Erroneous HD DVD Report Gets Tongues Wagging 52
An anonymous reader writes "HD DVD fans learned a valuable lesson in 'don't believe everything you read' this week, after the trade publication Home Media Magazine reported that the HD DVD camp planned to release more than 20x the number of releases planned on Blu-ray through the end of 2007. The suggestion was so preposterous that even the official HD DVD Promotions Group (which has the most to gain from the spread of such misinformation) has requested a correction. 'Contacted for comment, the HD DVD Promotional Group told us that the Home Media Magazine report was incorrect. The group says it "conservatively" projects a worldwide total of 600 HD DVD releases for the entirety of 2007, and that the error in the report appeared to stem from a slide in an HD DVD powerpoint presentation that listed the cumulative number of titles by month for 2006. The Home Media Magazine report also quoted a Blu-ray spokesperson as saying that Blu-ray-affiliated studios will release a total of 43 titles in 2007. This number also appears to be incorrect, given that 160 titles have already been announced through September in the U.S. alone.'"
You must be joking (Score:4, Interesting)
* Blu-Ray discs, since the start of the year, have outsold HD-DVD discs by three to one margin (or higher).
* There are around 200k HD-DVD players in the US today. There are 2+ MILLION PS3's that play Blu-Ray, plus whatever standalone players Blu-Ray has managed to sell.
* Universal is the only major studio still wholly behind HD-DVD (The Weinstien Brothers have announced Hard Boiled will come on Blu-Ray, including the movie and a PS3 game).
* Funai, an HD-DVD backer just announced they will be selling a cheap Blu-Ray player later this year.
The winner is clear. I predict Universal, in a bit over two months or so, will announce they too will producing Blu-Ray titles - they cannot afford to be the major backer of a system that has a sales rate three times less than what they otherwise might get using Blu-Ray during the Christmas shopping season when the Blu-Ray press will be at its mightiest from Sony and Disney and other studios.
Re:PS3 owners (Score:4, Interesting)
Smoothing a PS1 game on a PS2 has always been available but in many cases the soothing did not do much although to be fair a few games looked fantastic and some looked awful so you had to turn the feature off. I would assume this will be the case with the 1.8 PS3 upgrade except it would be applied to both PS2 and PS1 games. I have tried the new update on a PS1 game which I know needed smoothing and it did look quite nice (not fantastic but much more playable) but this is the only game I have had the time to try out the new feature on.
I have an Australian PS3 which means the machine uses software emulation. All my PS1 games (I have about 20) work, however not all my PS2 games work (most I have finished anyway) but all the ones I am currently playing do so I am quite happy.
There are more changes and some of them are quite good, however you can read the following URL for more info http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Network/Updates [playstation.com]
The 1.8 download is over 100MB so you would need a decent high speed line or you could contact a "friend" (ie. work
It is amazing the number of times people get HDTV wrong it is really very simple. If you have a TV that has resolutions 1280x220 (720p or i) and 1920x1080 (1080p or i) then and only then do you have a HDTV. Other resolutions are 720x480 (NTSC) and 768x576 (PAL) which are standard definition (SDTV). There are other standards but lets not get too complicated. As for picking a HDTV it really depends on what you want to spend keeping in mind that under 40" you will get 720p (SDTV up to 1080i) and above 40" you can get 720p or 1080p which costs about 20% to 60% more.
For more details see the following http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_tele