It's still too early to judge how successful HD-DVD has been. I've been very antsy to post news about it but there are no hard facts right now. I'm really interested to hear how many Netflix users have signed up for it. Supposely they're buying 1,000 of every HD-DVD and Blu-ray title. I'm wondering how many of those have been utilized thus far.

Apple Computer is supposedly in talks with Sony to get iPod compatible versions of movies included on all Blu-ray discs. I have to say that that would be really nifty to see the studios embrace something like that. With 50GB to blow through, there's certainly room. I do wonder how the DRM for that will work, however. (Because you know that's going to be locked up tighter than a nun's.... you know).

Unrelated to the HD sector, but certainly within the scope of this site, it appears that certain someones have been wining and dining their senators of choice into writing a proposal to vastly expand the powers of the DMCA. It's the usual extremely scary, my Lord I wish I didn't live in this country, type of stuff. God have mercy on our souls if the US government is stupid enough to grant such rights to private entities.

After some early leaks by Best Buy and other retailers, today is the official day of HD-DVD. There will be no way to tell how successful it is for at least a few days, but from what I have read so far, it appears there is a decent amount of excitement. High Def Digest has posted some rather glowing reviews of Serenity and The Last Samurai. As a consumer with enough money to go out and buy HD-DVD if I wanted to, the whole thing just makes me upset. I want to be able to rent and purchase high definition movies, so bad! But for various depressing reasons, I won't bring myself to do it. I cannot support an industry that hates its customers and treats them like criminals.

Please spread this site to everyone you know who may be interested in HD-DVD and Blu-ray. They need to know about the evil that the MPAA is bringing to us.

I'm looking for someone to create a graphic incorporating our slogan "Take an axe to AACS". I want it to be about the same size as the yellow box on top of the front page (with the info about boycotting) which is around 800x100. Or it could be over on the top right of the title bar where it currently has the slogan, but it would have to be smaller in that case. It doesn't have to be fantastic, but at least "pretty decent". In my mind I just see it in some nicely shined up blocky font with an axe sticking into the word AACS, as if it were an actual object... but what do I know? I can't afford to pay you anything, but I will be eternally grateful and will happily include credit and a link to your site in exchange. If anyone has ideas or is interested in doing this, please leave a comment or contact me.

Universal just upped the already mighty impressive ante of three movies for HD-DVD launch, to four! That's right, you'll now have four whole movies to choose from if you decide to hand over $500 for that shiny new player (although we'd advise otherwise). All joking aside, the movie they decided to release (Serenity) is actually the only enticing title of the available launch selection. I'd love to see that in HD. Man, I'm starting to get upset. Hollywood, why must you be so evil? I really want to be able to rent movies in HD via Netflix, but because of your crap, I will never buy an HD player! What's a poor technophile to do?

In preparation for the imminent HD-DVD launch on April 18, Toshiba is about to barrage innocent consumers with a new ad campaign: "So real, you can feel it". The point of the ads, says Toshiba executive Tina Tuccillo, is to make consumers say "I have to get that." Unfortunately, the ads will likely focus on the only good thing about HD-DVD (the video quality), while neglecting all the absolutely horrible things, like, oh, I dunno, the fact that over 3 million people with analog-only HDTV's won't be able to watch movies in full resolution? If they want to be honest, they need to change their slogan. So horrible, you'll want to die is a bit more realistic, in my opinion.

We'll have a bunch of HD-DVD launch news coming up so stay tuned!

The Inquirer has a funny and depressingly insightful mock interview with some movie executives about the next generation DVD players, bringing up a lot of the points that we have here on our own little boycott page. Humor is always a good way to bring some insight to important issues:

Them: Yeah, the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) – it allows for high-def pictures and sound to be fired through a single cable and, it supports the DRM technology. Most new HDTVs have one.
Us: Mine doesn't.
Them: Oh
Us: What do you mean 'Oh'?
Them: Well, that means you're screwed.
Us: What?
Them: Obviously some people with older LCD or plasma screens will be affected somewhat by this
Us: How many is 'some'?
Them: Well, most of you actually.

Good times ^_^

Legal movies online has long been a dream for many an internet junkie. Today it was announced that seven major movie studios will be releasing their movies online, including new releases the same day that the DVD goes on sale. However, in what can only be described as the biggest non-surprise of the century, and certainly warranting a visit from our good friend Captain Obvious, the details leave much to be desired. For example, the pricing.... $20-$30 per movie, surely they're joking? It's as if they want this to fail. Who in their right mind would pay that much money, when they could get the DVD for half that price? Especially considering a normal DVD has a lot more benefits, like, oh, I dunno... being playable in a standard DVD player. And all the special features too! These downloads can only be played on your computer. Mmmm, fun! And your computer must be running Windows. Terrific! Wow, that sounds great, Hollywood! I can't wait to read the press releases proclaiming how you tried to do legal downloads, but those dirty "pirates" still wouldn't stop "stealing" your movies! Surely that will have nothing to do with the fact that you're more out of touch than you've ever been with consumer desires. Someday, dinosaurs will die...

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?

Today, Toshiba released their first HD-DVD player in Japan, even though there are absolutely on HD-DVD discs yet to put inside it. I guess I'm not sure what exactly they're expecting to happen. If you lived in Japan would you go out and buy this?

Most major studios have now announced that they won't enable ICT on their movies, at least for the time being. ICT is the Image Constaint Token, which instructs the player to downsample the HD video to "normal" DVD quality, unless connected through a secure digital connection (HDMI or DVI). This "feature" would affect more than 3 million people in the US who do not have digital HDTVs. Considering that the studios were all demanding this type of "security" before they agreed to release their movies on Blu-ray or HD-DVD, this is a rather surprising turn of events. Have the studios decided that maybe they've gone too far with their control over consumers? Please. It's much more probable that this move is to help ease all the confusion that they've created with regards to next generation DVD. Just remember - ICT is a permanent feature. The studios can enable it again any time they want in the future, and they very likely will.

In a completely predictable turn of events, it appears that consumers everywhere are very very confused about Blu-ray and HD-DVD. So what's wrong? Well generally speaking, people don't want to make the decisions that they will have to make, for example, should I buy Blu-ray or HD-DVD? Consumers want one format, and they just want it to work. Unfortunately, neither is the case. With two competing formats begging for your dollars, we will be witness to a format war, leaving a lot of people out of a lot of money when the losing format meets its maker. The competing formats will also not work as advertised for the 3 million people who don't have digital HDTVs, leaving them wondering why the hell they just blew a hefty wad of cash on something that is no better than their existing DVD player.

Luckily, the studios have made one very important decision for us: stay the hell away from next generation DVD. Gladly, sirs.

Earlier it was speculated that Toshiba would delay the rollout of HD-DVD players until there was something available to go with them, which by all signs is April 18, the day Warner releases three whole movies on the new format. (How's that for launch selection?) Toshiba has now come out and officially announced that they are delaying HD-DVD. They did not mention April 18 specifically but I'd say it's a safe bet they will use that as their launch date.

That means we have three more weeks to spread the word! If you know someone considering an HD-DVD purchase, please send them a link to this page so they know what they're getting into.

When it comes to that illusive analog hole, Japan's got it good. All HD players sold in Japan through the end of 2010 will not be allowed to downsample HD output over analog (component) connections, since apparently most HDTV's over yonder are not digital. Interestingly enough, Japan will also have the same region code as the US for Blu-ray (not sure about HD-DVD), which means a player bought over there will play all discs you buy over here. The MPAA's blatant disregard for the A-hole is amongst my biggest complaints. If your HDTV doesn't have a HDMI or HDCP-compliant DVI port, of which there are over 3 million, it sounds like you'll be able to get around this problem with an imported player. So the question remains: How hard and how expensive will it be to import one these players? This question of course comes after the much more important question, Why do I have to go to such great lengths to rightfully watch high definition movies over analog connections? While pondering, hopefully you will come to the conclusion that you shouldn't be supporting such outrageousness, not now, and not ever.

I originally posted this site to reddit.com and waited to see if it would take on a life of its own. An hour or two later, "dirty frat boy" posted it on digg, where it got quite a bit of attention and sent over 10,000 unique people to this site before being buried a few hours later. There were many people upset by the domain name. Understandable, but it's supposed to make a strong statement. Keep in mind that there are alternatives such as bluraysucks.com. There were also some people upset with some of my arguments. Most of this was caused by bad wording on my part. For example, hdbeat.com posted this rebuttal, but my response (comment #6) shows that most of it was just a misunderstanding or poor wording by me. I have since revised the boycott page to clarify a lot of points. The most common complaint was that I said HDMI cables were "not cheap" - heh, if such a minor point is the biggest complaint, I think that the article in question was pretty spot on.

The **AA's of the world think that in absolutely no circumstances should DRM be allowed legal circumvention, even at the cost of human life. Hmm. Well, I think that pretty much speaks for itself.