If you thought that the HD war was over with the switch of Warner Studios from supporting both HD formats to just Blu-Ray then you might want to observe the market a little bit longer. The effect that Warner has left the HD DVD supporters will not be visible to consumers later this year when the contract expires (May 2008). From then on Warner will only release movies on DVD and Blu-Ray.
HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray Next Round
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.
Sony PS3 + 15 Movies for $499 at Walmart
I’m not really sure how Sony is planning on making money from that sale but I suppose they have a good reason for that. Walmart is apparently offering a Sony PS3 80 Gigabyte console system plus 10 Blue-Ray movies plus 5 mail in Blue-Ray movies for $499 as part of their Secret Sales holiday campaign.
Send Text Messages to the Future
Textmemos is a service that lets the user type in text messages that he wants to have delivered at a certain date and time. All that needs to be done is to enter the cell phone number, the cell phone provider, the date, time and of course the message. As of now 38 different cell phone providers are supported by Textmemos most operating in the United States and Canada with only a handful European ones.
Sony caught editing Halo 3 Wikipedia entry
Oh Sony, when will you learn that manipulating the public will not be taken lightly when it becomes public. This time, someone from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s studios in Liverpool was caught adding a sentence to the Halo 3 entry on Wikipedia. The person in question added the sentence ‘Although it won’t look any better than Halo 2′ to the game description which has been removed after discovery.
Rootkits: Sony does it again
I would have never thought that a company like Sony would not learn from its mistakes especially after the first rootkit debacle which was a major public relations fiasco for Sony. The first rootkit was placed on several audio CDs that were distributed in 2005 and led to a $6 million settle case in the United States. While the rootkit was intended to make it impossible (albeit ineffectively) to copy music from the CDs it was effectively used by producers of malware, trojans and spyware to hide their code from antivirus software.
The HD-DVD vs. Blue-Ray war confuses consumers
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.
