The format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is finally over and one would have thought that this would have a positive effect on Blu-Ray sales especially from the customer group that decided to wait and see which side would win the war. Now that HD-DVD lost the format war it should have been clear that [...]

Categories: Hardware

I don’t know how you feel about the ongoing format war between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray but I’m sick and tired to hear which company is backing up which format and which format is doomed because of this move. Today the news hit the Internet by storm that Warner is going Blue-Ray exclusive and everyone was asking the question if this was the end of HD-DVD losing another major movie studio.

Categories: Music and Video

The war between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray entered a next stage with the announcements of Paramount and Dreamworks to publish their lineup exclusively on HD-DVD. Rumors soon spread around the Internet that both companies were receiving payments (Paramount $50 million dollars, Dreamworks $100 million dollars) from HD supporters to make this decision.

Categories: Music and Video

DVDFab HD Decrypter is a free DVD and HD ripper that is able to copy the contents of a movie onto your hard drive even if that movie is copy protected. It can remove DVD copy protections such as CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS and even manages to remove AACS from Blue-Ray and HD-DVD disks which means that it should be possible to copy most DVDs and HD DVDs that you have to your hard disk without running into copy protection problems.

Categories: Music and Video, Tools

Have you ever seen something so irritating than rotting Blue-Ray disks ? Paying $35 for a movie (now available for $22) that is not playable after a few months because of rot ? A user in the AVS forum started a thread showing pictures of the Blue-Ray movie The Prestige that showed dozens of blotches that are apparently underneath the disk surface.

Several other users reported that their disks were showing similar blotches while others said their disks did not have them. Suggestions were that it could be climate related or a coating problem during production on some batches that have been sold.

Categories: Hardware, Music and Video

I’m not that interested in the HD format war because I do not have a television that is HD Ready and do not plan to buy one in the near future. Maybe that is one of the reasons why I feel a little bit lost about the success or failure of HD-DVD and Blue-Ray players and movies.

I thought that I’m going to discuss it with each of you. What are your thoughts about both formats ? Do you think that Blue-Ray is in the lead, maybe because of the boost after the release of the Playstation 3 by Sony ? Or is it the HD-DVD format that you think will win this war.

Categories: Hardware, Music and Video

You surely now what has happened during the last week. The AACS send some cease and desist letters to bloggers and website owners requesting the takedown of the so called HD-DVD processing key. The story more or less exploded on the web. The main reason for this was probably the way the admins of digg.com handled the affair. Their first decided to pull all articles posted to digg containing the key which lead to a furious reaction of the digg community who submitted so many articles about the key to digg that the founder of digg decided to follow the lead of his community and let it happen.

Categories: Hacking, Music and Video, Security

The war between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD is still in the beginning which frustrates the consumers. One nail in the Blue-Ray coffin might have been added today by a guy who managed to hack the HD-DVD encryption. Being able to backup the expensive HD-DVD movies could win the format war. Most users will not be able to backup their HD-DVDs right away because the process sounds a little bit complicated and the author of the code did not reveal all the information how he managed to rip a HD-DVD movie but the source is available which means that many programmers will take a look and create advanced versions of it.

Categories: Hacking, Tools

I don’t know why Sony is so obsessed with Linux, it just does not feel right but I really can’t find a good motive for the support – yet. Some guy apparently installed Linux Fedora Core on his Playstation 3 and dumped everything that he could get his hands on. He was able to dump a complete game disc to his external usb hard drive that he connected to the PS3.

Categories: Hardware