You’ve got to give Sony full marks for effort: despite the fact that Betamax has been a running joke for about two decades, the company is only officially killing the dead format just now.

Need further proof Microsoft will never adopt Blu-ray, as you clutch your HD DVD drive to your chest and sob for Microsoft's halcyon HD format days? Xbox 360's UK director Stephen McGill has reiterated the future is digital downloads.

Blu-ray's latest bit of brilliance is the Flipper: a disc that's plain ol' DVD on one side, and Blu-ray on the other, like bolting a cassette tape on the back of a CD. Amazing.

The other week, we explained how Apple influences a ton of what goes on in tech by shaping industry-wide standards. This week, we're gonna look at Microsoft, and what's it's done with standards.

We all knew this day would come. Following the death of his beloved HD DVD, Toshiba couldn't stand the cold bed, the lonely nights and the tables for one. Suppressing tears, he released the BDX2000 Blu-ray player.

After killing off HD DVD and suggesting it'll possibly, probably, do something with Blu-ray, Toshiba has finally applied to join the Blu-ray Disc Association, and plans to launch set-top players and notebooks with BD drives "in the course of this year."

Toshiba, the former leader of Blu-Ray's enemy HD-DVD camp, is admitting defeat in the most final way they can: By launching a Blu-Ray player.

Still sitting on a pile of HD-DVDs that grow more and more embarassing by the day? Warner Bros. has just started up a new program that'll let you swap them out for Blu-ray versions.

Even though HD DVD died long ago, Blockbuster is just getting around to ditching the leftovers (over 300 titles) at $8 a pop. I can't believe they would even charge that much. [Blockbuster]

Once upon time, video codecs and formats were really only the concern of AV nerds, anime freaks and hardcore not-so-legal movie downloaders. Now, even the most part-time of geeks has to deal with them, whether they're trying to stream a flick across their house with an Apple TV, dump some video onto their phone or…

There is nothing wrong with your computer. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. You have not awaken in a crazy, alternate reality where HD DVD won the format war. But Toshiba has unrolled the firmware 4.0 update for its HD DVD players to improve playback issues like a pause bug. We'd make fun of Toshiba mercilessly…

A banner year for Blu-ray, to be sure, with a 100% drop in the most important stat of all, there in yellow. All this according to "Sony Figures." They just can't help themselves.

You actually know what some of the crazy doodles on the side of an HDTV means when it comes to video-720p, 1080i, 1080p. Congrats, you're ahead of most people, like my mother. But do you understand the alphabet soup of audio, the confounding constellation of logos on your Blu-ray player's box? While there are…

HD DVD was declared dead a long time ago, and the last film to be released to the US on the format will hit (roughly three to five) shelves tomorrow. Disco Pigs was originally released in 2001 and very appropriately stars Cillian Murphy and Elaine Cassidy as friends who were born in the same hospital, at the same…

One year ago, we predicted that the infinite format war would rise from the ashes of the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war-that a million online services and set-top boxes would suddenly promise to deliver movies and video to your computer or TV. And that each one would essentially be their own format, since none of them are…

Poor Toshiba's still not quite over the HD DVD defeat earlier this year, as evidenced by its president saying that they will "not market DVD players that are compatible with Blu-ray," instead opting for upconverting DVD players to bide their time before Blu-ray becomes so prevalent that the company has no choice.

LG will stop swinging both ways with HD formats this fall, when it ceases production on its Blu-ray/HD DVD combo player. (Samsung's is already dead.) I'm just kind of amazed an already dead format manages to keep getting deader. [DVD Town]

You guys have apparently been listening to our warnings about not jumping into the Blu pool just yet. NPD says that even after HD DVD stopping peeing in it and lied down to die, not only have Blu-ray sales have only jumped a meager two percent (after falling 40 percent from Jan.), but they're so bad, they won't even…

Some day these Microsoft Xbox 360 HD DVD players might be worth something to someone. We can't really imagine who—maybe the technology museum of the 22nd century—but someone should want it. And with the limit of 12 per customer, you and your family can even stock up and make a fort out of these. A giant, obsolete…