Digital Trends presents this article, in which they declare HD-DVD the clear winner of the next gen battle. Even with far fewer studios currently supporting them, HD-DVD still has considerably more releases (see here) and is much more affordable. Digital Trends' original prediction was Blu-ray would win, partially because of what the PS3 would do for it. That was before both the price of the PS3, and the delays, were announced. Given the current circumstances of the PS3, e.g., it's a complete joke of a system that no one wants, it's understandable how things have changed.

When Sony announced the PS3 specs and prices a few months back, enough bricks were shit to build a house. After the dust settled, fingers stopped being pointed, and laughter was no longer travelling in Sony's general direction (although you can still hear it if you listen hard enough), there was one real sore spot that stood out: the "cheap" PS3 was not going to have an HDMI port. Yes, even though Sony loves bragging about how its PS3 is going to be 1080p for games AND movies, while the X360 is only 1080i, they forgot to mention that 20% of the units shipped would fail to have a connection that supported 1080p.

And now, in a shocking and dramatic movie, Sony has listened to the complaints and has decided to include HDMI on the "cheap" PS3. Of course, this doesn't mean that an HDMI cable will be included with the system. That would just be TOO nice!

When was the last time you read something positive about Sony?

Thanks to severe shortages of the blue laser diodes needed for Blu-ray goodness, they have reduced their initial shipments of the PS3 from 2 million to 500K. Not that anyone was planning on buying one... BUT STILL!

Europe gets the finger as usual, they won't see the PS3 until sometime in 2007. That's a huge market that big companies seem to see as second class and completely ignore until they get Asia and USofA all stocked up. And when you consider that the cost of items over there is usually 50% higher than US equivalent, it seems like that'd be pure money.

As previously reported, after the initial novelty wore off, Sony's UMD movie format has been a complete and total failure. While studios have been releasing less and less movies in the format, and stores have scaled back inventory, it has taken this long for one store to take a stance against Sony. That's right, Target has dropped UMD movies for good. Will other stores soon follow? I'd bet my bottom dollar on it.

PS: Sorry for the hiatus. Other than the launch of Blu-ray being delayed (along with Sony's official players) there hasn't been much to report. Coupled with the fact that I'm currently in the process of buying a house has resulted in very little free time.

When it was discovered that Sony was installing a rootkit on its customers computers via certain audio CD's, I had never seen such an explosion of anger and disgust on the internet. There is absolutely no question that Sony did wrong, and that they deserved to pay heavily for it. Many lawsuits were filed, but were eventually combined into one class action lawsuit. A settlement was proposed, and today approved by a judge. Sony's punishment? Replace the infected CD's with either normal ones or via mp3 downloads, and to pay up to $7.50 to each person filing a claim.

WOW! What a punishment. Man, Sony must really be feeling the heat now! I mean, gee, they only completely destroyed thousands of computers and opened up tons of security holes left and right. And now they can offer you free replacements via download and pay you up to $7.50! For a company that pulls in over $60 billion per year, that's really hitting them where it hurts!!

All right, seriously, this is completely unacceptable. The punishment absolutely does not fit the crime. There should be billions of dollars coming out of this company to pay for what they did, and people should be in jail. Instead, they merely get a slap on the wrist and are told not to do it again. If anything, this only encourages other companies to pull this kind of stunt. Way to go everyone. We sure showed them.

I just came across this story on digg. Apparently Sony was holding some conference for something or other, and part of it was a laptop that supposedly had a Blu-ray drive in it, playing a Blu-ray copy of "House of Flying Daggers". This reporter wanted to see his first Blu-ray disc in person, but upon ejecting the disc (without Sony's knowledge of course), he found a burned DVD-R instead! HA. That is the funniest thing ever! No word if it was actually a Blu-ray drive or not, but it certainly makes you question just how well Blu-ray development is going for Sony... especially considering it's supposed to be released to the masses next month. :P

Last night, Sony released much needed details about the PlayStation 3 due later this year. There will be two versions, $499 w/20GB hard drive, and $599 with 60GB. The size of the hard drive is the only detail they mentioned as the difference, but there are many other important differences they chose not to share in their E3 presentation, one of them being huge: No HDMI output!

As has been mentioned, most first generation HD movies (both Blu-ray and HD-DVD) will not be incorporating the Image Constraint Token (ICT), which downsamples HD output to standard DVD quality unless video is being sent over a digital connection such as HDMI, and DVI in some cases. By excluding an HDMI port on the "cheap" version of the PS3, Sony is essentially making that version completely worthless for future generation HD movies since it will have to be connected via component (analog) cables. Now even if you aren't interested in Blu-ray HD movies, there's still another problem. Component is only capable of 1080i output, while HDMI can do full 1080p, the "gold standard" of HD video. So not only will you be royally screwed for movies, but your video games will also be crippled - not nearly as bad as HD movies of course, but still a slap in the face.

I think this is really just a way to set the price of the PS3 at $600, because only a fool would buy the "cheap" $499 version. Just like no one wants the Xbox 360 Core edition, no one will want this either. Besides all that, it makes the 360 sound incredibly cheap! Of course, the 360 doesn't have a next generation optical drive in it. Considering the cheapest Blu-ray drive will be $1000 when it launches later this month, $600 sounds like a good deal, not to mention the fact that your $600 will also be buying you a nice shiny video game console.

Regardless, Sony really dropped the ball on this one. Don't offer two versions of your console, because no one wants the shitty one. If you feel you must sell it at $600, then sell it at $600 instead of screwing your customers over.

Betamax. MiniDisc. MemoryStick. ATRAC. What do all of these products have in common? They're all propietary, all created by Sony, and all complete and total failures. So no one should be shocked to hear that Yet Another Sony Propietary Format, this one being the UMD movie format for PSP, is also a complete and total failure. Several major studios have completely stopped releasing UMD movies, many stores are scaling back their inventory, and an anonymous executive at Universal went so far as to say, "It's awful. Sales are near zilch. It's another Sony bomb - like Blu-ray." Mmmmm, now that's some juicy gossip! Universal is currently the only studio who is not supporting Blu-ray, and it sounds like they're already predicting its demise. So now the question is, will Blu-ray also be YASPF failure? Well, history does tend to repeat itself... ;)

But seriously now, people. Is anyone really surprised that consumers didn't want to pay twice for a movie they already owned, only to get it in a crappier format with lesser resolution that only plays on one device that has a tiny screen that you can't even hook up to your TV? Whose brilliant idea was this anyways?

Warner, who is supposedly going to be the first studio to release movies on HD-DVD, has delayed their first releases by three weeks from March 28 to April 18. Toshiba has said they are likely to delay the release of their players to match the launch of the first content, though they haven't officially announced it yet. HD-DVD's first-to-market advantage over Blu-ray is getting smaller and smaller, and now looks like they'll beat Blu-ray to market by only one month. (Blu-ray is currently scheduled to launch May 23). This is unfortunate because if it were life and death, and I had to choose between HD-DVD or Blu-ray, I would take HD-DVD any day of the week. I mean, considering all the crap Sony has pulled, I just don't like them anymore.

Also, Toshiba is apparently only shipping 10,000 total HD-DVD players for its intial launch, indicating they aren't exactly expecting steller sales. Of course, with only three movies at launch, it shouldn't be too surprising.

Look's like everyone's hope for a cheap Blu-ray player sometime soon just went bye bye. (Cheap being a relative term of course.) Sony today announced that the PlayStation 3 will be delayed until November. Supposedly they are working on some extra security features to protect the games from being copied. They're also probably doing it to save a ton of money. I'm sure they'll still lose money initially on PS3 hardware sales, but at that point Blu-ray will have been on the market for 6 months so their manufacturing costs will have come down significantly. We'll see what happens!