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Archive: January, 2008

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Gartner: Blu-ray to win in 2008, HD DVD price cuts are “useless resistance” – Engadget

Hooray! Let’s get on w/ it then, shall we?

Gartner: Blu-ray to win in 2008, HD DVD price cuts are “useless resistance” – Engadget:
Posted Jan 28th 2008 5:46AM by Thomas Ricker

Gartner, the fat lady of research firms, is singing HD DVD’s swan song this morning. Hiroyuki Shimizu, Principal Research Analyst in Japan, says in Gartner’s Semiconductor DQ Monday Report that, “Gartner believes that Toshiba’s price-cutting may prolong HD DVD’s life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format.” He goes on to call the recent price cuts “useless resistance” in avoiding the inevitable. What’s that, you coyly ask? According to Shimizu, “Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over.” With 5 of the 7 major studios now backing Blu-ray exclusively, Gartner’s certainty on the subject doesn’t appear to be much of a stretch.

categories Hardware

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Your Daily Awesome

Dance

Via: .tiff – Vox:

categories General

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Blu-ray players grab 93 percent of market after Warner went Blu – Engadget HD

Blu-ray players grab 93 percent of market after Warner went Blu – Engadget HD:

bluray ftw“According to the latest NPD group report, during the month of December Blu-ray players held 60 percent of the HD media player market — despite the fact that HD DVD players were considerably cheaper. While that might’ve helped Warner in its decision to go Blu, the move has definitely had a dramatic effect on player sales since. According to the same study the week after the announcement, Blu-ray players were able to grab 93 percent of the market, which puts the year to date (short, we know) share for Blu-ray players at 70 percent. Granted, it’s hard to put too much stock in just a week or two of data, but if this and the recent media sales numbers (85 percent) becomes a trend, maybe this won’t be such a slow death for HD DVD after all.”

Hooray!

categories Hardware

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Gamefly

I LOVE Gamefly.com. I had Zack & Wiki out and decided I’d keep it for $25.

As I was walking my doggy tonight, I got two emails telling me that Zack & Wiki shipped, and that PGR4 is shipping to me. I think “Awesome. I’ve been meaning to get to that game.” What caught my eye next was that it’s already on sale for $30 — half the cost of the retail game. The aholes at Gamestop normally charge $55 for a game w/ an MSRP of $60, so fu, Gamestop.

categories Gaming

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I Miss My Little Girl :’)

WomenAin’t this the cutest picture?

I took this over Christmas break when she visited for a week.

categories Bitches, General

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Being An Adult Rules

Rock BandSo Friday I came home to find this waiting for me.
Having played quite a few hours of Rock Band over at Il Duce’s house, I knew I loved the game, and knew I’d eventually have it, but I was on strict orders not to buy anything at Christmas, since one of my presents was still on it’s way to me (Christmas shipping delay).

After an eventful Friday night (the vpn daemon on our xserve stopped responding, so that had to be righted), I woke up at my normal 6am the next morning and after walking my doggie, went right to the basement to get in some quality time w/ the game.

For whatever reason, I chose to try out singing first. Three hours later, I was slightly hoarse but had unlocked 13 songs I’ve never even heard of before. There were a few gems in there, and a few bands I’ll have to look into. I had to rush to a noon meeting, so I had to quit for the time being.

Fast forward to 6:30pm, add 3 doods (my oldest bro, JB and Il Duce) and a few cool beverages: we had a fantastic time playing as a quartet! We played a solid 6 hours.

Amazing.

categories Gaming, Hardware, Software

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DRM’ed music is finally on the way out

In what turned out to be a huge day for digital entertainment news yesterday, Sony announced that they would be dropping DRM from their music, as well.

Sony BMG Will Drop DRM:

BusinessWeek says that Sony BMG will join us here in the 21st century when they become the last of the top 4 big record companies to drop DRM.

…

Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com’s (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007.

I am, of course, happy about this, but I think some credit is due.

People have been bad-mouthing DRM for all of the obvious reasons: incompatibility, vendor lock-in, loss of freedom, stole my bike… (srsly — drm stole my bike!). What everyone seems to overlook, however, is that drm actually played a key role in the musical revolution we’ve enjoyed over the past 5 years of so.

I’ll say it: DRM WAS GOOD FOR THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND CONSUMERS.

What? Really? Yeah — lemme explain before you go nuts.

You see, without drm, there’s no WAY Apple could’ve convinced the record labels to allow their music to be sold on the iTunes Store. It was that assurance that gave the record execs the comfort level to let the experiment even happen, but it was the amazing sales numbers that opened their eyes to the fact that people actually WILL buy music online.

The battle to convince them to remove drm, however, took a while to win, but still… w/o drm, that first step could never have been taken.

Goodbye DRM: you’ve been martyred, and I thank you for it.

categories Music

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We may FINALLY see an end to the HD format wars!

The guys over at The Consumerist have a great comparison of which movie studios are on which side in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD high def disc format war.

The comparison was brought on by yesterday’s announcement from Warner that they’re going to switch exclusively to Blu-ray in May. This is great news to me, as I’ve stopped buying any new movies because I didn’t want to end up with a stash of discs in the losing format. I know someone w/ a considerable collection of Laser Discs who’s hoping his long-discontinued disc player doesn’t break.

bluray vs hddvd

Format Wars: Where Things Stand In The Hi-Def DVD Format War:

After Time Warner Inc.’s announcement today that they’ve chosen to support Blu-ray exclusively, here’s the current breakdown of studio support for each format—and things aren’t looking good for HD DVD.

So the future is tilting more and more toward Sony’s Blu-ray format, it seems. Honestly, though, will anyone be buying movies on discs by the time this is all settled?

After seeing this chart, I feel pretty confident that Blu-ray’s going to win. Warner’s decision was based on the outcome of the Q4 sales results between the two formats, and though I haven’t seen what the results were, I do remember Blu-ray outselling HD-DVD by 2-1 for many of last year’s months.

When people ask me which of the two formats are better, I honestly admit that I can’t really tell the difference. I have a decent consumer-level plasma, but they both look great to me. Until today, I’d always told them to hold off.

categories Movies