Quoting Ascended_Saiyan:

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We now have more Amazon data tracking sites (Eproductwars for the UK, Germany, and Japan)...


Amazon Wars UK
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd-uk/

Amazon Wars Japan
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd-jp/

Amazon Wars Germany
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd-de/

Just to keep an eye on how much the Amazon landscape changes in Europe now that the PS3 has launched.

Also, it is note-worthy to mention the 4 of the top 10 HD DVDs in the UK are sampler discs.  They seem a bit content starved or something.

whoop de doo .... yawn

Quoting susm:

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Quoting Ascended_Saiyan:

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It will be on Blu-ray this year.  Remember, what HD DVD gets from Warner Bros. and Paramount, Blu-ray gets too!  I am disappointed that after Blu-ray backers gave them 20,000 first week sales of The Departed compared to 13,000 for HD DVD and stronger continued sales on that title, they would release this title first and Blu-ray second.

Congrats, HD DVD on the first release date!

But, then again, Blu-ray will get Spiderman 1, 2 and 3; The Pirates of the Caribbean 1, 2 and 3; Cars; Bad Boys 2; The DaVinci Code; etc this year!  Those are TRULY exclusives.  They won't be on HD DVD...period.

I read somewhere the reason hd-dvd is getting it first is because the authoring tools for the extras just aren't there yet for blu-ray. This is a shame as I have recently committed to blu-ray and bought a ton of movies.

It's the PiP (picture in picture) authoring tool that Warner Bros. does not have for Blu-ray.  Of course, that does not prevent them from being able to add uncompressed PCM tracks, FBA TrueHD tracks (the truly lossless version of TrueHD), higher bitrates, Java games or other Java interactivity to their Blu-ray versions.  The only way to keep Warner Bros. from hiding behind the PiP tool is to complete it as quickly as possible.  The BDA is definitely behind HD DVD on that feature.

Anyways, there should be some very advanced Java features on the Pirates of the Caribbean titles.  There will be an additional disc (25GB) packed with Java interactivity for each title.  The actual titles will be on 50GB discs using AVC, I believe.

I found this a little interesting.  I am trying to find alternate confirmation but if I were an early adopter, I would be a tad pi$$ed.

Current Blu-ray players will be rendered obsolete by the end of 2007.

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Current Blu-ray players will be rendered obsolete by the end of the year. The Blu-ray disc association, in an effort to realize the hitherto unseen potential of the format, has mandated that all BD players going on sale after October 31 must offer fully-functioning BD Java, in order to deliver PIP interactivity. Frustration comes from the fact that BD releases have failed to compare to current generation HD DVD discs. The inability of Blu-ray players to run BD Java and go online with BD Live is frustrating studios eager to build next generation functionality into their products. Unfortunately, this attempt to effectively finalize the format may be coming to late for the format’s early adopters. Currently, even the PlayStation 3 is unable to offer PIP via BD Java and no standard alone designs have the ability to go online with BD Live.
First generation players can have their firmware updated via disc; however such updates alone may not be enough to maintain hardware compatibility with advanced PIP platters. Machines need a minimum of 256MB of persistent memory storage to run the feature. Players with an Ethernet connection for online interactivity are required to have 1GB of memory, to store and buffer downloaded content.

Possibly Some Big News...

This is not confirmed, yet.  This is from an insider.  Supposedly, the announcement should be made around March 31, if it is true.

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The News:

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy will be released on both Blu-ray and HD-DVD on November 23, 2007.

Here is the interesting part:

As a gesture of good faith over the Matrix release, New Line/WB will be releasing only the Extended Editions on Blu-ray at this time, while HD-DVD will get only the Theatrical Versions.

The Blu-ray version will be on a BD50 in VC-1 with PCM!! It will also showcase a lot of the neat features of BD-J.

Here is a quote from a friend and a breakdown of movie running times.

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King Kong (HD DVD) which we know maxes out the capacity of 30GB DL HD DVD and had to drop the TrueHD track to do it, has a running time of 187 minutes.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) has a running time of 208 minutes

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition) has a running time of 208 minutes

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition) has a running time of 250 minutes.

How, pray tell, does New Line Cinema fit any of these movies (particularly LotR: RotK) onto a 30GB HD DVD without seriously degrading PQ, hm?

...How indeed.

Really, who needs lossless audio? Totally unnecessary in my opinion and mostly for purists.

Quoting mnemo:

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Really, who needs lossless audio? Totally unnecessary in my opinion and mostly for purists.

The truth is we don't NEED High Definition moving pictures and sound, but a lot of us want it.  This type of technology is completely driven by wants.

Quoting Unicus69:

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I don't know whether or not those people were/are pissed.  I only know how that I would be...which is exactly what I said and another reason I don't adopt early.  Talk about wasting money. 

That IS wasting money.  That's another reason I bought the PS3 instead of a standalone player.  PS3s are built to last about 6 to 8 years.  Therefore, it will continue to be a top notch Blu-ray player for a long time.  When BD Live is activated, all the PS3 will need is another firmware update to work.  When BD Live is on most new Blu-ray players, I will purchase one or two standalone players.

Quoting mnemo:

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Quoting Ascended_Saiyan:

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The truth is we don't NEED High Definition moving pictures and sound, but a lot of us want it.  This type of technology is completely driven by wants.

A higher video quality (let's say from DVD to HD) is easily visible to the novice, but higher quality audio (let's say normal DTS 5.1 to Dolby TrueHD lossless) is not noticable to what...? 99% of the audience? So I can easily justify higher video quality, but lossless audio... not really. Even theaters only play compressed audio. Maybe it's only so people can say "Hey, I have technically better quality audio in my home than at the theaters." :-)

Actually, a lot of people can tell the difference between DTS and TrueHD (both streams...FBA and FBB).  Every person I have demo'ed DD and PCM can tell a drastic difference between the two.  They could definitely tell the difference between DD and DTS.  You are just about the only person I have heard of that has listened to legacy and next-gen audio codecs and not be able to tell a difference (I am assuming you have listened to both back to back).  Personally, I can tell the difference between the TrueHD FBA and FBB streams (true loseless and lossy respectively).  That ability is not uncommon.