Here’s the scoop on the big Father’s Day weekend push.

• This is the weekend that Toshiba’s rebate program expands to include all of their HD DVD players.
• Amazon has a “7 Free HD DVDs with Purchase of Toshiba HD-A2 DVD Player and The Matrix Trilogy” deal. This mega-offer is really pretty cool: it combines the $100 rebate on the HD-A2 player, with Toshiba’s “5 Free HD DVD” offer, and then Amazon throws in two more HD DVDs if you also order The Matrix Trilogy (doesn’t matter whether it’s the regular or ultimate collection).
• Amazon offers a free HD DVD movie when you buy the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player.

Obviously, an online deal is not going to get delivered on time for Father’s Day this weekend, however Best Buy and Circuit City have their own 2 free HD DVD offers when you purchase the Xbox 360 HD Player, and you’re still eligible for Toshiba’s month-long $100 instant-rebate program, and their 5 Free movies.

It happens all the time in politics, and business is not immune to it either: everybody paints the best picture possible for even the smallest bit of good news.

In my opinion, the specific numbers don’t really matter because these kinds of press releases come and go all the time, but it was just the other day that Toshiba and friends announced that their rebate program had resulted in some really great sales numbers for HD DVD players. The increased sales data were actually pretty good in terms of percentages and short time-frames, but in the bigger picture, the format war is still on and going strong.

The Blu-ray camp is no stranger to spinning either. For example, large numbers of player sales makes it sound as if the world has overwhelmingly chosen that format. The truth is (more…)

Some of you might say that day will come when “hell freezes over,” but history demonstrates that this particular hell has frozen over numerous times in response to evolving business conditions. Let’s go back a few decades (perhaps before you were born) when the major videogame consoles were made not by Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, but by Atari, Mattel, and Coleco. Atari was the biggest of them, and they could boast about the numerous exclusive titles in their library. Mattel had some pretty good games too, but nobody could really compete against Atari’s big lead.

The business reality for both Atari and Mattel was that there were plenty of people in the other camp who would never cross over. There were enough of these potential customers that it made business sense to make games for the competitor’s system. It seemed like heresy to suggest that Atari would make its classic games like Battlezone, Centipede, and Pole Position available for play on Apple ][ computers, PCs, or the game systems from Mattel and Coleco—but they did. Atari’s venture into making games for PCs and other game systems was called AtariSoft. Mattel and Coleco even joined the cross-platform lovin’ and followed Atari’s example. (By the way, The First Quarter : A 25-year History of Video Games is a great book to read if you’re interested in more videogame history)

What’s the HD DVD and Blu-ray point here? (more…)

We’re finally going to enable some long-awaited features such as comments for the various articles so that you can share your responses. A move to a new host has been in the works for a while, and I wanted to keep the move as simple as possible. Since we have no comments or a forum just yet, there’s been no risk about losing any of YOUR writing. Once we make the switch, the site will eventually get a forum where you can start your own HD DVD dicussions and ask questions or share your views with the HD DVD community at large.

You’re always welcome to email me at editor@hddvd.com if you’ve got any ideas, requests, or comments for the site.

If you’ve ever followed or studied the stock market, you’re probably aware that certain companies and products end up being good indicators about what’s coming a few months later in the economy for a particular industry. For example, an increase in orders for construction materials means that more homes or buildings are being built, which means that business conditions for people buying homes or buildings must be improving as well. Or let’s say a company makes a kind of machine that’s used in manufacturing electronics equipment. Higher sales of their machines means that their customers (consumer electronics manufacturers) are ramping up production of whatever products they make with these new machines. In either case (construction or electronics), it means that consumers will be getting those products a few months later, and a few months after that, we’ll hear that the industry had a good sales period.

In a similar way, you might have heard about the following products on the gadget websites in the last few days or weeks (or months):

• Toshiba Qosmio Laptop gets 0.5-inch HDDVD-RW Drive
• Acer announces HD DVD-equipped laptop with 20-inch screen
• HP Pavilion dv9000t HD DVD-equipped laptop gets good reviews (Editor’s choice at PC Magazine)
• Alpine and Toshiba demonstrate automotive HDDVD player

What’s important about these products? Especially that last one, which isn’t even coming out for over a year? (more…)

Technology has the annoying habit of never standing still for too long. Just as you’ve decided to embrace a new gizmo, it turns out that something even newer is right around the corner. It’s a major let-down to find out that the gadget you just bought is about to be leapfrogged by something better – and probably for a cheaper price! It stinks, but what can you do? That’s just the nature of technology. I think the only thing you can do is wish for a healthy dose of good luck and discretionary income.

Luckily, some of that good luck has already headed your way if you have an HDDVD player.

One of the nice things about HDDVD players is that ALL of them come with ethernet connections allowing them to connect to the internet. The most common reason to be connected is to download supplementary content for a movie you might be watching, but a more practical reason is for upgrading the player. You are probably accustomed to updating your browser, operating system and other software on your computer, and in the world of HDDVD, you can do the same for your player!

These downloads are called “firmware” updates. Firmware is the software running in your hardware (but I don’t think that’s why it’s called “firm”). To a certain extent, support for new features is only a firmware update away. As long as new features do not rely on specific hardware components, it’s very likely that firmware updates will allow even a year-old HDDVD player to continue to keep up in many ways with newer models.

Let me repeat an important part of that statement about future-proofing: it only applies as long as new features do not rely on specific hardware components. That’s not the kind of upgrade you can get from firmware alone. Remember, firmware is just the software that drives your hardware.

You might have heard that there have been issues with some discs not working on some players. (more…)