Atul wrote in to complain about some baseball HD problems in Virginia:

One noteworthy news note for you is that here in ACC country (Virginia) one of the biggest basketball games of the year is supposedly on ESPN HD, however nobody in Comcast’s Richmond area network, and possibly more, is able to watch the game because they are ‘having technical difficulties.’ What did they offer in return for this “inconvenience”, which will require people to drive to a local sports bar to watch the game in high def? A $1 credit to their customers who are paying upwards of $100/mo for this ’service.’

Personally I wouldn’t care about missing a baseball game, but if this were F1 and F1 were available in HD, I know I’d be ticked…

There have been a lot of mistakes in the HD format war, the chief among them the fact that it exists in the first place. Now I’m not saying that the BD group hasn’t made mistakes, but I got a good chuckly out of this mistake on the part of the HD DVD Promotions Group.

The HD DVD Promotions Group claimed that Speilberg’s films Jaws, Jurassic Park, and E.T. would be making their way to HD DVD this year. Now it turns out that this claim was made in error, and they’ve retracted it and apologized for the mistake.

Tee hee.

HD DVD Promotions Group to Spielberg Fans: Whoops!

A/V guru Joe Kane’s HD DVD version of ‘Digital Video Essentials’ has been delayed several times. But now it’s been given another release date: February 27th. It’ll retail for $34.95.

Everyone who’s serious about picture quality should use a calibration disc like this to set up their TV. I’ve done this using the AVIA disc, but that’s not HD. I’m looking forward to a high-def calibration disc like this, but I don’t have an HD DVD player. I hope that Digital Video Essentials comes out on BD sometime soon too.

‘Digital Video Essentials’ Gets a New Date… For Now

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

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

Pirates of the Caribbean was a surprisingly good movie considering it was based on a ride at Disneyworld. The sequel was good, but not as good, in my mind. The cool thing is that they’re both coming out on Blu-ray Disc, and Disney just announced when - May 22nd. That date is meant to coincide with the release of the third Pirates movie. Which surprised me, because I hadn’t heard anything about the movie before this.

Cars, the Pixar hit about stock car racing with a cameo voice acting appearance by Michael Schumacher, has also been dated. It’ll hits the streets in Blu-ray Disc form on June 5th.

Now the problem is that I have both Cars and Pirates on DVD already. I don’t want to go re-buying my whole DVD collection, but it’s so tempting!

Disney Sets ‘Pirates,’ ‘Cars’ Blu-ray Dates

Movies often get more than one trailer released for them, and this is the case with today’s two HD trailers, both of which now have a second trailer for them. First up, some turtles!

After the defeat of their old arch nemesis, The Shredder, the Turtles have grown apart as a family. Struggling to keep them together, their rat sensei, Master Splinter, becomes worried when strange things begin to brew in New York City. Tech-industrialist Max Winters is amassing an army of ancient monsters to apparently take over the world.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Then there are the spartans!

Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite.

300

One of my favourite shows to watch in HD is “Day Break”. It’s Groundhog Day with cops and bad guys, basically. And it’s a really really good show. I am majorly ticked that rating were so low that ABC decided to shelve it. Episodes were supposed to run until the end of December before going on hiatus, but now that’s changed. ABC plans to air the remaining produced shows on its website. Which just sucks. There are only a few good shows that I watch, like Prison Break, Heros, The Unit, and Day Break. Day Break was fast becoming my favourite show, too, and now it’s gone! Ga! It’s like Firefly all over again! Noooooooo!

Adam Baldwin - “Day Break” Tv Series is off ABC schedule

PS And no, I didn’t like Day Break just because Adam Baldwin from Firefly was in it. Though that was a nice bonus.

John Bitove has applied for a license to create an HDTV network in Canada. His HDTV Networks Inc. wants to create an HDTV network in eight markets: Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax. Thankfully, my city is in that list.

John wants to show Canadian, original Canadian, and foreign content on his network. All you need in one of those network areas is the ability to receive HD programming. I assume this means over-the-air.

So I have to wonder, will I finally be getting Smallville in HD?

Businessman plans free HDTV network for Canada

Smallville is a title from Warner Brothers that has only been released on HD DVD so far. That title and other HD DVD only holdouts will be making their way to Blu-ray in 2007. That’s from the 12/8/06 “My Two Cents” posting at The Digital Bits.

And the 12/11/06 column talks about the fact that both Fox and Disney aren’t going to be releasing HD DVD anytime soon. They are both firmly committed to the BD format. Disney will announce some major title news at CES in 2007.

Warner to catch up with BD titles in 07

It looks like Xbox 360 owners who want to download programs or movies in HD might have to wait a bit. And by “a bit”, I mean 10 hours “a bit”. Microsoft started its TV and movie download service a week or two ago, and it looks like it’s having some problems. Some dude at Video Business tried to download an HD movie, and it ahorted after 6 hours. Later he tried it again and it finished downloading.

This kind of movie download service would only work with the Xbox 360’s background download feature. But to be honest, I’m not so sure I mind waiting 10 hours for a movie to download. I could set it up in the morning before I leave for work and have it ready by the time I want to view it that evening.

XBox: 10 Hours For HD Download?

When I go shopping for video games, the first thing I do is check out the used section. That’s because video games are so expensive, I need to find a cheaper way of getting my video game fix. Movies, on the other hand, aren’t as expensive as video games so it’s not quite so important to get them used. But used is used - and it’s still cheaper. Now some HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies are being sold at retailers used.

The formats are less than 1 year old, but several retailers are already selling used HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles in stores.

Hastings Entertainment, Newbury Comics and Trans World brands F.Y.E. and Suncoast are among the outlets that have been accepting consumers’ used HD DVD and Blu-ray titles since the formats launched in the spring. In turn, the chains are stocking the high-definition titles, which have included copies of Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s Serenity and Doom on HD DVD, for sale within their used DVD sections.

Cool, huh? More if you follow the link below.

Stores start market for used high-def discs (free subscription req’d)