Comments on: Circuit City Says You Can Have a Do-Over

By: Pravin

Pravin — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:49:18 +0000

The 360 can easily support all the heavy-lifting required to play Blu-ray movies. I am not convinced that Microsoft will be coming out with Blu-ray support any time in the immediate future for the 360, but I wonder if they’d let some third party come out with an external Blu-ray drive instead as well as the accompanying player software. This could be a way to bypass some of the issues Microsoft has had with Sun over Java.

By: sid6581

sid6581 — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:22:19 +0000

Yes, Warner canceled their last titles for Germany which means we will get six more titles from now on and after March HD DVD is done in Germany. The US are probably the last country to still get HD DVDs after the begin of April.

By: K bill

K bill — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:17:06 +0000

@ Pravin: Do you think that the 360 add on would have a better chance at a firmware upgrade? Being that they could access the memory of the system itself to override the units programming? If so then would a hacker may have a better chance in doing it?

By: Pravin

Pravin — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:05:40 +0000

If a firmware update is all that it took to make an HD DVD player do Blu-ray instead, it would be the equivalent of running a whole new operating system on your computer, and not like adding a device driver to enable a second mode. I don’t think there’s enough space on the flash memory to support two entirely different operating systems, and I’m not sure if Blu-ray’s Java based system requires more RAM than HD DVD’s HDi. The flash memory and RAM on a consumer electronics device are usually only big enough to get the job done. Making them a lot bigger adds expense that may not be justifiable.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 are actually computers with lots of RAM and hard drive space, so it’s much more likely that they’d be able to support multiple formats easily.

By: K bill

K bill — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:07:41 +0000

This was placed on a “bluray” site just figured you would like to know…. Hopefully LG will not follow suit and the combo players will be around for a while.

Samsung has announced that they have canceled plans to introduce their second generation hybrid Blu-ray and HD DVD player

@ Pravin: If you are a member of Best Buy’s reward program they should have a record of your purchase on their computer…. I think it also applies to any purchases paid for by credit card…

@ Vinnie: I really do not think that a firmware upgrade will be in the works…. Or possible for that matter….

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 08:27:53 +0000

Because the physical disc structure is incompatible, you won’t ever see blu-ray play on an HD-DVD only player. But it may be possible to rip a blu-ray and compress it onto a regular Dual-layer DVD for playback on HD-DVD devices. It would be compressed, but remove some of the extras and you could have a broadcast-quality HD movie on your hands. The next DVD Shrink perhaps? Not sure if it’s possible yet but that would be a great solution.

By: vinnie

vinnie — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:14:27 +0000

I have about 400 DVD’s and 40 HD DVD’s I will never trade my A35. Just whate and see them come out with some type of firmware upgrade to play BLU-RAY format on HD DVD players. Its all about makeing money thats the bottem line money!

By: Pravin

Pravin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:32:02 +0000

I think they are, because it’s been a few days since that German article and nobody’s come out in the US media to say that Warner has changed their plans.

By: rob

rob — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:01:38 +0000

isn’t waner bros still making movies until may?

By: Pravin

Pravin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:40:57 +0000

It’s already been mentioned at this site in other postings, take a look around and you’ll see.

There was word on some German site that Warner might stop early, but I haven’t seen any other sites in the last couple of days confirm that story.