The HD DVD group has announced a new triple layer version of the disc for recording, and that each layer will be able to hold an additional 2GB. Previously an HD DVD could hold 2 x 15GB = 30GB. Now it’ll be 3 x 17GB = 51GB! Hmm. One GB over the 2 layer BD’s 50GB. Coincidence?

The new disc format will be proposed to the DVD Forum for standardization this year. Products might make it to market by the end of the year.

Interestingly, the HD DVD group has also released some sales figures. As of January 5th, 2007, 150,000 HD DVD players (including standalone, HD DVD add-ons, and laptops) have sold. 28 HD DVD titles have been sold per player, which I think is a lot.

HD DVD Unveils Plan for 51GB Disc

We heard last year that Warner Brothers patented some technology to do with creating a hybrid HD DVD and Blu-ray disc. It looks like their hard work is actually going to amount for something, because Warner will introduce its new “Total HD” disc at CES this tomorrow, according to the NY Times. Warner’s Barry M. Meyer says that Warner came up with the Total HD disc when they concluded that neither format would win the format war anytime soon. Warner Brothers is also working on a disc that will include the DVD format as well.

Any more details will have to wait until Tuesday. The biggest question of course is: how many layers? How many HD DVD layers will Total HD support, and how many BD layers? It is vital to the HD DVD camp that the format supports at least two layers, for 30GB of storage. The BD camp would like to see two layers as well, for 50GB of storage, though this is not as vital. Many 25GB BD discs look quite good, and it quality in 25GB discs seems to be more related to the authoring process than to space limitation.

So I eagerly await tomorrow’s announcement from Warner Brothers, and hope to buy some Total HD discs soon.

New Disc May Sway DVD Wars

Surprisingly enough, at least to me, LG’s dual Blu-ray and HD DVD format player has been resurrected, and will actually see the light of day. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think it would happen. But here we are.

LG will be launching the player at the CES show this week. Of course, launching a player and selling a player are two totally different things. LG hasn’t revealed when the player will go on sale outside of a vague “early 2007″.

LG has set the price for their BH100 combo BD and HD DVD player to be $1,199. Not bad considering that these are two new formats and that I just saw a new Rotel DVD (not HD DVD, just DVD) player announced with an MSRP of $300 more.

The player will support 1080p, which is expected. But it will also support DTS HD, which is more rare. Nice to see.

LG to Launch Dual-format Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD Player
LG’s BH100 hybrid Blu-ray & HD DVD player: $1,199
LG’s Dual HDTV Player: The War Isn’t Over

Pictures:

Best Buy LG BH100 Page

On a side note, LG also unveiled a BD burner for the PC that also reads HD DVD discs. That’s an interesting combination. It will record at 4x speed at will retail for less than $1200 in the first quarter of 2007.

LG Unveils New Super Multi Blue Dual-Format Burner

Seems that the competing press releases are starting to come out of the woodwork. Warner Bros. is expected to announce that they have a new disk that will have both (yes both) Blu-ray and HD DVD on the same disk! Also, LG is suppose to announce a player that will play both formats and come out in early 2007.

Warner Readying HD-DVD/Blu-ray Hybrid Announcement for CES DVD HD-DVD Blu-Ray at TheManRoom The Man Room
New Disc May Sway DVD Wars

Dreams Do Come True! LG’s Makes World’s First Blu-ray/HD DVD Dual-Format Player

So, I saw this video last week of a guy claiming to have cracked the AACS encryption on HD DVD. It was grainy as all these movies are, but it looked convincing. Now yesterday the hacker listed more of how he cracked the key.

Essentially there are 3 (maybe more) keys used. There is a device key a volume key and a title (video) key. The hacker went for the volume key since it seemed a weak link and possibly the hardest to revoke.

So now just like science every hacker is trying to reproduce the results, and once that happens the floodgates should open up. One interesting thing that I found interesting was that both HD DVD and Blu-Ray only made 1MB of space for a revocation table. Hackers, just for spite, could just start publishing keys left and right to fill up the revocation area. Of course with a limited size such as this, couldn’t someone just come up with a large revocation list on an ISO and essentially wipe out the revocation list?

This is just getting better by the day. Now we can finally backup our movies just like the law allows us to. I guess we don’t need managed copy now. ;>

HD DVD Encryption Cracked? - Brian’s Brain - Blog on EDN - 400000040

This was bound to happen with the PS3 20Gig at $499 it was making for quite a cheap (abeit high quality) blu-ray player.

So now Samsung has cut their price by a Benjamin and big box retailers are following with even bigger discounts bringing the player down to the $550ish range. The is great news for blu-ray and consumers. Manufacturers, though are going to start feeling the profit pinch. Hopefully they are finding more efficiencies in their manufacturing processes which will help offset these price cuts.

Samsung Drops Blu-ray Player Price | High-Def Digest

In the “take it with a grain of salt” category.

eproductwars.com shows that blu-ray sales ranks are picking up steam fast and should supplant HD DVD by the second quarter (my guess, not thiers). Anyway it seems that all those people who bought PS3s and finished Resistance now just want to watch movies. Hmmm. I wonder who predicted that one?

HD DVD and Blu Ray sales rank at Amazon
Huge blu-ray sales rank surge at dvdwars part 2 - AVS Forum

First PS3, XBox HD DVD Add-On Sales Numbers The PS3 has supposedly sold about 197,000 units in North America at launch. And Microsoft has sold about 42,000 HD DVD add-ons for the Xbox 360.

The self-proclaimed HDTV expert, Peter Putman, took a look at Toshiba’s second-gen HD DVD player. First off, the player is a lot slimmer than it predecessors. That’s a good thing! The remote has been revamped, with lots of small buttons and no more backlighting. That’s a bad thing.

But what about picture quality and loading times? The latter is much better, but still slow in the big scheme of things - turning on took 30 seconds and getting a movie playing took 11.

As to picture quality, that should be fine as long as you set the output to 1080i. The 720p and 480p setting degraded the quality considerably. Not so good. But at 1080i, this $500 player works quite well. So if you don’t mind using the 1080i output, this is one of the cheapest ways to get into HD discs right now. (The other being the 20GB PS3, if you can find it.)

Product Review: Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player

So China has tried to steal the lime lite of HD DVD and Blu-Ray by reintroducing the previously failed EVD specification. So what do we know from the press release and rumors?

- Some 20 manufacturers will be making 54 players by 2008
- Uses a red laser (like HD DVD)
- Uses a new codec that is supposedly as or more efficient than MPEG4 (haven’t heard a comparison to VC-1)

What we don’t know.

- How many U.S. will sign on (so far zero)
- How much capacity (assuming if similar to HD DVD ~25-30Gig)?
- What audio codecs will it support?
- Will these devices use HDMI/HDCP?
- Will EVD support new audio formats (DTS-HD, DD+)? I don’t think so.

This is a scam. These players are for China only. There is no US content on board. No codec support. This is a chinese player to play chinese content. This may work well in China and maybe around asia. That may not be a bad thing with 3 billion of the worlds 5 billion people concentrated right in the asian area.

So what does this mean to you and me?

Nothing. Now go watch a Blu-ray movie.

YET20ANOTHER20DVD20FORMAT20IS20LAUNCHED

Those white-trenchcoated folks over at CNET labs put Microsoft’s HD DVD peripheral for the Xbox 360 under the microscope, and they had to adjust the focus a little bit. Once in focus, though, they liked what they saw.

But right off the bat, I have to say I can’t agree with one of their pluses for the peripheral. They say “The Xbox 360 HD-DVD player is less than half of the price of today’s stand-alone HD-DVD players and includes the Xbox 360 Universal remote.” Less than half, sure, but only if you already own an Xbox 360. Add that to the cost, and you’re paying $500 for the system.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the peripheral isn’t any good. Quite the contrary. It makes out well in labratory tests. So if you’re an Xbox 360 owner, you might want to take a look at this peripheral. However, if you’re worried that studios might one day start enabling the ICT flag, then you might want to look elsewhere because the Xbox 360 + HD DVD solution does not contain an HDMI or DVI/HDCP output. Right now, though, that’s not a problem. It might never be. So you can enjoy movies now, and for the forseeable future, in HD on your Xbox 360 with this $200 peripheral.

Microsoft Xbox 360 HD-DVD