The high-definition disc format war is over, but the real losers aren’t those who bought HD-DVD movies or players but Toshiba, the company behind the bested standard. The company has announced today that their net profit this past quarter dropped an astonishing 95 percent, thanks to losses prompted by the format pull-out. Overall, net profit scraped in at 1.25 billion yen (US$12 million), versus 26.17 billion yen this time last year.

Toshiba also blamed a drop in the price of flash memory chips for their ailing profits. Revenue overall for the quarter was 3-percent lower than last year, at 2.09 trillion yen (US$20billion). Total profit for the financial year up until the end of March 2008 was 127.4 billion yen (US$1.2billion), a fall of 7 percent.

Dell is commemorating Blu-ray’s victory by offering a Blu-ray playback drive in its super low price, 15.4 inch laptop, the Inspiron 1525. Starting at $880, you can watch BD movies on its screen (at 720p resolution) or send the video to HDTVs via HDMI. You will be seeing more Blu-ray read (not read-write) desktops and laptops in 2008 since the format war is over - HD DVD is defeated.

Note: The Blu-ray player disc drive is fully backwards compatible, and will play as well as burn traditional DVDs and CDs.

Blu-ray is the declared victory of the format war. And now Blu-ray player prices are at the all-time high for the year. Even worse is that not all of the players support BD Profile 2.0. Your best bet would be Play Station 3 (PS3) because it offers the most recent profile and it is a game console! The price of a PS3 is relatively cheaper than a standalone player. I think the price will be remain this level for a while, but the price tag of PS3 will continue to drop as Sony wants to increase its market share.

Source: PS3fanboy

With only one format left, we will going to focus on Blu-ray players without worrying other format competitors. Thanks to the demise of HD DVD, Sony is proudly introducing the BDP-S550 Blu-ray player this fall for approximately $500. Will Sony jack up their Blu-ray DVD players, knowing no more HD DVD? BDP-S350 is relatively cheaper than BDP-S550.

• 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema output
• Standard DVD playback with 1080p upscaling via HDMI
• 7.1 channel Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus decoding
• dts-HD High Resolution Audio and Master Audio bit-stream output
• 7.1 channel analog audio output
• Support for AVCHD discs
• Compatible with D-R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW (CD-DA format), and JPEG on DVD/CD

Some people might prefer getting Playstation 3 with Blu-ray and gaming console combo.

Source: Ubergizmo

As Toshiba announced that HD DVD goes to the deadpool. The format war is over, Blu-ray is the Big Winner. I guess there’s no other option but to go with Blu-ray. Universal’s president Craig Kornblau said: “While Universal values the close partnership we have shared with Toshiba, it is time to turn our focus to releasing new and catalog titles on Blu-ray.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The PlayStation 3 has outsold the Xbox 360 and got very close to the Nintendo Wii last month, according to the latest market research.

Wii: 274,000 units
PS3: 269,000 units
xBox 360 : 230,000 units

It might be that consumers are buying the console to get what is often described as the “Best Blu-Ray Player”, and it’s also a game console. With Warner Bros. abandoned HD-DVD and go exclusively to Blu-ray, it looks like shoppers have an easier decision of which format to buy!

Following Warner’s Blu-ray Only announcement, Blu-ray’s hardware was a comfortable 90% of the market share. However, what wasn’t mentioned is that this figure was unintentionally leaked as it accounted for “free Blu-ray player” promotions.

As a strike back, Toshiba’s $100-200 price cuts on their players went into effect on January 13th which probably accounts for the sales spur. We’ve seen the Toshiba HD-A3 for $199 and this can be lower?

Source: Pocket-lint

There are many websites that have mentioned about Warner will be producing only Blu-ray in 2008. This is a shocking news that I’d like to let our readers know.

Read the rest of this entry »

The flames of the format war got a little hotter this week thanks to a mix-up with some Blu-ray Disc collections of the Harry Potter: Years 1-5 Limited Edition Gift Set: some consumers reported that instead of Blu-ray, their collections included an HD DVD for the fourth movie in the series, The Goblet of Fire.

The Harry Potter Limited Edition Gift Set includes Harry Potters Years 1-5, a Harry Potter DVD game Hogwarts Challenge, along with a bonus disc containing over 2 hours of enhanced content, an exclusive “Harry Potter’s Bookmark Collection”, and collectible trading cards. (Retail $120)

Warner Bros. customer service representatives were still unsure of whether a replacement disc would be shipped or if an exchange program would take place. However, many consumers reported that the stores they purchased the collection from were making accommodations.