All industry rumors right now are heading toward LionsGate support early next year. I'm hoping they revisit the already released Blu-ray titles using VC-1 as well.

Though I havn't posted in it, I think the thread you started on AVS regarding studios "dropping" support is the most important thing that can happen within the next year. We should all be keeping our eyes on all Time Warner companies come Qrt 1 2007.

I wasn't aware that Sony had been using it on all their titles. But, then, I haven't been paying much attention, save for the amusing arguments in this forum about the "Beyond High Definition" slogan.

Saw this posted by PeterS on AVS. Alex also stated he has heard this is true for at least Blu-Ray Hardware from Panasonic.

"Spoke to a knowledgable dealer today (at least he has been right on in the past) who told me to "skip" the Pioneer, Panasonic and Sony players.

He has good information (according to him) that each of these players will be refreshed within 4 months of their release with units supporting HDMI 1.3 and all of the audio formats. Supposedly, the initial units will not be upgradable. He also pointed out that the intial units were supposed to be out 4 months or more ago, and that this timeline is in keeping with a one-year update to what they had originally planned."

I think its unlikely to happen, but Time Warner dropping support of either format is the death of it. Their catalog is that strong.

Okay, can I just say fuck Best Buy? I went to pick up some new releases today and they only had Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, Dazed & Confused, End of Days, and Land of the Dead. They had Tokyo Drift but no other F&F movies. No Robin Hood, no T3, no Grand Prix, ARGH. I want to watch Robin Hood NOW. Fucking fuckers.

Rant over.

wtf? So all of a sudden there's not enough to go around? Amazon won't ship. Best buy don't have. I want to watch RH too.

But hey, they had 10,000 copies of Tokyo Drift on DVD in stock.

It's worse at the CompUSA I work at. They still have not updated their HD DVD stock beyond the initial batch of The Last Samurai, Million Dollar Baby, and Phantom of the Opera.

It's all ordering online for me.

Someone already hinted that the "older" BD titles that were done using MPEG2 will be re-done for HD DVD. That's a big "score" from me

Yeah, everyone is concerned with getting MORE studio support. No one ever really thinks about or mentions them dropping one format or the other. I think it's very possible.

They could've been sold out. I went to the local Worst Buy around 4:30 this afternoon and picked up the 2nd-to-last copies of T3 and Robin Hood.

They also changed the layout for HD-DVD and Blu-rry. Each format was now being displayed alongside the SD-DVD shelves. And they were right near the new releases so no one would miss it.

The guy I talked to, who put the discs out, said they didn't receive any copies of either title. I'm not in a big city, so it wouldn't surprise if they don't send them all the discs on the release day.

WB is probably the most influential entity in the entire industry, as you stated about the strength of their catalog.

If PS3 sales don't have a strong attachment rate to the Blu-Ray films, we can be looking at Warner and Universal taking a joint stand for Hd-dvd. If software comparisons are still 11-1 or even 20-1 after January all bets are off. This is certainly what New Line is waiting around to see next year. I think the Time Warner properties all are remembering Lieberfarb's words from last year.

"Lieberfarb launched right into Blu-Ray versus HD DVD, but his comments were somewhat surprising. He stated that Hollywood had been "duped" into blindly following a battle between game consoles instead of making a decision based on their best interests. Sony, of course, is pushing Blu-Ray hard by including a BD-ROM drive in the Playstation 3, due some time next year. Microsoft, while not initially including a HD DVD drive in the XBox 360, is a strong promoter of the HD DVD standard and may in the future utilize it in their game console."

"If you ever read "The Art of War," you will see all of Sony's moves, including taking all its enemies in the same tent and then leaving them empty-handed, are things that they have done historically. They did the same thing to Matsushita and Betamax, they did the same thing to Matsushita on compact disc, they did the same thing to Matsushita on the digital video camcorder. - Lieberfarb "

When I got to the Hd-dvd display today I noticed they only had the WB films out. WTF right? The stockguy comes out with another box with the Universal titles in it! So I decided to take a walk around the dvd section and let him put the new titles out on the shelf, you know, not to distract him. It took him 20 minutes to put the seven Universal titles in alphabetical order on the shelf! He honestly had no clue what he was doing. At that point I figured all the threads on these forums about some Best Buy stores favoring one format don't even scatch the surface of the problem.

I'm sure incompetence and flat out laziness do factor into it. The guy wouldn't even check in the back for me.

However, the HD DVD section is double the size of the BD section at my Best Buy, so I don't think they're blindly favoring BD.

This was the point I was trying to make with my long post a few pages back. Alot of people on here just dont realize how educated a good portion of the population is on electronic news like this. I also think people misunderstood me in regards to what i meant by educated. I am not suggestiong that these people are tech savy like those of us on here, just that they read the news and are aware of more than people are giving them credit for.

PS...

Same but even moreso in my Best Buy. With this weeks releases the HD-DVD section grew to be at least 3 times as big as Blu Ray and another interesting point is they are stocking up to 3 times as many copys of HD-DVD's as they are Blu Ray. There are no more than 3 of each Blu Ray title and they had 9 copy's of all the new releases for HD-DVD and around 5-6 copies of the older HD DVD titles. I talked to my favorite sales guy there and he said those are the same Blu Ray movies they got in months ago, they just arent selling at all and the HD-DVD's were really startiing to sell.

PS...

Confirmed by a British forum member who heard that at UK HiFi Forum last Friday. The current DMP-BD10 will be discontinued shortly after release, and new Panasonic players with HDMI 1.3 and advanced audio decoding are expected for March/April '07.

Can you say 'Osborne'?

This is an interesting quote as it seems this is the same thing Sony is doing this time around as well...Pretty much seems like they hung Samsung out to dry.

I think "educated" means they actually KNOW something to most of us. You are describing a guy who saw a commercial once. I have seen and purchased pantiliners for the wife, but I wouldn't call myself educated on them.

Commercials haven't started airing for the add-on yet, have they?

That is almost .sig-worthy.

What are pantiliners? Is it HD or BD?

Don't know, don't want to know.

Next generation...

Seriously though, I think purchasing those is the female's global test of our love for them. Ive been there and done that!

I just talked to a co-worker a few minutes ago about the 360 addon...he is going to get that as his merge into the hd formats.

Funny, cause the PS3 and 360 addon seem to be like "dipping your toes in the water" for this format war. Ill be curious to see how many do this and how many titles they buy.