I had to look in European gadget and technology blogs to find detailed coverage of the HD DVD presentation from IFA. Some of the products and news are very much about the European market, and it’s natural that IFA coverage by the “home team” is going to be pretty good. All of this information comes from DVD Times, Pocket-lint.co.uk and TechDigest.tv, and you can (and should) read these for yourself because I’m only recapping the highlights here:

• Toshiba will have sold 30 million HD DVD-equipped notebooks by the end of 2007, with 16 million of those purchased directly by consumers and the remainder sold to businesses. Whether these are used for movies or storage, it gets HD DVD drives into people’s hands. Toshiba has a 70% share of the European IT market, and HD DVD is being made available even on sub-1000 Euro laptops.
• There will be 400 HD DVD titles by the end of the year. A lot of movies paraded at the Blu-ray presentation yesterday are actually also coming out for HD DVD, including titles from Studio Canal and Pathe (Studio Canal had been mispresented as Blu-ray exclusive). They showed a lot of logos of European companies currently involved with making HD DVDs.
• HD DVD offers great possibilities for live music DVDs, and EMI presented music by Herbert Gronenmeyer (a famous musician in Germany). His HD DVD disc is being released in December, with DTS HD 7.1 audio.
• Toshiba announced the European versions of their third-generation machines: the HD-EP30, and EP35 coming in October. All come with the “5 Free Movies” offer. There’s no HD-EP3 because Toshiba Europe says no more 1080i players for them. With the Venturer at the low-end, Onkyo at the high end, and Toshiba right in the middle, European consumers will have plenty of choices.(We will too)
• Presented a list of hardware manufacturers involved with HD DVD, some of the names overlap with the list presented by the Blu-ray group from the day before.

Except for new player announcements, this was a lot like the presentation put on by Team Blu-ray the day before, and it definitely had a very European flavor to it. I’m glad they debunked any sense of Blu-ray exclusive deals by showing that many of the same parties are involved in both camps.

IFA is not over yet, and there’s likely to be more HD DVD news coming in the days ahead. A lot of products show up on the exhibit floor that aren’t part of these big press conferences, and I’ll report on those tid-bits as they come in. Feel free to share in the comments about any items that you come across.

Prominent high-def enthusiast Josh Zyber has taken a few moments to share his thoughts on all the recent commotion about last week’s Paramount news, as well as the hyping of disc sales numbers.

Some of Josh’s points have already been made in comments or articles at this site (and by a lot of High-Def fans on various forums), and it’s nice to see that these opinions are actually shared by a more authorative person like Mr. Zyber.

Pop on over to High-Def Digest to read his piece, and even post your thoughts for him to respond to over in the associated discussion thread in their forum.

Here are just a few of Josh’s points:

• Zyber’s early reviews of Blu-ray titles were negative because the studios were putting out lousy discs compared to HD DVD. He’d like to think that criticism like his has led to an improvement in Blu-ray quality, both formats are much more directly comparable today.

For some unknown reason, Blu-ray titles would come out in MPEG2 encoding, while the HD DVD version used VC-1.

• Comparing sales numbers between Blu-ray and HD DVD is “like boasting an ant is larger than a flea, just before the big shoe of DVD comes down to smoosh them both into oblivion.”

Josh is referring to the fact that DVD heartily outsells Blu-ray and HD DVD combined, and points out that 300 sold more copies on DVD in one week than both formats have sold of everything combined in 6 months of 2007. One format would have to start selling way better before trying to proclaim itself the winner.

• Business is business and if you’re going to point fingers at the Paramount deal, then don’t be hypocritical about Blu-ray’s deals.

He points out that Disney was a contributor to the HD DVD interactivity features, but “surprisingly,” they don’t even use this stuff because they’re Blu-ray exclusive.

• Both formats are going to be around together for a while, get used to it.

That’s how it has worked for many years in the video game world, and all of the competition forces everyone to make better products (at better prices too).

There’s even more food for thought in his article. To a Blu-ray supporter, Josh’s article is going to come off as an anti-Blu commentary. He promises that his next commentary will take on various problems with HD DVD. And I’ll be happy to report on that piece as well. Please do yourself a favor and read his article for yourself over at High-Def Digest.

• A War of Hype, and Paramount’s Big Bombshell

Most of it is still under construction with “Coming Soon” plastered all over the place, but Universal’s new UniversalHiDef.com site promises to be a great way to learn more about their HD DVD offerings.

You can set up a free account at the site and gain access to downloads for your HD DVD player, as well as share your in-movie bookmarks. U-shop is related to a feature where you can buy products based on items highlighted in a movie. Actually, these are all things that you’ll eventually be able to do. Right now, they all fall under the “Coming Soon” category so there’s not much to report.

The parts of the site that are up and running at the moment include some minor technical support about connecting your HD DVD player to the internet, and an explanation of common error messages. There’s also a page that describes many of the “U-Control” interactive features found on Universal’s HD DVD movies.

The site is still coming together, and I’m sure it’ll be much more completed in time for showing off to Christmas shoppers. I signed up for an account, as well as to receive whatever spam they want to send my way. I usually don’t check off the “receive special offers” box when I sign up at a site, but in this case, I do want to know about whatever coolness they’ve got coming out in the months ahead.

• UniversalHiDef.com

IFA, basically the German version of CES, is going on in Berlin right now and the first big day brought a lot of Blu-ray product announcements. It’s worth knowing what the other guys are up to so that you can have a better perspective on your own position. The first day at IFA featured announcements from Samsung, Sharp, Philips, Sony, and Daewoo saying they each had at least one new Blu-ray player coming out soon.

Except for the Daewoo (price or launch date not announced), most of those players are already “old” in the sense that none of them support the latest Blu-ray spec. In fact, there’s no player out now or coming out in 2007 that supports all the coolest interactivity features that are bragged about in Blu-ray promotions. Some of those features are beyond what firmware updates can fix, so this is not a silly issue. The reason that many of these players need to get announced and launched right now is that those advanced features become mandatory on Blu-ray players that come out from November onwards.

But internet stuff and disc bonus features are really only secondary to picture and audio quality when it comes to home theater, and in that area, all of these players feature 1080p, HDMI 1.3, Dolby True HD, and most of them also offered support for DTS-HD audio. Here are links to various gadget sites and their descriptions (and photos) of the new machines:

• Sharp @ EngadgedHD
• Philips @ Gizmodo
• Sony @ Electronista
• Samsung @ Reg Hardware
• Daewoo @ Engadget

One of the things that many (Blu-ray) folks criticize about HD DVD is that Toshiba is the only company that makes the players, but we’ve seen recently that Onkyo and Venturer are about to fill in the highest and lowest ends of the spectrum with their own players in a month or two. As hinted at in the Gizmodo article about the Philips, even if many people make units, if all the units are essentially the same thing, isn’t that almost the same situation in the end as having only one company make all of them? Where does the consumer get any variety if everybody’s pretty much putting out the same box?

As is typically the case with shows like this, major competitors make announcements on separate days so that each can get their fair share of media coverage. The HD DVD news from IFA is coming next.

Word spread fast on the tubes of the intarweb about Amazon’s HD DVD offers, and those offers were subsequently withdrawn about a day later. Maybe supplies ran out, maybe there was a bug in the system. Who knows. While many people did manage to get in on the fun, a lot more were surprised to find that their saved shopping carts (or otherwise modified shopping carts) no longer featured the amazing deals.

The short-lived promotion on Toshiba HD DVD players helped make the HD-A2 the #1 electronics item on all of Amazon when the sale was pulled. As I write this in the wee hours of the following day, the HD-A2 is now #2 and HDMI cables (probably to go along with the player) are at #3, #8, and #11. The next best-selling DVD player is a similarly priced $230 up-converting OPPO at #67, and a $48 Philips at #70.

The #1 item in video games is the $179 Xbox 360 HD DVD Player add-on, which still has the “Get Eight HD DVD Discs Free” offer on it. Five of those movies are part of the now-familiar Toshiba rebate, 1 is King Kong which comes with every Xbox 360 HD DVD Player, and then Amazon throws in two movies.

Rounding out the good news in the HD DVD bestseller lists is that the HD DVD version of 300 is the best-selling high-definition DVD. In fact, HD DVD disc sales beat Blu-ray 3:2 in the top 100 DVDs list — all fueled by the promotion on discs, no doubt.

It should be pointed out that Amazon had virtually identical promotions for Blu-ray, so it’s not like this was a one-sided sale. Customers had pretty much the same deals on Blu-ray as on HD DVD, and in the end, we see that the demand for HD DVD is not fading at all.

It all goes to show that people love a good sale. If you’ve got very similar items going up against each other, then there’s not much reason to get the one that costs twice as much.

Combined with the impending $199 (or lower) HD DVD player about to appear in stores like WalMart, HD DVD fans should prepare for some good times ahead.

For many months now, analysts have been saying that HD DVD will get a big boost when Chinese manufacturers unleash a $199 or cheaper HD DVD player. There were rumblings that Wal-Mart was seeking out just such a unit, but those rumours were quickly squelched, and then we had only silence on this matter.

Venturer Electronics of Canada comes through to herald the long-awaited moment by announcing the $199 (or lower) SHD7000 HD DVD player for North America. It essentially sounds like Toshiba’s base HD-A2 player, and features all the mandatory HD DVD specs such as ethernet, internal storage, Dolby True HD, etc. Like the HD-A2, this puppy only does 1080i, but that doesn’t matter one iota to the tons of people with 720p and 1080i HDTV sets, and is to be expected in a low-end unit.

I’m sure there will be lots more to say about this machine, and this important day in the week ahead. For now, go straight to the company’s site and read for yourself: Venturer Electronics

UPDATE: (10/1) The Venturer is now available at Target online, at a list price of $249.99.

UPDATE: I’m not sure if there’s a problem at Amazon or if the offers have been withdrawn for some reason. Click through the links any way and see what happens for you. I can understand if the movie offer expired quickly, but the player offer doesn’t even get listed on a product description page for the players right now.

Amazon’s latest HD DVD player promotion nets you up to 8 free HD DVD movies, making the player effectively cost at least $50 less. Five of those free discs come from Toshiba’s “5 Free Movies” offer, and Amazon chips in the other three. Just as with the “5 Free” offer, you have to select from a list, but the list isn’t bad at all including movies such as 300, Batman Begins, and Blood Diamond. I’m pretty sure they generated that list using an Amazon search for “HD” instead of “HD DVD’ because it contains a lot of Blu-ray titles. Maybe they were trying to accommodate the Blu-ray converts, I dunno. UPDATE: They fixed it, only HD DVD movies are shown.

Here’s how it works: (more…)

DVD sales have been down this year, and much of that is attributed to lackluster release slate from 2006. This has affected adoption of high-def DVD formats as well, because people aren’t going to invest a few hundred dollars into a new kind of player if the movies aren’t compelling enough. It looks like Christmas 2007 and much of 2008 will be a very different story.

Summer is not even officially over yet, but summer 2007 box office results are approaching an all-time high of $4 billion with over 600 million tickets sold. All or most of these movies are headed for home viewing by Christmas, which means that “They don’t have enough movies” is going to be less of an excuse for people to stay out of getting into a high-def DVD format.

Shrek the Third is the biggest of the summer box office movies headed to HD DVD, followed by Transformers and The Bourne Ultimatum. All three are HD DVD exclusives which are likely to boost HD DVD player sales as well. Looking beyond the eventual end of the “5 free movies” (and in some cases 6 or 7) offer, Warner Home Entertainment has a “Best of HD DVD” series lined up for release in September. The Best of HD DVD, Volume 1 consists of Lethal Weapon, The Road Warrior, Swordfish, and Training Day, all bundled together for about $60 at Amazon. Here’s how the other sets work out (also for about $60):

• Volume 2: The Last Samurai, The Phantom of the Opera, Unforgiven, The Fugitive
• Volume 3: Blazing Saddles, The Departed, GoodFellas, Superman – The Movie

On top of that, Warner is re-releasing several movies as HD DVD-only instead of as HD DVD and DVD combos. This will result in at least $5 savings on each title. Here’s a list of the movies about to go that route: (links go to search results for these movies because the non-combo version hasn’t shown up in Amazon’s catalog yet)

• The Ant Bully
• The Departed – Also part of “Best of HD DVD Volume 1″
• The Fountain
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• Happy Feet
• Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
• Lady in the Water
• The Lake House
• Letters from Iwo Jima
• Rumor Has It…
• Superman Returns

All of these HD DVD movies are categorized and filed away in our “Shop for Movies” page, or you can fend for yourself and hunt them down in the catalog at Amazon or other sites. I’ve found that while one site or store may feature a good deal on a disc or two, nobody beats Amazon.com overall. On top of that, shipping is often free, and sales tax may not apply to your order either.

It’s been a tumultuous week in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray world with the recent conversion of Paramount (who also distributes DreamWorks) to HD DVD-only instead of supporting both formats. Going forward, all Paramount discs will now only be in HD DVD. Blu-ray pre-orders for Blades of Glory and other movies will have to be refunded, and all existing Paramount Blu-ray titles are about to become collector’s items.

It’s natural to jump to conclusions about the motivations that people and companies have for doing what they do. In Paramount’s case, a certain part of that motivation came in the form of some special consideration, like free advertising, and other incentives reportedly worth $150 million. Many people have jumped to the conclusion that Microsoft was behind that sum of money – after all, even the man on the Moon knows Microsoft has tons of cash lying around.

Two noted Microsoftians have gone on the record to dispel these theories. (more…)