Saturday, May 3. 2008
HDMI Woes: Diagnosed & Fixed
Aah, the joy of new technology.  After having continuing strange ( and intermittent ) problems with my Sony Blu-Ray player (picture flaking out, sometimes not showing at all, etc), my first instinct was to blame my HDMI switcher and duly tried switching the input ports around with no luck. Finally got off of my lazy duff and swapped the Blu-Ray player HDMI cable with the DVR box HDMI cable. Wouldn't you know it, the DVR box started having issues - freezing up, etc. Hmmm - time to get a new cable perhaps?  Since I need instant gratification, I duly made the pilgrimage to my Best Buy store to pay an inflated price for a new HDMI cable  (for those not in need of instant gratification, this online store comes highly recommended to me by a coworker), and, presto, HDMI happiness all the way around. |  |
Wednesday, April 23. 2008
Netflix to Raise Blu-Ray Rental Fees
| All those (Blu-Ray fans) who didn't see this coming, please raise your hands. Now that the hi-def format war is essentially over, one of the first effects evidently will be Netflix raising the prices on their Blu-Ray rentals. |  |
Heroes: S2 Released? (On Blu-Ray?)
| The stars must truly be aligning. This past weekend, one of my coworkers whom I have been bugging forever to get on the Blu-Ray train finally succumbed and purchased a Blu-Ray player (of course I missed the post, so now I'll be the one receiving the ribbing ) and now rumor has it that Season 2 of Heroes will be released on DVD in August 2008. And in even more good news, Heroes: Season 1 and Heroes: Season 2 will be among Universal's first releases on Blu-Ray. Yes! Incidentally, Season 3: Villains starts September 2008. |  |
Friday, April 4. 2008
Matrix Trilogy coming to Blu-Ray?
| Rumor has it that all three Matrix films will be released on Blu-Ray this year, most likely in support of the the Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer film. |  |
Tuesday, January 8. 2008
High Def DVD format war to end soon?
| Is the (ridiculous) High Definition DVD format war at long last going to come to an end? If rumors are to be believed, it looks like Paramount Studios, one of the last true HD-DVD backers, is set to drop support for HD-DVD (following the footsteps of Warner Bros). If so, that would surely be the death knell for HD-DVD, as Universal would be the sole remaining studio supporting this format. Update (1/08/08): For those interested in the upcoming different Blu-Ray Profiles, Gizmodo has a good article up regarding the first impressions on the Profile 1.1 version. Update (1/09/08): Here is Microsoft's Bill Gates weighing in on the current state of the HD-DVD format war. | |
Saturday, October 27. 2007
Blu-Ray Outsells HD-DVD 2:1 in the US
| In Blu-Ray news, it seems that Blu-ray is outselling HD-DVD 2:1 in the US. | |
Saturday, September 29. 2007
Finally Took the Blu-Ray plunge
| Well, Christmas seems to be coming a bit early this year, at least for me. Thanks to the combination of my old Sony DVP-S9000ES DVD Player starting to freeze at layer switches and the extremely tempting price cut of the Sony BDP-S1 DVD player (due to the upcoming Sony BDP-2000ES player scheduled to be released at the end of October), I ended up taking the Blu-Ray plunge. Needless to say, the chance to dangle my feel in the Blu-Ray pool for a low price, was just too hard to pass up. (To boot, there was a five free Blu-Ray DVDs offer from Sony if you purchased a qualifying Blu-Ray player by Sept. 30th). One of the first things that I did was the firmware upgrade (from 1.06 to 2.50) I haven't had much time to play throughly with it (outside of upgrading the firmware to the latest level (2.50) ), so a more thorough review will be coming shortly once I get a chance to really play with some Blu-Ray discs and compare a Blu-Ray DVD with a SD DVD that I already own. (Note: I did switch my Netflix account over to Blu-Ray though, which there is no cost for). |  |
Thursday, June 7. 2007
Interesting Article on HD DVD format war
| On at The Digital Bits website, I came across an interesting editorial on the state of the HD DVD format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The Digital Bits opinion is that either: 1.) Blu-Ray format will win or 2.) Neither format will win. Evidently, there was quite a bit of feedback from the HD DVD format war editorial, because The Digital Bits has posted a followup. On a related note, Sony has cut the price (by as much as $200.00 in the US) on it's BDP-S300 Blu-Ray DVD player. | |
Saturday, April 28. 2007
Blu-Ray DVD Player for Apple
| Over at Slashdot, a new Fastmac Blu-Ray DVD player for Apple notebooks has been announced. | |
Wednesday, March 28. 2007
LG BH100: First Reviews...
| The early reviews are in for the (long awaited) LG BH100 Dual-Format DVD Player and, unfortunately, they are not too good if one is a fan of the HD-DVD format. The general consensus seems to be that the BH100 does a good job on Blu-Ray, but doesn't support the full capabilities of HD-DVD. The BH100 player only plays the HD-DVD disc - there is no access to the menus or special features (one of the big points of the HD-DVD format). Below are some of the reviews from various sites: Also, here is the official LG press release. |  |
Thursday, January 4. 2007
One Studio (Trying) To End HD DVD Format War...
| It looks like Warner Bros Studio is trying to end the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war by releasing an optical disc format capable of being played in both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) machines, called Total HD. Speaking from the consumer side of the fence (which, at times it seems is never listened to by the corporate heads ), I would be very happy/relieved to see the format war put to rest. Also, on a related note, it seems that LG is working on a next-gen DVD player that will play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats. | |
Thursday, October 5. 2006
Sony Blu-Ray DVD Player Delayed....
I was all ready to take the plunge this past weekend and plop down my hard-earned cash on the Sony Blu-Ray BDP-S1 player, but when I went to purchase it, I found out that this model will be delayed until  !!Update (10/31/06): Just checked the SonyStyle site and found out that the new date for Blu-Ray player is now December 4th, 2006. !!!!Note: On a somewhat related note, Fox has a special website for announcing their Blu-Ray releases. | |
Wednesday, March 15. 2006
First Blu-Ray DVDs To Be Released In May
| The first Blu-Ray DVDs are scheduled to be released on May 23rd, the same time as the first Blu-Ray DVD player (from Samsung). Update (4/07/06): Apparently, according to this Video Business article, the date for the first Samsung Blu-Ray DVD player has been pushed back to June 25th. Samsung is blaming the delay on compatibility testing with Blu-ray discs that it needs to complete before shipping the hardware. | |
