Home Theater Blog has posted an excellent look into the newly released HD HQV Benchmarks. They take both the Blu-ray and HD DVD discs for a test drive across several players and got the following summaries.

The Sony PS3 (couple with a JVC DLA-HD1) got a 100 out of 100 score.

The Toshiba HD-A2 received a 65 out of 100 score.

The Sony BDP-S300 received a 75 out of 100 score.

You can read more about the tests and the player scores here at Home Theater Blog.

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Technorati Tags: HD HQV Benchmarks, Home Theater Blog

Samsung officials in Hamburg, Germany have announced that their new dual format BD-UP5000 high definition disc player will be coming out in October of this year for a price of approximately €550. Similar to the LG Electronics dual format player, the BD-UP5000 will support both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. However, Samsung claims that their player will fully support both formats including their interactive technologies - HDi, and BD-Java. The LG dual format player fully supports Blu-ray but will only play the movie portion of an HD DVD disc.

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Blu-ray is striking back at HD DVD with a new promotional campaign. Starting July 1st, customers who purchase a qualifying Blu-ray player (which includes the Sony PS3) will be eligible for five free Blu-ray titles. The movies come from five different categories and you can only get one movie per category (which is a bit limiting but hey - it’s free). The five categories of movies are as follows:

Category 1:

• The Guardian
• Pearl Harbor
• Invincible
• Chicken Little

Category 2:

• Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
• The Phantom of the Opera
• Blazing Saddles

Category 3:

• Stealth
• Resident Evil 2
• Underworld - Evolution
• Stir of Echoes

Category 4:

• The Italian Job
• Black Rain
• Babel
• The Devil’s Rejects

Category 5:

• Kiss of the Dragon
• The Omen
• Transporter 2
• Species
• Hart’s War
• The Last Waltz

This offer is good until September 30th, 2007.

Note - you can also combine this offer with existing offers from other manufacturers - e.g. Panasonic is giving away five free Blu-ray titles with the purchase of a new Panasonic DMP-BD10A player. Yup - that means one could potentially get up to 10 free Blu-ray titles depending on the manufacturer.

One final note from the Blu-ray.com website. Sony has a promotional offer going on for the PS3 that works as follows. If you purchase a PS3, two games, and an extra controller from now until July 8th through select Sony Style stores, you can get yourself a $50 dollar gift card.

All told - not a bad deal although I wish the movie selections were a bit better.

[Check it out via Ars Technica]

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Warner Brothers has delayed the launch of the Total HD (THD) disc format until early 2008. The new disc format, which was to include both Blu-ray and HD DVD versions of a movie title ,was originally slated for he second half of this year. According to Steve Nickerson, Warner senior VP of marketing management, the company plans on releasing 10 to 20 titles in the new format. Nickerson is also quoted as saing “There is no expiration date on the viability of this concept, so we’re not in a rush to do it, We’ll do it when it makes sense and when it’s right.” Total HD discs work by having HD DVD and Blu-ray on opposite sides of a disc.

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Home Media Magazine is reporting that BD+ Technologies has announced the completion of its licensing program. BD+ Technologies is the licensor of BD+ which is the another layer of content protection found on a Blu-ray disc in addition to AACS. BD+ allows content providers the ability to include small executable programs on Blu-ray discs that can perform various activities such as examining the player’s environment to see if there was any tampering, verifying the digital keys have not been changed, and transforming the audio and video output. As expected, several movie studios have come out in full support of this security layer because it’s yet another method of protecting their valuable content. This is arguably one of the major differences between Blu-ray and HD DVD that’s been often cited by movie studios.

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Now here’s an interesting thought. Even if the HD DVD format should falter in the U.S., there’s a good possibility that it will succeed in other parts of the world - in particular in the U.K. and Europe. How could this happen? It again boils down to movie studios - this time the big ones vs. small ones. While large Hollywood studios are the primary source for movies in the U.S. (and also for the most part the primary backers of Blu-ray), the same can’t be said of Europe where approximately 50 percent of movies are actually produced by smaller studios independent of Hollywood. These same independent studios actually prefer HD DVD since the format has lower production costs which will result in higher profit margins. Yes it comes down to dollars and cents.  Obviously the folks behind HD DVD realize this and as such are keeping Europe in their crosshairs. Meanwhile, Blu-ray has largely ignored Europe and continues to work on the U.S. audience.

Another piece of interesting news comes from Microsoft. The Xbox 360 HD DVD player is apparently the most successful Xbox 360 accessory ever - selling more than 155,000 units in the U.S. alone. Good job Microsoft! You can read my original review of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player over at Krunker.com.

One final interesting if not somewhat flawed statistic. The very same article from CNET claims that consumers who purchased HD DVD players are buying more content than folks who purchased Blu-ray players. The ratio is something on the order of 4 to 1 - HD DVD to Blu-ray. 

The basic problem I have with this statistic is not knowing whether the numbers counted the HD DVD player promotions that are normally found with each new player sold. If you’ve been following the HD DVD player market, you’ll know that Toshiba often allows you to get up to five free HD DVD titles for every HD DVD player purchased. Does the study count these five titles per HD DVD player purchase? If so, then the study would be flawed - especially since the Blu-ray camp doesn’t offer the same type of promotions. It’s still relatively good news to HD DVD but let’s not celebrate the format too much shall we?

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Those of you interested in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format wars will be interested in reading this article over at BusinessWeek.com. It’s entitled “In DVD War, Body Blows for Toshiba” and it’s a good analysis into the current state affairs for Toshiba and the HD DVD format. The article claims that while HD DVD and Toshiba has suffered some blows in recent months, the company and the format is certainly not down for the count - at least not yet. There are still several factors that can help the HD DVD format rise from its current condition to effectively battle against Blu-ray. Since BusinessWeek articles sometimes disappear after some time, I’ll try and summarize the basic points in the article here.

• While Blu-ray appears to be winning, don’t count Toshiba and HD DVD out yet
• In response to Blu-ray’s initial dominance, Toshiba lowered prices for HD DVD players
• However, Blockbuster recently decided to stock Blu-ray discs over HD DVD discs although they have not officially declared a winner as of yet
• HD DVD is still a strong player in the online rental market with both Netflix and Blockbuster Online carrying the format
• While Blu-ray titles have outsold HD DVD titles 2 to 1 since January, there is still no clear winner since sales are overall very sluggish
• Sales of Toshiba HD DVD players have risen since the price cuts in May while Blu-ray player sales are still sluggish
• Toshiba is encouraging the Chinese government to adopt HD DVD for internal use with two large Chinese DVD manufacturers committing to do so.
• If the Chinese enter on the side of HD DVD, component prices could fall rapidly which could result in cheaper prices - but this could also hurt Toshiba should Chinese HD DVD players make it to the US
• Hollywood backing of HD DVD is still critical since the majority of the studios still back Blu-ray. However high definition content has not been very compelling thus far
• The computer market for HD DVD and Blu-ray is still a non-factor - at least until prices come down for drives and media.

The final paragraph to the article is probably the most important advice that HD DVD and Blu-ray could heed. “The solution [to the war], is for each side to call a truce and revive talks that failed two years ago to marry the two formats”. Let’s hope they do so soon before both formats become irrelevant as some have predicted.

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Technorati Tags: HD DVD, Blu-ray, Toshiba

Dan Costa over at GearLog.com published an interesting editorial on Thursday entitled “No One’s Winning the High-Def Format War”. His arguments are straightforward actually. While the high definition format wars continue, the consumers ultimately will not care in the end because they will have chosen the format of choice - and that’s to download HD content over some pipeline (probably the Internet).

Costa bolsters his argument by using the music industry as an example. Until MP3 files and digital music players became popular, people were stuck to CDs. Yet when given the choice of quality CDs vs. downloadable digital tracks, the consumers chose to download content instead. Look at the results now - CD sales are down and digital music stores are on the rise.

He applies the same notion to movies. Optical discs are a thing of the past Costa argues. The way to distribute going forward is via the Internet with many companies and products already trying out various services to see if this is viable. Now granted - there are many more obstacles in the way when it comes to movies. You need more storage and download times take a good deal longer than say downloading music. However as download speeds improve and as storage costs plummet, the optical disc - whether Blu-ray or HD DVD - will become obsolete in favor of a new video distribution method over the Internet.

It’s definitely an interesting argument although I do think there’s a place for either Blu-ray or HD DVD in the high definition arena. There will be consumers who will want downloadable high definition content, and there’ll be folks who want to own something on a disc format. Ultimately the key to all of this IMHO will be cost. If Blu-ray or HD DVD players lower in cost dramatically - say to something like DVD players, then I think you’ll see rapid adoption for either format. If products come out that make downloadable HD content affordable and easy to use, then I’m sure you’ll see that market expand rapidly also.

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Home Theater Blog has a solid review of the new Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player here on their website. The BDP-S300 is Sony’s cheapest Blu-ray player selling for an MSRP of $499. Home Theater Blog does an excellent overview of the capabilities of the device as well as picture performance - especially in comparison to the PS3’s Blu-ray performance. One of the unfortunate missing capabilities from the player is the lack of a network connection but really - shouldn’t this be a mandatory feature on all players? Can it really jack up the cost of a Blu-ray player that much? I doubt it.

Specs for the Sony BDP-S300 include the following:

• BD-ROM, DVD Video, DVD+R/+RW/DVD-R/-RW, CD playback
• AVC-HD media playback with x.v.Color output
• Supports MPEG2/MPEG4-AVC/VC-1
• Full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema Video Output
• DVD upscaling to 1080p via HDMI
• Support for BRAVIA Theater Sync
• Cinema Tuned Picture Presets
• Support for Uncompressed Multi-Channel Linear PCM output, Dolby Digital Plus decoding, Dolby Digital and dts 5.1 channel output
• BD-Java interactive capability
• Screen saver
• MP3 and JPEG playback from DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW
• Measures 17 x 3 1/8 x 14 7/8 inches and weighs 10 lbs

In any event, here’s the current recommendation from Home Theater Blog on the BDP-S300:

At this point if you’re looking for a stand-alone Blu-ray player I can’t wholeheartedly recommend the BDP-S300 quite as easily as before these issues came to light. It’s still a good player, but certainly not quite as good as our first impressions indicated.

If you’re interested in reading the instruction manual, check out the PDF link here at SonyStyle’s website.

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DigiTimes is reporting that Funai Electric will be launching a new 42 inch LCD television set as well as a new Blu-ray disc player in North America this coming fall. The 42 inch LCD TV will utilize panels made from Taiwan with unit shipments expected to number between 100,000 to 200,000 units in the batch.

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Technorati Tags: Funai Electric, LCD TV, Blu-ray player