Figures for the first quarter of 2008 have just been released and Blu-Ray standalone player sales dropped by 40% between January and February and rose by only 2% in March. Analysts had predicted that the winning format would see a strong surge in hardware sales but this is not happening.

The price of the Blu-Ray player cannot possibly be the reason for the sharp drop. The players were as expensive when Blu-Ray was still competing with HD-DVD and the prices have not changed a lot since then. One possible reason could be that the customers who wanted to purchase a Blu-Ray player have already done so and that the others simply do not want to pay that much money for a movie player.

Add to that the Internet update problematic and horror stories that some early Blu-Ray players will not be able to play new movies because of technology updates and you pretty much got it summed up.

Would not it be funny if no format would win the war ? That Blu-Ray would not win either because most consumers don’t need it ? That another company would come up with a better format, without DRM, for a lesser price ? I would love to see that. How about you ?

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To be honest; I do not care if that is the end, if the war will go on another decade or if everyone will come to their senses and produce one format for all movies. I can understand that companies want to push a format that they have created. What I can’t understand is that movie companies like Warner did not pressure the format creators to create one format which would be the best for the customers.

Now we have two formats and everything seems to be utterly complicated. Playstation 3 owners want Blu-Ray to win, the guys who bought a HD-DVD drive for their Xbox 360 want that format to win and everyone can’t play movies that are released exclusively for the other format.

It’s all about money of course and the company whose format is going to win will make most of it for a long time to come. Do they care about the viewers, the customers ? I don’t think so. Besides the obvious fact that many customers who already bought a new player will not be able to view all movies they are also confusing everyone who has not made a decision yet.

My opinion is that we will see players who are supporting both formats. They will cost more but are in my opinion the only reasonable way to please those who buy the players. I for one will use DVD as long as possible and boycott this insane war. I would change my mind if they would release a player that is fast, without all the copy protection and DRM and play both formats without problems. This will never happen I know but hope is still there.

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The situation is currently the following: Paramount and Universal will publish their movies exclusively on HD-DVD while Disney, Fox, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM publish theirs exclusively on Blue-Ray. Time Warner seems to be the only movie company that is producing movies for both HD formats.

While the companies are battling for the one true format consumers are confused and left with choices that they can’t make at the moment. No one wants to pay hundreds of dollars for a HD player if that player will be obsolete in a few years. Remember the Beta / VHS fiasco back then ?

The best choice at the moment is to wait in my opinion and buy the movies on DVD which is the only format that will see all movie releases from all companies. If you already made a purchase you can enjoy some of the movies in HD but will have to rely on DVDs to be able to watch the other movies.

I’m really happy that I do not have an HD television yet and no desire to buy an Xbox 360 with HD drive or a PS3 with Blue-Ray in the near future. I have all the time in the world to wait and see how this war continues. Will it be decided by money or by the choice of the consumers ?

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The only aspect that is a little bit confusing is the menu structure. Since this is basically a free version of DVDFab Gold and Platinum not all options are accessible in the main menu. It is only possible to rip the DVD or HD movie to your hard disk removing all copy protection in the process or to uncheck certain elements, such as extra languages or trailers, on the disk before you do that.

The options should be your first stop before you start using DVDFab HD Decrypter. Make sure you change the temp and output directories if your c: drive does not have enough space to hold a full DVD or HD movie.

The Region Code is removed as well by default making the disk universally playable on all players. It seems however that this setting has to be changed in the options whenever a disk with a different region code is inserted. It was automatically set to region 2 and it did not change when I placed a region 1 disk in the drive.

Still no problem unless you have a lot of disks from different regions. DVDFab HD Decrypter is a great tool if you want to copy DVD or HD movies with or without copy protection. Please note that using this tool might be illegal in some countries.

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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.

The thread starter was using a PS3 to play the movie which could be related. There are unfortunately not that many information available at this point but this could be a serious blow for the Blue-Ray supporters if it turned out to be something serious that could happen to all disks.

Do you own a Blue-Ray player and have the movie The Prestige ? How does yours look and which Blue-Ray player do you use ? Click on the images for a larger picture.

found: Crunchgear

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I thought that I’m going to discuss it with 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.

A possible third scenario would be that both formats will get their share of the market or that hybrid players will take over once their availability rises and prices drop. I personally can’t see that one or the other format is currently leading by a large margin and this is probably one of the reasons why many consumers refrain from buying such a player at the moment.

I feel confused that some movie studios for instance only support one of the players which should be a major point of consideration for everyone who buys such a player these days. So, who is winning the HD war ?

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In the meanwhile many news sites, radio stations and even tv networks published stories about what was happening on the Internet distributing the key exponentially on the Internet. If you search for the code today you find that more than 1.3 million websites reference it. The AACS nevertheless decided to take on the fight which leads to question that I would like to ask “Have not they learned a thing from last weeks events ?”

Even if it would be technically possible to send Cease and Desist letters to all 1.3 million websites they would not have eliminated the key from the eye of the public. They probably can force American websites to take down the key but what about sites that do not care about American laws ? China, Russia or even Sweden for instance. Those sites most likely won’t react at all to letters that they receive.

If they are really going to send those letters out it will generate even more hype which leads to even more sites posting that key. The funny thing here is that not many users even know what they could do with that key. How is this key helping them defeat the copy protection of HD-DVD / Blue-Ray movies ?

The commercial pirates already know the key and produce copies using it but what about you and me ? Do we profit from that key in any way ? I don’t think so. At least not at the moment. The casual user will not be able to use the key until someone does write a good program that does everything automatically.

The actions of the AACS remind me of someone running with his head against a wall and instead of learning from this painful incident they decide to do it again because they still believe this was the only way to get past it.

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It took the author 20 days to encrypt the protection using his Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive and lots of free time. He started looking at solutions because he was unable to play a purchased HD-DVD movie using a HD-DVD drive and a HD monitor. I never fully understood why they created such restrictive formats in the first place. They only make their customers angry with restrictions like this, hackers will always find a way.

The author published a youtube movie, here it is:

The faq that comes with the program gives valuable information. I decided to publish it fully as well.

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Some days later he managed to do the same with a Blue-Ray movie which means that everything is set to get the warez scene going. I think it is kinda strange that it was always easy to copy games for the Playstation systems and many people think that the success of the Playstation systems could be connected to this.

This got me thinking. Why did not Sony try and dump their discs if they knew everyone would be able to install and use Linux on the Playstation 3 ? Did they all miss it or was it probably something they did not care about or even wanted ? What do you think about this ?

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Players would then be able to check the RFID chip on the disc and refuse playback if a criteria was not met, meaning if it has been copied or someone wants to playback the dvd in the wrong region. Will this help in the fight against piracy ? Not likely, is it ? The range of the RFID chip makes it impossible to track the DVD down unless your tracking device is close. (it is short range communication).

The only thing that could be working is that new players receive data from the chip and refuse to play if the data is not correct. So, this story could be a test to see how consumers would react to such chips.

What the industry is doing is to tighten the grip on those people that they need most, the people who actually buy DVDs, Blue-Ray and HD-DVD discs. Every new restriction tightens the grip a little bit more resulting in the loss of customers.

When will they understand that they can’t win this game unless they start thinking about what the consumers want.

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One would think that the video and audio quality would be close to each other and that differences could only be seen in navigation and supplemental content. Apparently this is not the case: The video quality of the HD-DVD versions of all three movies is superior to the Blue-Ray disks. The Blue-Ray disks miss the Dolby Digital-Plus tracks which are provided in the HD-DVD disks as well. The tester also criticized the disk navigation on two of three Blue-Ray disks.

Training Day:

In our first head-to-head comparison, we found the HD DVD to be superior. The unfortunate cropping of the Blue-ray image, coupled with more noticeable compression artifacts and an overall darker cast, can’t compete with the more consistently pleasing presentation of the HD DVD. Also a strike against the Blue-ray version is that both the Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital-Plus soundtracks have been dropped in favor of plain old Dolby Digital, and even the disc’s menu navigation is more clunky and with less interactive functionality. Certainly, this Blu-ray release delivers fine video quality in its own right, but the format’s backers will need to step it up if they are going to win the hearts and minds of early adopters over HD DVD.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:

With our second Blue-ray versus HD DVD battle on ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,’ we again declare victory (although by a smaller margin) to the HD DVD version. Most of the same problems we found with ‘Training Day’ on Blue-ray — namely the picture cropping (though it is likely a player issue) and darker cast — reappear again here. The absence of HD DVD’s Dolby Digital-Plus tracks on Blue-ray is problematic, and I still find Blu-ray’s clunky menu navigation quite irritating. Though with ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ Blue-ray has proven it can deliver moments of stunning high-def as good as HD DVD, it is still not delivering that level of quality as consistently. Very close with this one, but still no cigar.

Rumor has it..