Items tagged with DVD
'DVD Jon.' of DVD and FairPlay cracking fame, has gone legit.Beginning Tuesday, the first product from his company, DoubleTwist Ventures, will enter open beta. Called DoubleTwist, it's a free desktop client that essentially allows any kind of music, photo, or video file to be shared between a long list of portable media players, and through...
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Thought Microsoft actually made the following statements prior to Toshiba's official announcement, it is reasonable to assume that they knew what was coming. It seems like they're not very concerned about the potential impact:“We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or...
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Although as early as Saturday NHK had reported the decision by Toshiba to drop HD-DVD had already been made by Toshiba, the company did not publicly announce it - until today. "We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,"...
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As the saying goes, it's all over but the shouting and we're sure there are more than a few heated words that are still yet to be exchanged. Reports are continuing to flow in quickly since Friday, on the news that Walmart was stepping back from the sale of HD DVD players moving forward, offering only Blu-Ray format players by June...
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Worse than anything else this week, perhaps worse than any news since Warner Bros. dropped HD-DVD just prior to CES ... the world's largest retailer has announced it is dropping HD-DVD.Enough about my family and on to the Wal-Mart plans… by June Wal-Mart will only be carrying BluRay movies and hardware machines, and of course standard def...
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Since Warner Bros. dropped HD-DVD just prior to CES, bad news has continued to flow for the HD-DVD group. Price drops were said by Gartner to simply "prolong the agony," Netflix dropped HD-DVD, and Best Buy said they would begin recommending Blu-ray over HD-DVD. Now "reliable" sources say that in the coming weeks Toshiba - the...
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Start the funeral dirge, if you haven't already. Yet another nail in the coffin, as Netflix today announced it will only carry Blu-ray, phasing out HD-DVD titles by "roughly" the end of the year."The prolonged period of competition between two formats has prevented clear communication to the consumer regarding the richness of the high-def...
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Is this a case of throwing good money after bad? The HD-DVD Group is spending loads of cash on an HD-DVD Super Bowl ad.The ad will feature Toshiba's three lowest-priced players, the HD-A3, A30, and A35, and is the biggest advertising move for any high-def disc medium to date, reports Home Media Magazine.According to industry reports,...
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When Warner announced that they were going to go Blu-ray exclusive starting in June, it seemed that the outlook for HD DVD seemed bleak at best. But it appears that a new strategy is forming, and the immediate goal would appear to be putting more HD DVD capable devices into consumer hands.“One part of HD DVD’s new strategy is on lower...
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Toshiba, backer of the HD DVD standard for next-generation high-definition disc players, is reacting to the move of many Hollywood studios to exclusively offer their entertainment on rival Sony's Blu-ray format. By "reacting," I mean "slashing their prices to the bone."Toshiba's third generation 1080i-capable HD-A3 is selling for a mere $139.98...
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Well the winner of the "Who wants to be listed in Wikipedia next to the Betamax format" sweepstakes appears to be HD-DVD. Paramount has decided to follow Warner Brother's recent decision to support Blu-ray and is going to drop its support of the HD-DVD format. Warner's decision last week to throw its weight behind Blu-ray saw it...
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Yesterday Warner Bros. announced the decision to drop HD-DVD support, opting to go Blu-ray only after May. The HD-DVD Group issued a short, tersely worded press release in response, but that was just when the fun started.We just got an email which stated that the HD DVD group is canceling its CES press conference; tail severely between...
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One or the other of the two high-definition formats has to get an edge eventually, doesn't it? This might help Blu-ray. Panasonic has started shipping samples of the world's thinnest internal Blu-ray drive -- just 9.5 mm high.Now available to PC manufacturers, the new sample 9.5 mm high BD drives, were accomplished by combining Panasonic's...
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The fight for supremacy between the two high-definition formats for entertainment has been fought to a stalemate, at least according to Sony's CEO Howard Stringer. Sony backs the Blu-ray standard, while Toshiba touts the HD DVD format. When the numbers are in for Christmas, we'll likely see that one or the other format has a wide lead over...
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While doing research for this review, we realized that we had to go back nearly three years - an eternity in the PC industry - to find the last HotHardware article on optical drives. For a comparative look at technologies, back then we were using single core Pentium 4s in Intel 865/875 boards, GeForce...
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Just in case you're the type who likes to jump right down to the news, we’re writing to let you all know that we’ve just posted a new article here at HotHardware in which we evaluate the features, performance and overall value of three DVD+/-RW drives, the Asus DRW-2014L1T, the Lite-On LH-20A1H, and finally the Plextor PX-810SA. ...
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Addonics Announces Optical Solution that Bridges Blu Ray and HD DVD Formats -- Zebra Blu-ray / HD DVD Player Plays Both Formats and Burns DVD±R/RW and CDRW Media -- SAN JOSE, CA (December 13, 2007) – Addonics Technologies today announced its Zebra Blu-ray / HD DVD Player an optical storage solution that allows your PC to play Blu-ray...
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If you aren't wearing your tin-foil hat, you might want to go get it before reading any further.Now that you have your tin-foil hat, we'll issue a not-too subtle warning that this as a wild rumor/allegation and it could easily fall under the heading of 'crackpot' theories despite having a big Hollywood name attached to it. Microsoft...
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Remember when George Lucas digitally remastered the original Star Wars trilogy? He said it was to "finish the film the way it was meant to be." Most of the changes were cosmetic, enhancing the films with special effects that were not available when the films were first made. In a sense, we now have a similar version of Star Trek: The Original...
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The continuing battle between Blu-Ray and HD DVD might eventually boil down to who can get their player into more consumer hands. A large part of that equation is price. How does less than $200 sound?If you're worried that $200 will buy you a cut rate player, think again. We're talking about a HD DVD player that was going...
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All is not well in Apple-Land. Several threads on the Apple discussion forums indicate a defective batch of DVDs, as well as BSODs ("blue screen of death") after installation. Now, much as we always say about Microsoft, you can't expect 100% flawless behavior; there's no such thing as bug-free software after all. But the defective DVDs, on...
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On Monday Toshiba made good on a promise it made earlier this year to add HD-DVD drives to its more popular systems, by adding HD-DVD drives to a Satellite laptop. Previously only the Qosmio AV notebook had an HD-DVD drive. The Satellite A205 equipped with HD DVD carries with it a retail price of $1,149.99 USD, approximately 30 percent...
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