It may come as no surprise that the other format war (VHS/Beta) was supposedly decided by the porn industry and the availability of porn on VHS.

Today, with the new format war, everyone is looking at this as the new litmus test and if it will decide which side wins.

I beg to differ. Porn is a $10 billion industry. $10 Bil is not something to be sneezed at, but today people can get their porn in many ways. Internet, DVD, cell phones, you name it. Back in the VHS days there were only peep shows, XXX theaters, and HBO. VHS revolutionized the privacy of watching porn. Now that revolution is over. People can now get porn anytime, and with services like TOR, anywhere (even work).

So my prediction is that the porn industry this time around will be just another player like Time/Warner. They’ll produce for both formats and eventually will choose one, but the winner of the format war will be decided well before these guys choose. Who knows the winner may be streaming video?

Slashdot | Porn Industry May Not Decide Format War

LG Electronics made everyone at CES do a double-take when they announced a combo Blu-ray and HD DVD player, to be made available for sale soon. Well, now it’s available. It’s is called the LG “Super Multi Blue” Player (model BH100). It should now be available at stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA.

The player retails for $1200, if I remember correctly. That’s enough to buy both a Toshiba HD DVD player and a Sony PS3. So you have to determine what’s more important to you: saving a little space, or getting the best of both worlds. (And remember, the LG supposedly doesn’t fully support HD DVD’s iHD feature.)

World’s First Dual-Format High-Definition Disc Player Now Available from LG Electronics at U.S. Retailers

So how’s that whole format war coming? Nielsen VideoScan has released some information that finally lets us see how the whole BD (Blu-ray Disc) versus HD DVD thing is coming along.

In short, Blu-ray discs are now starting to sell better than HD DVD discs. In the first two weeks of January, BD discs outsold HD DVD discs by more than two to one. (Though those two weeks only saw two new HD releases - both on Blu-ray.)

On top of that, BD is catching up to HD DVD in total units sold. As a matter of fact, if current trends continue, that inflection point will occur within weeks.

This is all good news for Blu-ray Disc Association members. It’s probably helped by the fact that PS3 owners are actually participating in the whole Blu-ray thing, unlike what some people were predicting.

Finally: VideoScan Releases High-Def Disc Sales Numbers

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

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

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

LG made waves at CES 2007 by announcing their combo Blu-ray and HD DVD player. Lots of people like the idea of a combo player, thinking that it’s the solution to the format wars. Personally, I don’t think the war will be over until a winner has won. But that’s beside the point.

The LG player was only announced at CES, and already it’s been seen in the wild. Crave/CNET is reporting that the LG player is already available for $1,199 at a few CompUSA locations. One small problem - reports indicate that the player does not support HD DVD’s iHD spec, but it’ll still play the movie itself.

LG’s Super Multi Blue HD Player spotted in CompUSA

[Edit: It looks like the player isn’t supposed to be available however. According to IGN, the official release date is February 4th.]