Though Toshiba has joined other PC vendors and included Blu-ray drives on their laptops, Microsoft joins Apple on this Windows 7 release week in continuing to leave Blu-ray off their own machines.
In a Windows 7 launch day interview with gadget site Gizmodo, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer made some statements that included the words “360″ and “Blu-ray” in the same sentence. Ballmer’s exact words were, “Well I don’t know if we need to put Blu-ray in there — you’ll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories.” Ballmer stated that the future of movies was to view them on-demand, and not on physical media. There was enough ambiguity in his words to lead some to conclude that an external Blu-ray drive was in the 360’s future, even though Microsoft spokespeople denied a new Blu drive.
Much later in the day, there was an emphatic clarification from Major Nelson, the Director of Programming for Xbox Live, who was able to burst the 360/Blu-ray rumor immediately. Major Nelson explained that Steve Ballmer was referring to the fact that Blu-ray drives are available as add-ons and options for PCs in home theater setups, and that Microsoft’s focus is on instant streaming of HD movies on the Xbox 360, as they’re doing now with Netflix.
Is this enough to completely squash the short-lived story about a Blu-ray 360? Only time will tell. Is there going to be a Blu-ray add-on drive? Only time will tell.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:41 am
I think the reason Microsoft is staying away from bringing an add-on Blu-ray drive to the 360 is the failure of the HD DVD add-on. Not that people didn’t buy it, I own one myself. But I think that Microsoft is not so confident that Blu-ray will be around for too long. I don’t think it has to do with the ability to stream HD content via the internet, because if that was the case, then they would of never had the HD DVD add-on in the first place since the 360 already offered HD downloadable content through Xbox Live.
Microsoft is in the position of saying “Been there, done that.” and as we can all see, it didn’t work out for them. So them being cautious doesn’t surprise me. It actually makes me a bit suspicious. Is there a newer, way better HD media in the works that Microsoft isn’t telling us about? China is already releasing HDTVs with resolutions way above 1080P but with no devices to take advantage of them… or are they just around the corner and Microsoft knows something?
Only time will tell indeed.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:35 am
I think its really about the fact that Micrososft won’t get a chunk of cash for every blu ray movie you might of play on your 360, but it will get a piece of the pie for most everything you download or stream to it. I beleive the only reason they supported the original HDDVD drive was as a marketing counter point to the PS3’s built in blu ray. Oh well, I would have preferred an add on. I have two of the HD DVD drives for two XBox 360’s, (plus a third back-up) It would have been nice to simply add another drive to the same device, instead I now will have to eventually pick up a blu ray drive, plug it into a different source on my home theater setup, (Igf you have the room for another source) Microsoft could have a had a piece of that pie, (at least licensing of the hardware to work with the 360), but alas…….
October 26th, 2009 at 8:38 am
To expound just a bit more, I beleive Microsofts only reason for the HD DVD add on was to market against the PS3’s built in blu ray. But they did not support it very strongly due to the fact that they want to herd people into the digital streaming and ‘rental’ realm, where they will get a piece of the ol’ money pie for content your watching. (even though for HD DVD’s they would not, but as I stated they didn’t really ’support’ HD DVD to strongly did they?, just as a marketing counterpoint to blu ray being available on the PS3)
Anyway, that is why I do not think they are going to release a blu ray device for the 360, they still wish to push poeple towards the digital streaming and rental schema, and with the foolish demise of the consumer friendly HDDVD format, and the increasing bandwidth available to the home consumer, they will push HD over the ‘net’ before they create a 360 blu.
Personally I wish they would just release some device drivers and let us hook up a USB blu ray disc player, for the reasons stated above I would buy one, I would prefer one more device plugged into the 360 and the rest of my theater connections remaining the same, but alas again…. lol
October 26th, 2009 at 8:46 am
As far as a newer HD format? Damn Juve!
I don’t know, we are finallly seeing market penetration of 1080P, do you think the consumer can be sold on another format?
I just don’t think the demand from consumers will be there without another concerted effort from the industry to create an infrastructure to support higher resolution broadcast and distribution.
And I don’t think the industry backers would be financially interested in pushing a newer format just yet, as much of the investment of the past few years has been to support the current HD.
But, when all is said and done…..
woudn’t it be nice to watch in 7680 X4320 on a 16 X9 wall! lol, aaahhhhh.
(Still, happy with 1080 on a 65 inch,….. for now….. lol)
October 26th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Dang-it Rick!!!!
Why you always have to make good points?
Yeah, 7680 x 4320 at home would be super sweet!!!! Can’t wait for that day.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Well, they’re certainly making good money off streaming and Netflix integration, so I can see why they’d want to steer people away from physical media like Blu-ray. They’re trying to tell us that physical media is dead, so it would weaken their point to start supporting Blu-ray.
On the other hand, I know they’re losing some console sales to Sony simply because the Xbox 360 lacks Blu-ray support. Also, the people who can afford enough bandwidth for HD streaming can generally afford a Blu-ray player these days, and once you’ve seen both, you realize that “HD” streaming is garbage compared to HD physical media.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Raptor,
I agree. HD streaming totally SUCKS Watermelons!!!!!!
It’s ok, but it’s no Blu-ray.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:33 am
I agree as well, ain’t nothin like having the disc in hand, all the extras , and better quality.
I do want to see what the 1080P streaming over the xbox live network looks like tho, I’ll do a compare when they roll it out. (I have FIOS and the bandwidth needed to stream their newer HD xboxlive service, which they state will do 1080 P (yes P) but even still, I like having the disc, Offline? snowstorm? I can still watch the disc, (as long as I have power !)
October 27th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Just had a crazy idea. We should organize an International HD DVD Convention. Kinda like Sci-Fi conventions. We can all bring our HD DVD Players, HD DVD Xbox Add-on Drives, rare international HD DVD releases, we can all even dress up as HD DVD Discs of our favorite HD DVD Tittles… No… Wait… I just described the last MegaCon I went to in Orlando. LOL
October 28th, 2009 at 6:50 am
Lol nice!
October 30th, 2009 at 6:19 am
Well my costume would have to be the Japanese Import of Band of Brothers.
(Damn it took me awhile to figure out how to shut off the jap subtitles).
We could have a costume of a 1st gen blu ray player ‘haunted’ by blu ray content it can’t play!
Along with the spectre of sony with wads of cash hanging over it.
Happy Halloween everyone.
October 31st, 2009 at 11:30 am
The best costumes would be a brand spanking new Blu-ray player sporting the Ethernet Port for upgrading firmwares over the net and BD Live features. And right next to it a first Gen HD DVD player that already had those type of features thus making the Blu-ray player run home crying cause it was told that it had new features but found out that the HD DVD costume had those years ago. LOL!!!!!!!!!!
November 4th, 2009 at 11:47 am
I still get upset that the more consumer friendly format is squashed…. grrr.
Still nothing on a Dark Night German hddvd release, sorry guys…..
November 8th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Bummer! But, oh well.
I think that it is starting to sink in that we’ll be hearing even less and less of this great format.
Rick, I’m right there with you. Way back in the day, my household stuck with Beta years and years after VHS had won. We ordered the tapes from Japan and recorded our favorite shows. To this day, the quality on those tapes recorded back in 92 are still better than VHS.
One day, I will pull out my HD DVD collection just like I do for my Laderdiscs today, to show a less critical crowd just how much better this format was. Only then, will people understand, just like people are beginning to understand now how Beta was so much better than crappy VHS.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hello. Does anyone know when the zombie film is shipping out? Thank you.
November 12th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I’m still waiting as well, I will send an email to the guy who made it and ask, his name & address is:
Gary Ugarek [deadlandsthemovie@yahoo.com]
November 12th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Thank you, Rick.
November 13th, 2009 at 6:23 am
I recieved this from Gary:
The studio didn’t email you?
The HD DVD will be delayed until November 24th we ran into some issues with the pressing of the disc. There is a topic on HD Digest forums under HD DVD section.
To compensate for the delay they are offering everyone a free copy of the DVD to tide them over.
Just call 818-597-2346 then press 1 at the prompt and ask for Alexandra or email her at alex@anthemdvd.com
Sorry you weren’t informed. The studio said they would email everyone if they signed up to the Anthem store website and ordered the HD DVD. Did you sign up or just buy as a guest? if as a guest maybe why you didn;t get an email
Sorry again
Gary
GARY UGAREK (writer/director)
CEO WNWR Films LLC
————————————————–
(My response)
That is quite alright Gary, I was over at the HD DVD forums and it came up. (I’ll pass the word)
Thanks again Gary!
Rick K.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Also Gary mentioned that they sold through 426 of the 500 pressing in pre-sales. soooo a precious few may still be available if anyone out there is wise enough to pony up!
Rick K.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Thank you, Rick. I got the exact same message. I wonder if they forgot to notify the 426 who bought the hd or just some of us… Well, let’s keep waiting. And by the way, the hd dvd German version of the Dark Knight you keep mentioning never existed, it was a hoax. Sorry about that. Take care, guys. And as always. thank you, Pravin.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Any new developments in the HD world. HD DVD or Blu-Ray? I got one. So these new Blu-Ray discs don’t support BD-J on PCs, meaning that if you have a Blu-Ray drive in your PC that came with PowerDVD 7, you won’t be able to use your mouse to make the menu selection forcing you to buy PowerDVD 9 that comes with a virtual remote control thingy so that you can make such selections that are basic for operation. Seriously?! Is the Blu-Ray industry that desperate in making money to make you upgrade your software? The software costs just as much as buying one of the new low end Blu-Ray players. Are they trying to alienate PC users? The only way you don’t get screwed is if you have a PC that comes with a Media Center remote control. It will accept that just fine. But if you don’t have that, you might need to buy one online from anywhere between 20 to 80 dollars and not all of them are compatible with PowerDVD 7 for some reason. Leave it to Blu-Ray developers to keep making things more and more complicated.
December 4th, 2009 at 8:14 am
You can hate BluRay as much as you want. The fact of the matter is, BR is not going away. It is here to stay and it is going to be here for a long long time. I, too, am an HD DVD fan but there comes a point in time that you have to say enough. It’s time to move on, time to let go, it’s just another piece of technology. Bluray is not that bad as everybody thinks. You can stick and live with HDDVD movies all you can but it only goes so far as it is a discontinued technology. HDDVD is stuck to its current state and will never evolve. Yes its nice to watch movies that were produced in HDDVD but as I’m saying, it has reached its limits (like Laserdiscs). No new ones coming out and there never will be. Regardless of what other countries are doing to develop similar HDDVD technology format such as the ones in China, it will never pick up worldwide mainstream to revive nor to become dominant again. The furtherst thing that it can go is as it is right now, a rare niche of a product. BD has evolved in so many ways and it is continuing to do so.
December 4th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Betlog,
What does anything you said have to do with what I wrote?
Seriously!
What does anything you said have to do with the latest Blu-Rays not supporting BD-J features on PC software. If HD DVD was still around and they did the same thing I would be just as upset about it, just as much as I would be if DVDs started doing it too.
A consumer should not have to buy a completely new version of a software to be able to play a medium that they already paid to watch.
I’ve said in in many, MANY posts before this one. I DO NOT HATE BLU-RAY. What I do hate is what they are doing to it in order to milk people’s money after they already spend a good bundle in getting this medium into their PCs.
December 4th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Juve you made the mistake of making complete sense, therefore betlog could not address your real point. so he makes up his own argument to’fight’ um great job betlog,… you um win. yeah.
P.S. you may have to upgrade your software on your pc, and if you have a first gen blu ray player you will need to shell out for a new one as well, since you seem so glad to shell out cash when you already have paid for something how about sending some to Juve for this great site?
December 4th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Juve and Rick:
Right on, brothers, right on! And betlog: no one invited you to our party…
December 5th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Hey guys,
This might be a different topic but does any of you tried plugging in your Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to a PC that is running on Windows 7? I remember, and correct me if I’m wrong, that the HD DVD Xbox 360 add-on needs some hacking/tweaking on Windows XP. On Vista, they say it will work but I never tried it.
BTW, ogscorpion, this is not a format war anymore so don’t even start.
December 5th, 2009 at 11:14 am
ogscorpion,
When I used my HD DVD add on on my XP PC I had to install some specially made Toshiba drivers to get it to work. I might still have them laying around. On Vista I never had to do a thing. It just automatically installed the drivers and I was up and running. For Windows 7… I have no clue since I don’t own it yet.
I would look around in forums. Toshiba might have some drivers out the for it that have not been officially released.
I’ll check and see if I still have the XP drivers I had. If I do have them I’ll post it on here in case anyone needs them.
December 7th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Thanks Juve. I’m still debating if I should jump the bandwagon on getting Windows 7 or not. In the meantime, I still have XP Media Center 2005. I just want my Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to work so I can watch my HDDVD movies on my PC. If you can find the drivers, I would really appreciate it. I will also do some diggin’ on the web to see if Toshiba have some drivers for Windows 7. I just don’t want to upgrade to Windows 7 if they do not have any support/drivers for it but then again, it is still a new OS so I might have to give it some time.
BTW, I meant to say Betlog and not ogscorpion (which is myself) on my previous post. Typo, coz of Betlog’s crashing in to our party got me upset with his ‘format war-ish’ statements.
December 8th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Hello all!! Need some advise from the HD DVD crowd! Quite a while back i sold off my entire HD DVD collection to make the move to Blu ray(Big Mistake) i now find that all the titles i had are still very expensive to buy on blu ray so here’s my question, i still have an HD DVD drive do i go back to buying the HD DVD’s i really like cause they’re so cheap or do i wait for the price to come down on Blu Ray?
p.s. Sorry this has nothing to do with the subject thought this would be the best place to post.
December 8th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I would rebuy them in Hd DVD you have the exact same quality of video and in most cases, audio as well, for a much cheaper price. You simply have two devices now to watch on, why not use the HD DVD drive you have? I wouldn’t trade in my old HD DVDs they still work! Sorry you had to sell em off only to re-buy them, still though you will find it much cheaper than the blu ray versions.
December 8th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I agree with Rick. Buying them on HD DVD will save you a crap load of money and will leave you enough money to spare to buy a new release on Blu-ray like Star Trek or something like that. Don’t spend a lot of money if you don’t have to. Best places where I buy HD DVDs are on Amazon and iNetVideo. If yu spend over 25 on Amazon you get them shipped free… at least I think they still have that deal going on.
December 9th, 2009 at 12:49 am
I found the XP Toshiba drivers for the HD DVD drive. I uploaded it into my dropbox account and including a link here.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2688792/setup.exe
After you plug in your HD DVD drive unto your XP system and it installs regular DVD drivers to it, run this file and it will enable the device to properly read HD DVDs.
December 9th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Juve,
Thank you for the link. However, unfortunately I have attempted to download the file several times to no avail. I am only getting 13% download and then it just hangs from there, and it is very slow. I know my internet connection is not an issue as I tried downloading to several sites it is fast so its got to do with this site. Is it possible for you to zip and email me the file? My email address is ogscorpion@yahoo.com. Much appreciated!
December 9th, 2009 at 9:55 am
ogscorpion.
Not a problem. Seems that dropbox is not all that great. LOL
I get 2 Gigs for free and have to pay if I want more on-line storage, but if it’s that bad now I don’t think I’m going to pay to get the same type of service.
I’ll email it to you right away.
December 9th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I recently started using 4Shared.com, and they have 10GB for free. I have been able to share large files pretty easily, but I haven’t used it enough as a recipient to come up with complaints about it yet. It beats uploading to some site that expires the file after some days or number of downloads, and also nags both the uploader and downloader about registering or paying for more features.
December 9th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Pravin,
Thanks for the info. Gonna try it. 10 GB is way better than 2GB and I need the online storage space.
December 9th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Thanks again Juve! Just tried it and it is now working. Now I can watch my HDDVDs on my XP machine. Woohoo!
Thanks also Pravin. I will definitely take advantage of that site. I need 10gs for online storage.
December 15th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
ogscorpion,
Success. I just bought me an HP Laptop with Windows 7 in it. I plugged in the 360 HD DVD drive to it and it automatically installed drivers no problem.
One thing. When you install your retail version of PowerDVD 7 Ultra, do not download the latest update. It will not install, and if you leave the regular retail version on there without an update, it will not play any media, not even DVDs. Follow this link I got from Cyberlink.
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/download/patches_112_en_US.html
This update will go all the way through. Once you launch PowerDVD 7 Ultra, do not update it. It will continue to send you to the messed up update that won’t install on Windows 7. This one will work even if you ignore the update prompt. Plays Blu-rays and HD DVDs flawlessly.
Enjoy!
December 16th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Awesome info there Juve, thanks a bunch!!!! Now I will pick up an upgrade version of W7 on my Quad Core Dell PC. So I’m guessing that the Media Center version of Windows 7 doesn’t have a built in player support for HDDVD? Have you tried playing HDDVD movies in Media Center? Just curious.
December 16th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I’ve tried but no cigar. Same goes for Blu-ray discs. PowerDVD 9 will integrate itself into Media Center and you can play Blu-ray discs from it, but Cyberlink dropped HD DVD support since PowerDVD 8. There is a patch out there for 8 that will give it HD DVD support, but the moment you run any update on it, it drops it again. Sad how VCD is still being supported knowing that it died off well over ten years ago, but no support for HD DVD. Shame on the industry.
December 17th, 2009 at 6:48 am
Yes it is a shame indeed.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Merry
Christmas, to all of my fellow HD-DVD ‘rs.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Right on Rick!!!!
Merry Christmas to you too!!!
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:43 am
Yep…Happy HDDVD to all!
December 24th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Yes, Merry Xmas to you all. By the way, where in the whole world is the zombie hd dvd…?