Toshiba’s Blu-ray player did not bring HD DVD back from the dead, however Indie film makers WETNWILD FILMS and Anthem Pictures are resurrecting the HD DVD format with at least one brand new title: Deadlands 2: Trapped due out on October 27, 2009, in a limited run of only 500 copies.

What started out as a small discussion at the AVS forum has turned in to bigger news in the HD DVD world. Director/writer Gary Ugarek, an HD DVD fan himself, passed along a press release on Friday afternoon about his zombie horror film, Deadlands 2: Trapped. Here are some of Gary’s quotes:

• “Some people thought I was flat out nuts and were asking, why HD DVD? Are you not a Blu-Ray supporter? I answered I am, but when you have a dedicated fan base for a format, like HD-DVD does, and you see the passion of its supporters I immediately knew I wanted to do this for the fans. I want to give them something special.”
• “Right now we have 30gb of space to fill up, so Anthem and I are working together to see what can be included, and if we have the space I will keep adding more to the list to make it a packed to the brim HD DVD release of the film.”
• “I know it’s a gamble with HD DVD having lost out on the format war, but based on feedback from HD DVD fans we expect this to be a huge moment for them, the film and HD DVD. Kind of ironic that a zombie film would be helping HD DVD try to come back from the dead, even if for a short period of time, but who knows, if the program is a success maybe other indie filmmakers and distributors can do something similar for the HD DVD fans and keep it alive for the hard core.”

And more info directly from the press release:

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As I predicted in the previous posting, Toshiba made an announcement about their Blu-ray player right on time for the IFA show.

There will be pictures and interviews at the gadget sites, but here’s the scoop on what Toshiba included in their press release:

• Model: BDX2000
• Available in November for $249
• BD-Live Profile 2.0 and Bonus View
• SD card slot so that you can store any downloaded content
• does not play HD DVD discs

I did not expect availability in November, however none of us should be surprised that the BDX2000 supports the complete interactivity of the platform, since this kind of feature was already available on HD DVD players. The $249 price is pretty amazing, and is likely to catapult Toshiba towards the top of the list of popular Blu-ray players.

What do you think? Are you miffed about no HD DVD compatibility? I think it would have been nice to include, but would have confused some customers about HD DVD discs, and would also have made the player a little more expensive.

UPDATE: CNet points out that competing players in this price range offer Netflix and YouTube. I suspect these can be added via firmware updates. We’ll find out soon enough as more technology sites start picking up this story and begin to interview Toshiba reps.

For the last couple of months, Toshiba has mainly been making headlines on their memory and netbook models, and their blatant hesitation to make Blu-ray products.

The latest buzz about Toshiba and Blu-ray went into high gear a couple of weeks ago, when a local Japanese paper mentioned that Toshiba would start making Blu-ray machines.

No specific details were mentioned, like time frame or models, so it was easy to dismiss this news and file it away along with the endless Xbox 360 Blu-ray rumors.

The news became slightly more interesting today, August 10, as Toshiba put out the following press release at their corporate website:

Tokyo—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) announced today that the company has applied for membership of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) and plans to introduce products that support the Blu-ray format.

As a market leader in digital technologies, Toshiba provides a wide range of advanced digital products, such as DVD recorders and players, HDTVs and notebook PCs that support a wide range of storage devices, including hard disk drives (HDD), DVD, and SD Cards. In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA.

Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year. Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration. We will make announcements in due course.

I’m sure we’ll see some demos at CES, unless they’re already preparing to show something at the September IFA show in Europe.

If you’ve been holding out on getting a Blu-ray player, how do you take this news? Would you wait for a Toshiba player? Or did you already get some Blu-ray capability months ago?

In the months after Toshiba shut down HD DVD, some prominent retailers came forward to offer trade-ins or store credits as a way to ease the pain. Some of these promotions were aimed at transitioning customers to Blu-ray, and many people, myself included, simply used our store credits to buy newly discounted HD DVD movies or something else that we might really want at those stores.

Trade-in programs for HD DVD discs, where you could trade them in for Blu-ray versions of the same, were also offered, but there were still hundreds of movies that were only out on HD DVD and were not appearing on Blu-ray any time soon, so this was not a useful proposition.

A year later, that disparity has been diminished and most HD DVD titles are now available in the surviving format. The only obstacle is that Blu-ray movies are still on the expensive side (as HD DVD titles would also have been), and the prospect of building a library is daunting, if you already built up a library on HD DVD in the first place. Plus, many HD DVD owners have grown accustomed to paying only about $5 per movie from all these closeout sales.

Warner’s newly launched Red2Blu site, may help make a dent in that transition to Blu-ray. Knowing that HD DVD owners are mighty happy with paying $5 for movies nowadays, Warner is charging $4.95 per Warner HD DVD title that you want to trade-in for the Blu-ray equivalent. You can trade in up to 25 movies, all for a flat shipping fee of $6.95 ($8.95 in Alaska, Hawaii & Puerto Rico). A $15 off $50 coupon on Blu-ray purchases is also part of the deal. This offer is currently only available in the US.

You don’t have to mail in your discs, only the cover art from their HD DVD case — which must be intact and include the UPC code. This means you can keep your HD DVD library (and possibly sell those discs for a few bucks – but lack of cover art definitely reduces some value).

There’s plenty more information at Warner’s site: http://Red2Blu.com.

There was recent activity was over in the comments on a couple of posts, and I had not realized that so much time had gone by since a new posting. There are actually many things to talk about, so let’s see if I can get us caught up.

Traderbora is still delighting lots of Amazon customers with low $5 prices and free shipping on plenty of titles. There’s also the usually reliable InetVideo sale that comes around where you can pick up a few hard to find titles, like Bonnie and Clyde.

Astute shoppers from the AVS forum have found HD DVD discs in unexpected places, like Burlington Coat Factory stores. Some had also seen discs at Kroeger’s grocery stores (Ralph’s in California – although not at any that I went to).

There were reports a few weeks ago about a book by Microsoft insiders which provided a small peek into Microsoft’s HD DVD effort, and explained it as a calculated business decision. Well of course it was! Did you think that Panasonic and Sony partnered over Blu-ray for altruistic purposes? Apparently, Microsoft joined the HD DVD team as a way to encourage more cross-licensing of its technologies. Toshiba and Microsoft already had a close relationship dating back to the PocketPC and Zune, so their readiness to collaborate on HD DVD should be no surprise.

But here’s a big surprise: just a month ago, Warner decided that HD DVD aint so bad afterall, at least for China. Well, it’s not exactly the HD DVD format that we’re all familiar with, but the Chinese version, CBHD. Warner has announced that they will put out their big hits, including the Harry Potter series, while also pushing movies on Blu-ray. Unfortunately CBHD is slightly different enough from HD DVD that this news is not very useful for HD DVD fans.

• Traderbora has $5 and free shipping at Amazon
• InetVideo has a sale as usual
• Microsoft insiders write about HD DVD in a book about intellectual property deals
• Warner endorses Chinese HD DVD format

They said it best over at Engadget in describing Toshiba’s 2008 CES press conference as more of a funeral. It had been just a few days after Warner made a public announcement that they’d be going exclusive with Blu-ray, and the mood over at the HD DVD part of the show was definitely morose.

A whole year later in 2009, Toshiba has put on a much happier press conference full of some new HD related innovations, but with the notable absence of any Blu-ray support. Among Toshiba’s announcements were Regza HDTV models that can play movies stored on USB flash drives, or downloaded directly from the internet. The models also offer enhanced up-scaling of non-HD video, and a 240Hz effect for smoother motion.

Toshiba also presented upcoming technology using the Cell processor which could handle multiple HD sources simultaneously, for example a DVR serving different rooms with their own HD movies. The Cell was also driving a prototype 56-inch 4K x 2K resolution HDTV (which is double the current HDTV resoluton). The Cell processor was jointly developed by Toshiba, IBM and Sony, and Toshiba has been working with it since around the pre-HD DVD days on various multimedia applicatons. IBM has used the Cell on some servers, and Sony uses it as the brains for the PS3.

It’s been interesting to see what the other companies, many of which are already Blu-ray supporters, have been up to as well. While they are still pushing forward with Blu-ray technology, LG, Samsung, Panasonic, and even Sony seem to be embracing digital downloads too. All have announced HDTVs that connect to the internet for the purpose of viewing various kinds of content. LG has also been working on Blu-ray players that download movies.

Most of us in the USA have some form of high-speed internet at home, and even on our mobile phones when we are out and about. It’s an inevitability that we will receive more and more of our movies from some sort of online/on-demand source. It’s also inevitable that these movies will become more HD and eventually rival what we already had in HD DVD and can get now on Blu-ray. But when exactly will that happen? And will there be a physical format, like a 50-layer Blu-ray disc, that delivers the next level of HD resolution (like the aforementioned 4K x 2K)? Or will the next physical format be some kind of memory card like the recently announced SDXC?

In all this talk about the future, I was somewhat amused to hear that one of Panasonic’s new Blu-ray players is a combo unit that also plays VHS tapes. I’m sure they have a good reason for doing this, and I hope it’s better than, “because we can.” I hope it upscales those VHS tapes really, really, really well.

An article at Financial Times points out something that many active HD DVD enthusiasts have known for quite a while now: despite its official death in February, there are still a lot of people buying a lot of HD DVDs. The statement is validated by Jeff Wisot, vice-president of marketing at Buy.com, and Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio, an excess inventory liquidator.

Here’s the scoop on the article highlights:

• Demand for the format is fueled by discs going for less than $10 a piece, and players available for under $60.
• “HD DVD sales are still very strong,” says Jeff Wisot, VP of marketing at Buy.com

He is no doubt recalling their recent sale on $60 Venturer HD DVD players.

• “Cheap entertainment always does well in a recession or depression,” says Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio.

Kugler’s company has bought millions of unsold HD DVDs, who, having already sold 1 million discs, expects to sell another 2 or 3 million by Christmas.

In the spirit of good journalism and equal coverage, the article also includes a disclaimer by Andy Parsons of the Blu-ray Disc Association pointing out that their format is not dead and they’ve had some good sales figures too.

• HD DVD slashed prices drive sales up article at FT.com

A lot of people were understandably upset when Toshiba pulled the plug on the format, and many skeptics felt that Toshiba would never live up to their word regarding continuing player support. But here’s some encouragement for the less pessimistic HD DVD fans.

I missed this when it officially came out earlier in the week, but every single Toshiba HD DVD player model now has a firmware update to version 4.0 available at the Toshiba site. Any model with a 1, 2, or 3 in its name (that’s all three generations, folks) can now be updated to version 4.

If your player is already hooked up to the internet, then you can perform the update right from your player itself. You can also download the update to CD and make an ISO file for your HD DVD player instead. This method is slightly faster, but some people end up having trouble making the discs (usually because they’re only unzipping the file and not using the ISO feature on the CD software). You can download the file by navigating to find your player model number at Toshiba’s support site: http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/customersupport/.

Over at the AVS forum’s version 4.0 thread, “papacoach” reports that 1080/24 jaggies are fixed in this update on his Transformers, and this has been seconded by other posters at that forum.

Acknowledging that their new eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) tech does not actually replace a true HD source like HD DVD or Blu-ray, Toshiba is hoping to attract all those consumers who are mostly satisfied with their HDTVs and DVDs by offering the XD-E500 up-converting DVD player today.

The new XD-E500 retails for $149 (although it debuts for $179 today at Amazon) and offers DVD up-scaling that’s superior to what’s been offered in their own lower-end models, and probably from other up-scaling DVD players.

The XDE player offers a choice of three video enhancements: (1) sharp for edge detail (2) rich color (3) more contrast, of which you can select two to be active at any time. I’m sure forthcoming articles and interviews will reveal why you can only select two at a time, and we’ll be on the lookout for the inevitable comparisons against the highly vaunted Oppo up-converting DVD players, as well as true HD media.

Toshiba’s website for the new player, http://www.toshibaxde.com hasn’t gone live yet so we don’t really have a lot of pictures to show from the sales pitch, but you can see some before/after enhancement shots over at Amazon.

Toshiba’s product description page states the following:

This product does not play HD DVD or Blu-ray discs. It upconverts standard definition (480p) DVD content to HD (720p, 1080i or 1080p) to match the resolution of your HD display. Although near the picture quality, it does not produce or output native HD video content.

In other words, it’s not “The Look and Sound of Perfect” but just “Good Enough.” I’m curious to see whether “good enough” and “near HD” take a hold in the marketplace. I know that you and I are probably not amongst that crowd of buyers, but I’m sure you’ve got at least a few acquaintances who think a big screen is all it takes to have a great home theater.