Lionsgate has announced some more Blu-ray Disc (BD) titles, and they actually look like they’re good movies. Four movies will arrive in stores August 22nd, and they are Total Recall, Stir of Echoes, Stargate, and The Devil’s Rejects. I have to admit I’ve never heard of The Devil’s Rejects but I’d rent all the others again just to see them in HD. They are all 1080p single-layer discs, and include Dolby Digital EX and DTS HD High Resolution ES soundtracks. Which is nice. Supposedly these movies will actually feature some exclusive content, which is doubly nice. The MSRP will be $29.95.

Lionsgate Sets Second Blu-ray Wave

When Blu-ray first came to Canada I went to Best Buy and Future Shop looking for a BD disc. I couldn’t find any. I asked for the BD display and they pointed me to the HD DVD display, at both stores! Ah well.

Around that time I was ordering a Luca Turilli CD (Dreamquest - quite good!) from Amazon, so I decided to add a BD disc to the order. I don’t even have a BD player because my budget doesn’t allow for both that and the PS3 I plan to buy. But I still wanted to get in on this whole HD disc thing, so I bought myself The Terminator on BD for only $12 or so at Amazon. At Best Buy it would have ended up being $35Cdn or so, so I gotta say I was feeling pretty smug about saving myself a lot of money. Anyway, I got it yesterday in the mail along with my CD (my CD was only released recently, and they were coming together), and while I can’t play it on anything, it’s on display on my shelf. I’m now part of the HD disc revolution! I pointed at the disc and told my wife that this is the future and she thought I was talking about the Terminator dude.

My HDTV is connected via an umbilical chord to my Scientific Atlanta SA8300HD PVR. It’s a decent PVR and gets the job done, but the GUI is in need of reworking. And sometimes it doesn’t record something that’s set to record. TiVo has been sending out letters to the FCC and cable operators.

The TiVo Series3 HD DVR product supports up to two CableCARD decoders. This product acts as two independent single stream UDCP CableCARD hosts within one set top box. It can also be configured to operate as a single CableCARD device.

This product is currently being tested by a small number of consumers in cable markets across the country, and will be generally available in retail stores soon. Thus, we wanted to ensure that you are aware of this product in time to make any necessary preparations to support customers who request two CableCARD decoders for their TiVo Series3 HD DVR.

So I’ve been wishing and hoping that TiVo would come to Canada, that they’d bring their HD TiVo with them, that it’s a two-tuner version, and that Rogers would start supporting CableCARD. Yeah I know - not gonna happen!

But supposedly in some areas of the States TiVo is doing some testing of their HD TiVo. It’s the Series 3 TiVo and it includes two CableCARDs.

TiVo tells FCC, cable operators to expect Series 3 boxes “soon”

So Microsoft is trying to muddy the waters by saying that because HD-DVD had two layers of protection and Blu-ray has only one that HD-DVD must be better.

I say the surface that can resist scratches better will win this one. I think the jury is still out, but with the problems we have had with CD’s and DVD’s and scratches, I think both camps would have made this a priority to fix this time around.

Games Radar - [Multi] PS3 format apparently not that reliable

Sony has made their BWU-100A BD burner available for pre-order. This burner for your computer is available in August for the price of $750, which is about $250 cheaper than competing burners.

This burner can read and write single-layer DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD+RAM discs, dual-layer DVD+R, and CD’s in addition to its BD writing capabilities. It can write BD-R’s and BD-RE’s at 2x speed.

Sony unveils BWU-100A Blu-ray burner

So you have an HDTV and want to take some home movies in full 1080i glory to show on that HDTV? Sony has some new camcorders for you. The HDR-UX1 records to the small DVD discs, the HDR-SR1 includes a 30GB HDD.

The camcorders have HDMI connectors, and you can even use them with a wireless Bluetooth microphone. You might be wondering what format these things use to store their content, and the answer is AVCHD(TM), based on MPEG4 AVC/H.264.

The HDR-UX1 will be available in September for about $1400, and the HDR-SR1 will go for $1500 in October.

Sony Ushers in Next Wave of High-Def Home Movies

HDBlog.net is looking for writers. Right now HDBlog.net is written mainly by me, Henning, with a little help now and then from Mole. I think that HDBlog.net could use another writer or two to help flesh out the site a little.

So if you’re an HDTV afficionado, and have some good writing skills, please drop me a line on my contact page. It’s an unpaid position because this site doesn’t bring in much money at all. So I’m looking for some HDTV enthusiasts who really like to talk! Please send me some writing samples and I’ll get in touch with you.

HDMI 1.3 is approved and Silicon Image is sampling HDMI 1.3 chips. November will see the release of the PS3, probably the first HDMI 1.3 product. The question, of course, is when will other HDMI 1.3 products come out? HDMI 1.3, remember, will support the new audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master.

Silicon Image says that a number of new HDMI 1.3 products will appear at January’s CES show. A/V receivers, HD televisions, and probably HD disc players will all be shown with HDMI 1.3 support. Frankly, I wonder why it takes so long. The spec is finalized now and manufacturers have known about HDMI 1.3 for a while. But while they’ll be shown at CES, that’s not to say that they’ll ship at CES. So maybe they won’t be available to consumers for a while after that. I would have expected products to come out much sooner, but oh well.

HDMI 1.3 Interface Due By End Of Year

Warner Brothers has released some additional information about their upcoming BD releases due August 1st. You’ll remember (or not) that these titles are Good Night and Good Luck, Training Day, Rumor Has It…, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. These titles will all feature the same bonus materials as their HD DVD and DVD counterparts. They will be single-layer discs with movies encoded in 1080p. No word on whether the movies are encoded in MPEG2, MPEG4, or VC-1. However, Training Day will not include the Dolby TrueHD soundtrack available on the HD DVD, which is a bummer.

Warner Unveils Specs for First Blu-ray Titles