It seems as though the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war has no end in site, and just when you think one format is turning the tide, the other one hits back. Earlier in the week we posted about Universal announcing that they were going to release 100 HD-DVD titles in 2007. That is definitely a solid number, but with no firm release dates, and only a few titles known, the level of anticipation could be higher. I can think of a few titles in the Universal catalog that could change that, and apparently so did they. Yesterday the HD-DVD Promotions Group added three Steven Spielberg classics to their “Coming Soon” in 2007 list, including E.T., Jurassic Park, and Jaws. If you want to get people to side with your format, a good way to do it is by bringing out some big guns, and these titles certainly qualify.

via High-Def Digest

Correction: My wording was perhaps a bit off. I meant to say that the three Spielberg titles had been added to the “Coming Soon” section of their current (hence 2007) HD-DVD list. There is no guarantee that these films will actually be released this year. As I theorize, however, should these titles be included in the 100 that Universal has stated they will release this calendar year, it would definitely be a boost for HD-DVD.

According to this article from TMC.net which doesn’t seem to be spell-checked, BestBuy will be introducing a “Blue-ray” player in the Chinese market in the first half of this year.

Strangely, the article says that these players are “Blue-ray HD-DVD” players. They’re not talking about EVD players, because the article outright mentions those as the competition. Maybe they’re talking about Blu-ray players, and the “HD-DVD” is just there to signify that BD discs are HD discs. Or maybe BestBuy will be selling HD DVD players. Or a combo player, like the LG. I guess I’m going on a tagent here, because I think that this player is really just a Blu-ray player.

Blue-ray HD-DVD Player to Enter China Market

LG surprised everyone at CES this year by announcing that their combo BD and HD DVD player is indeed a reality and would be available soon. “Soon” turned out to be “almost immediately”, and gadgetaholic has a review.

Remember that this player plays both Blu-ray discs and HD DVD discs, but does not support the HD DVD format’s iHD functionality. And it retails for a cool $1,199. (That’s enough to buy both an HD DVD player and a BD player (the PS3).)

So what does gadgetaholic think of this player? Load times are slightly better for BD discs than for HD DVD discs. The lack of iHD functionality really scuppers the use of special HD DVD features. They couldn’t find any picture quality difference between this player and other players for BD and HD DVD discs. But they didn’t seem to use a very thorough method. But they didn’t think highly of the DVD upscaling abilities.

All in all they think the player is a decent BD player with HD DVD capabilities tacked on.

LG BH100 Reviewed

Audioholics recently took a look at the excellent Sanyo PLV-Z5 projector, those lucky dogs.

Remember that the PLV-Z5 is a 3LCD projector with a resolution of 1280 x 720. It has a contrast ratio of up to 10,000:1. It has a brightness of 1100 ANSI lumens. This projector has an MSRP of $1,995. It includes two HDMI inputs.

We’ve talked about this projector before. How great it is, how sharp it is. Etc. So I thought I’d just poiunt out that this is one heck of a good projector, and you can’t do much, if any, better for the price. Especailly considering the the $2k is just the MSRP and you could probably get it for much less than that.

Sanyo PLV-Z5 Projector Review

So here’s the scoop: in order to avoid some legal wranglings, Toshiba’s sold its share of the SED joint venture with Canon to Canon. But that doesn’t mean they’re out of the picture.

Toshiba will actually be manufacturing the SED displays.

Toshiba was not available to comment on the production schedule, but Atsutoshi Nishida, president of Toshiba was quoted in a December Nikkei Business report as saying the company’s SED production facility in Himeji, Japan was on schedule. In addition, in October 2006, CNET reported that SED had made some manufacturing breakthroughs that would make SED TVs competitive in the market with LCD TVs.

But that’s not the most of it. For the most of it, see the article linked below. There’s a lot more…

After all is SED and done, Toshiba not out of the picture

One of the most important things to remember about getting good picture quality when using a front projector is to have the room as dark as you possibly can. And by that I mean that the room should really be pitch black. Because whatever light there is in the room reflects off the screen and becomes the minimum black level you’ll end up seeing.

But Planar wants to go about changing that with a screen that tries to reflect as little ambient light as possible and as much projector light as possible.

The screen does an admirable job of fulfilling up to its promises. But only if you’re sitting in its considerably small sweet spot. But if the ability to watch a movie with ambient on is what you want, that’s the trade-off you’ll have to live with. Oh - and the fact that the 60″ screen weighs 69 pounds (rigid frame) and costs $1,399. (And it only goes up from there.)

Planar Xscreen — Home Theater with the lights on

Just yesterday I was saying how there’s not much coming out on HD DVD compared to Blu-ray, and now someone has to go prove me wrong! In the 1/25/07 - 4 PM PST update of The Digital Bits, Bill Hunt talks about Universal’s plans for the HD DVD format. And they’re BIG.

Universal is planning to release 100 movies on HD DVD in 2007. That’s an average of about 8 per month, which is quite impressive. Among the movies to be released are Liar Liar, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Brazil, and Erin Brockovich. Not only that, they also said that the first season of the new Battlestar Galactica will be released this year on HD DVD, which is cool. It needs all the help it can get picture-quality wise.

The Digital Bits - Celebrating Film in the Digital Age

Pioneer recently unveiled a new BD/DVD/CD writer - the BDC-202. This things is quite flexible, here’s what it can do:

BD-ROM Read 5X
BD-R/-RE Read 5X
BD-R DL/-RE DL Read 2X
DVD-ROM Read 12X
DVD-RAM Read 5X Write 5X
DVD-R/+R Read 12X Write 12X
DVD-RW/+RW Read 8X Write 6X
DVD-RDL/+RDL Read 8X Write 4X
CD-ROM Read 32X

This drive will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2007.

Pioneer Unveils the BDC-202 Blu-ray Disc Combo Drive

Now that I have a BD player (my PS3) I am looking forward to seeing movies in HD more than ever. So of course I have to see what’s up and coming, and I do that using HighDef Digest’s Blu-ray page. (See link below.) So I was checking it out today and was impressed by the number of titles coming out in the near future - about 25 titles in February alone. So I decided to check out the HD DVD release schedule, where February was listed to have 7 titles. I thought that maybe February was just an anomaly, so I look at the whole upcoming schedule, and noticed that the HD DVD list was thinner than the BD list by quite a large margin.

Of course this makes me happy personally because I have a BD player, so of course I’m biased. But that doesn’t change the fact that BD is getting a lot more titles than HD DVD is, and that’s what’ll decide the format war. If studios stay the course will current allegiances and title release schedules, there’s no way that HD DVD will win. I agree that that’s a big “if”, however, and the HD DVD camp may still announce more titles and initiatives. But I think it’s rapidly becoming the underdog in this fight.

Release Dates for Blu-ray Discs
Release Dates for HD DVD Discs