01/05/2008, 1:55am, EST
Saturday, January 5thHD DVD Group axes CES keynote
The HD DVD Promotional Group tonight reacted to Warner's abandonment of HD DVD for movies by canceling its Consumer Electronics Show keynote on short notice. The organization does not say the keynote is being removed permanently from its scheduled but says it has "postponed" the event without a new date, according to the announcement. Discussions are said to be underway with the group's partners and are widely expected to determine how Toshiba and other HD DVD backers approach the format at the show. A statement from the organization says it remains committed to the "quality and affordability" of the disc format.
Toshiba itself has already reacted to the decision and claims not to understand Warner's decision; HD DVD has had "significant momentum" in the US and other areas and was entirely viable, the electronics maker says. The firm also claims that HD DVD players and equipped PCs have outsold their PC rivals but does not say whether these statistics include Sony's PlayStation 3, which is capable of movie playback. The HD DVD Promotional Group has historically omitted PS3 sales from its statistics and argues that only dedicated movie player and PC drive sales should count towards results.
The statements cloud the expected impact of HD DVD at CES, which was expected to mark a renewal of the conflict between Blu-ray and HD DVD with likely new products unveiled by supporters of each format. Microsoft in particular is rumored to have an Xbox 360 with an HD DVD drive built-in as part of its CES keynote presentation on Sunday and (if true) may be significantly impacted by Warner's decision to offer HD movie discs only in Blu-ray form. The conversion is understood to give Blu-ray a controlling majority of HD movie sales.
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: blu-ray, Toshiba, PS3, Xbox 360, HD DVD, Warner
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So an HD-DVD drive on a PC counts towards their sales numbers while a Blu-Ray drive in a PS3 does not for the sake of comparison?
That just seems silly to me. I purchased a PS3 over the summer as I felt it was the best priced and most attractive (based on the ease of firmware updates) Blu-Ray player. I have a dozen+ Blu-Ray discs and have only recently started to play games on the machine.
We bought a PS3 purely because it was a Blue Ray player and the cheapest we could find. We primarily s it for Blue Ray DVD's and yes we now play a few games on it as well.
The next press release we see will be from Microsoft saying that they only count Windows Mobile in their statistics and dont count the Iphone as thats irrelevant.
I'm not buying either in the meantime.
This is still good news. Die HD-DVD die.
It's a theory_
2 - Apple has the iTMS as a download service_ Both Music and Video_ Many other companies have and are following suit_ Yes granted it is quicker to drive to Best Buy and purchase a physical copy or BlockBuster and rent one_ But with all of this download stuff getting easier and quicker and products like Solid State Hard Drives gaining capacity and stability to rival that of Magnetic Platter Drives...
What is the big damned deal about this whole next gen Disc crap? Is there really going to be a media format to come after Blu-Ray/ HD DVD? It seems like who ever initiated the CD/ DVD industry is trying to prolong their dying market_ When it is so cheap to buy an external Drive with 20 times the storage capacity on average_ Or more as they break the Terabyte mark_