Those of you who played arcade games in the early 80’s have to remember Dragon’s Lair. That was absolutely one of the coolest interactive arcade games ever made in those days. Now thanks to the folks at Digital Leisure, owners of HD DVD players will be able to enjoy Dragon’s Lair in it’s full high definition glory. Dirk the Daring will be making his HD DVD debut this August and the game will feature:

• Full 1080p HD video
• Interviews with creators Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, and Rick Dyer
• Full length visual commentary of the game
• 5.1 audio

Dragon’s Lair on HD DVD will be playable on both the Xbox 360 HD DVD player as well as standalone HD DVD players. The disc will be available starting on August 15th at many game and movie retailers as well as at www.digitalleasure.com. The game is already available on Blu-ray format (which introduced earlier this year). Digital Leisure plans on following up the release with the release of Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp - both in HD DVD format.

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Technorati Tags: Dragon\'s Lair, HD DVD, August 15th

Warner Home Video is planning to release a “Best Of” box sets for both HD DVD and Blu-ray high definition media formats. Each box set will include four film titles ranging from new releases to old classics with three different volumes available in each high definition format. Film titles include “Lethal Weapon”, “Training Day”, “The Last Samurai”, “Blazing Saddles”, and “Goodfellas”. The box sets are expected to go on sale for approximately $85 dollars. The Warner Home Video “Best Of” box sets are slated for release on September 18th.

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Technorati Tags: Warner Home Video, Best Of, HD DVD, Blu-ray

Do you love your Toshiba HD DVD player but wish it supported 24p (or 24 frames per second) playback? Well it soon will! Toshiba has announced that they will be adding 24p playback support via an upcoming firmware update for their second generation HD DVD players. The supports players include the HD-XA2 and the HD-A20. The current crop of Toshiba HD DVD players support 30 frames per second playback. One thing to keep in mind though. If your HDTV doesn’t have a supporting frequency for 24p playback, 3:2 pulldown will still occur at some point. Most LCDs have a 60 Hz refresh rate. You’ll want a newer LCD with at least 120Hz refresh rates to fully support 24p playback.

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Technorati Tags: Toshiba, 24p playback

It looks like the upcoming Samsung dual format BD-UP5000 player will come out a bit sooner than expected. We originally reported the player was slated to come out in October but now Samsung has supposedly stated the Blu-ray/HD DVD standalone player will come out in Europe by the end of next month (August). Other rumors are stating that the Samsung BD-UP5000 could be priced as low as €400 ($548/£271). Again - that’s JUST a rumor. The BD-UP5000 will supposedly offer full interactive support for both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles which stands in contrast to the LG dual format player which fully supports Blu-ray but only plays the movie portion of an HD DVD disc.

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If you don’t subscribe to Home Theater Mag, then you might be interested in reading this article entitled “Blu-ray and HD DVD Face Off“ over on their website. The article first appeared in the June 2007 edition of the magazine and essentially covers the backgrounds of both Blu-ray and HD DVD. They then compare three different high definition players - the Tosiba HD-XA2 HD DVD player, the Panasonic DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player, and the LG BH100 Blu-ray/HD DVD player. If you’re not familiar with either Blu-ray or HD DVD, then you should definitely give this article a look over as it gives some great background high level information on both formats and the state of affairs of the format wars as it stands now.

Here’s a blurb from the article:

Until the average consumer can buy the cheapest player on the market and rent a disc without looking at the label (”What do you mean this disc won’t play in my player?”), neither format will gain mass acceptance. Regardless, this is going to drag out over years, and there is no possibility that either format (or both combined) will grow as fast as DVD. If Sony, et al, and Toshiba are lucky, they’ll grow faster than VHS.

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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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Many have known since day one that the Microsoft Xbox 360 HD DVD drive was usable on the PC platform. Back in the early days of the product rollout, you needed to get hacked drivers to make the product work on the XP platform but the drive worked just fine on the Vista platform - albeit with some memory unit question marks in the device manager. However, it turns out that somewhere along the way, Microsoft released full driver support for the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive on the Vista platform. Couple this drive with some HDCP/HDMI capable graphics hardware, HD DVD playback software, and an HDCP capable monitor, and you’ve got yourself an HD DVD capable system - potentially on the cheap (depending on whether you already had the graphics hardware to begin with)! The folks at Legit Reviews experimented with this proposition and wrote a good article about it here. I’ve been tinkering with the idea of adding an HD DVD drive to my home theater PC but I really need a processor upgrade to my system as Vista really chokes on the system - especially when I’m recording HD content. Anyhow, check out the article over at Legit Reviews. You can also read my old review of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player here.

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Technorati Tags: Xbox 360, HD DVD player, Desktop PC, Legit Review

Amazon and Microsoft have teamed up to sponsor the “One thousand HD DVD Indies Project” which is designed to make it easier for independent filmmakers to author and distribute their high definition works. At no charge to the filmmaker, 1000 selected entries will be authored to HD DVD format using Microsoft tools and then made available to Amazon.com customers via the CustomFlix Disc on Demand service. HD DVDs are produced as they are ordered so there are never any inventory issues to worry about. For independent filmmakers, this is a great way to distribute your high definition films on Amazon.com, a CustomFlix E-Store, and even on your own website (assuming of course you get selected). Filmmakers can set their own list price and earn royalties on all sales. They’re also free to pursue traditional distribution deals while participating in this project.

To submit your film to the 1000 HD DVD Indies Project, you need to go to this link and fill out the form. Chosen titles will be contacted by email or phone and you’ll have 30 days to send them a copy of your HD tape (film will not be accepted) and set up your title in their system.

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Technorati Tags: HD DVD, Amazon, Microsoft, 1000 HD DVD Indies Project

It’s about time! Internet enabled HD DVD discs are finally arriving onto the  scene (and you’ve been wondering why those HD DVD players connect to the net huh?). According to Forbes.com, the first Internet enabled HD DVD was a Japanese animation feature called “Freedom” which was released on Tuesday. If you watch this movie with an Internet connected HD DVD player, you’ll be able to download and watch a high definition trailer for another movie. You’ll also be able to customize menu styles, and download additional subtitles for the movie.

Another movie to feature access to online content is “Blood Diamond” which will come out on July 3rd for HD DVD. Owners of the HD DVD version of “Blood Diamond” will be able to partake in online polls while they’re watching the movie.

Following this movie will be the release of “300″ at the end of July. The HD DVD version of “300″ will allow users to re-edit the movie - “selecting and ordering the scenes as they see fit”. Users will then be able to upload their cut of the film to a webserver hosted by the studio to share with other users.

It remains to be seen whether users will find this downloadable content concept interesting. One can imagine selling HD DVD movie titles to gain access to exclusive trailer content for another upcoming movie (a la Halo 3 - buy a video game to gain beta access to Halo 3).

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Technorati Tags: HD DVD, Freedom, 300, Blood Diamond