HiDef DVD News VII - News Only : AND WE MEAN IT: NEWS ONLY - Page 85

Said O'Donovan: I expect to see a wide range of multi-format players on the market at current HD DVD player price levels by the end of this year.

Steve Wilson, an analyst at ABI Research concurred. We believe that universal players will come to dominate the high-definition DVD player market, he said.

As does iSuppli's Chris Crotty, who is so convinced he doesn't bother to segment the market by format in his forecast: The emergence of dual format devices over the next year will render the war moot, the analyst said.

Samsung has announced plans for one, and more consumer electronics companies are expected to follow suit.

Said O'Donovan: I expect to see a wide range of multi-format players on the market at current HD DVD player price levels by the end of this year.

Originally Posted by BenDover

X360 w/hdmi coming soon?

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/08/b...due-for-april/

it's now 100% official that the Black 360, (with black controller), 120gb hard drive and HDMI is due out in Australia for $749 AU in April. They will try to push this forward to late March to deter buyers from the March 23 PS3 launch.

Originally Posted by Kosty

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Art...+blog+fest.htm

that's the first actual quote I've seen of a Samsung dual format announcement for this year. Did I miss it earlier?

I think finally everything that we knew going into this format has started to happen, said Sony Pictures Home Entertainment worldwide president David Bishop. We have a critical mass of content, we have the biggest mass of consumer electronics companies in the world supporting this format. That has moved Blu-ray into the forefront.

Sony is so confident that Bishop said the studio plans to begin marketing the format to consumers as the winner of the format war.

The message that we're going to put out to the consumer now is, now it is safe to make a choice, he said. No more fence-sitting is needed.

In fact, HD DVD sales are continuing at a steady pace, they just haven't grown as fast as Blu-ray.

But retailers are less confident.

A spokesman for Best Buy said the retailer believes there needs to be industry unification behind one format before victory is declared.

The view around here is that something has got to be done definitively to get people off the bench, spokesman Brian Lucas said.

In my mind, neither format has reached a critical mass, and until then, the horse race is wide open. What's critical mass? In my mind, probably one of the following conditions: either one format holds an 80 percent market share for three months; or, one format holds a two-thirds market share for six months.

Originally Posted by mikemorel

Dilemma and PS3 of innovation

Make of it what you will, but it does not sound good from a Japanese standpoint....

Originally Posted by AV Doogie

Fox Blu-ray release changes: Looks like March-April titles are going to be pushed back for an unknown period of time??

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh...y_Line-Up_/472

A select group of customers who have paid nearly $100 for CyberLink's PowerDVD for its HD playback capabilities have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, claiming that the software does not perform as advertised.

Sony Executive Deputy President Yutaka Nakagawa told reporters that investment in chips would come down significantly from the 460 billion yen ($3.8 billion) allocated over the three business years since April 2004.

has found the "processing key" used to decrypt the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc films. Let's break this down for what it is: instead of needing individual keys for each and every high-definition film -- of which there are many -- the processing key can be used to unlock, decrypt, and backup every HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc film released so far.

Originally Posted by Kosty

important enough to highlight in this thread
This may explain the delay of Fox and Universal releases

discussion here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=804849

or here
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=777549