD like Gizmodo.
No kidding just bought a PS3 for my mom and sister broken out of box sent in got back new fan

er uh yay?... im still not paying 25bux for high def movies... sheesh people do you have any idea what it would cost me to replace my library..... nevermind that based on comparative dollars ohh ahhh someone finally gets the ant hill on the earth of digital video... I suddenly feel the need to gently pat a small child on the head and say "good for you" and to the think the shame of it all was that two camps were to GOD DA@*ED greedy to come to some sort of an agreement. I am suddenly overwhelmed with the image of a red ant and a black ant in a heated battle over a food crumb....

Oh fudge. I better get that Blade Runner Special Edition Blu before everyone else get the same idea. This one is limited edition, right?

Reviewing my small, doomed collection of HD DVDs, I find that most of them are Warner's titles. Aside from Transformers and Shrek, Paramount and Dreamworks just haven't been putting good stuff out in HD.
Paramount in particular has been very stingy with its back catalogue in this venture. It would have been nice to see "The Godfather" in HD.

@agahnim: The next time you by your mom and sister a present, save the receipt.

Let me know when It becomes Official ... But its good to know its almost over...

@Lorne:

I did, but it was a refurb with a short return policy. That's part of the "should've checked" thing...but at least I didn't pay $500 for it when it first came out.

Both Big Lebowski and Fear and Loathing are currently only available on HD DVD. Hopefully there'll be Blu-ray releases soon!

Good thing i never picked a side on this pointless war! I don't want to waste my doll hairs!

It's a wrap!

I'm still waiting for Green-ray

Oh well, Betamax was better technology too...

brea@hn333:

Actually if there was a format after blu-ray, it would actually be violet-ray. Or maybe even ultraviolet-ray

Guess I'm out $200 on my Toshiba A2.

But where's $200 BR players? I sure hope we will eventually see that, now that BR has one fewer reasons (and practically the only) to be competitive...

Does this mean the mass duplicators in China might switch from CH-DVD (variant of HD-DVD) to Blu-Ray or not? If not, HD-DVD could still sneak up as a dominant format outside the US.

argh! I bought an hd-dvd player with my desktop....sux to be me.

look on the bright side me, I'll be the first in line to get those discs that won't play in any of those other players when they go for $9.99 in the bargain bin....

also reminds of those tiger electronic cartridges at kb toys....

Finally. This war was over before it started, and these idiots wasted our time for 2 freaking years. They couldn't have just picked one format and worked it. Seriously, in the beginning all that exists is hardware. So WTF were they thinking picking an inferior disc?! I just don't get it!

about damn time Sony got a winner how long has it been 19-20-21 years

Laser disc... FTW!

@utube2007: I don't know, didn't the PS2 have moderate success?
I would find it unusual for China to support anything "blue" (get it?). I like impliedsurprise's idea for cannibalizing the apparently forecasted discount bins for cheap upconverting DVD players that can play obsolete formats (like a DVD player that can play laserdiscs).

@Daftrok

Exactly. These people took HD-DVD, which they knew to be technically inferior to BluRay, and milked it for all it was worth. Sure they are cheaper to produce, but do you really want to replace your entire DVD library with the cheaper, inferior format? If you're going to spend money on a new media library you should pick the better format and if you can't afford it, wait for it to lower in price. Don't just cheap out and settle for second best. HD-DVD's only real strength (besides Shrek and Transformers) was its low price tag and the penny pincher's out there completely fell for it.

Now the only format war is between the various BluRay specs!

@drcullex:

Well, shouldn't they have a decent amount of mass duplicators of blu-ray? Nearly every single ps3 game uses blu-ray discs. That's probably more blu-ray discs than all the sold blu-ray and HD-DVD movies combined...

now if only blu-ray makes everything about it more simple. All of these x.x formats are confusing. Although I am a huge geek, My tv and blue-ray player are the least of my worries. I want to buy a player, put a movie in, and watch it in glorious HD. THATS IT. I dont want to think about it anymore. TVs are supposed to be simple.

I thought that Paramount distributes Dreamworks? If so, then I think that they'd have to roll together. Anyone want a slightly used HD-A2? I may give it to the parents as a not-bad upscaling DVD player.

@utube2007: It's been 26 years since they developed and released a computer using the 3.5" floppy disk. Have they had another success since then?

Financial Times is a good source. Rock solid. Enough that Toshiba is currently trading 0.8% lower on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Sony is up 3.1% as of this writing.

I could care less which one wins. But it looks like BRD.

As to HD-DVD being "inferior": whatever fanbois. The content is what matters and both had adequate capacity to hold high bitrate 1080p/24 goodness. Everything else: don't care.

BTW - You know the format war must be coming to an end when a Gizmodo post about HD-DVD goes over an hour and a half, with more than 50 comments, and there is not a single mention of the word "Fanboy". What a wondrous day. I can not wait for that word to fall out of fashion.

Congrats, Sony. After all those years of shame following Betamax's defeat.

@ianken: Damn you. You had to open your mouth didn't you?

@Imaria: AMEN I will have both by this weekend and will enjoy all the free discs I got for all of my players...and continue to enjoy me some netflix BluRay and HDDVD lovin'

who cares which wins as long as the discs come down in price already...geez...I am tired of this shit