http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh...rly_Summer/521

"The reps said that discs with a 15GB HD DVD on one side and a 25GB Blu-ray on the other will be ready to ship by June. They said that that initial release would be followed by a higher-capacity HD DVD 30GB/Blu-ray 25GB in August.

The group offered no timetable for a full-capacity HD DVD 30GB/Blu-ray 50GB version."

So it looks like dual layers for both sides is a long way off since they didn't even anounce a time frame.

With my limited Spanish it looks like a July release in Spain (rest of Europe I guess and the US??)

http://www.zonadvd.com/modules.php?n...ticle&sid=9509

Guess again, bub:

1/1/08

HAPPY NEW YEAR - HD-DVD IS DEAD

(Them trying to hide their hyphen didn't work, either.)

Hello, HD-DVD and 'bye 'bye Blu-Ray? Nope, things ended up the other way around!

Throughout 2007, the Blu-Ray video movie format already had the support of major studios including Columbia, Disney, Fox, Lions Gate, Miramax, New Line and, of course, Blu-Ray owners Sony. And until this week, Warner Bros. was releasing movies for both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, but they've just switched to Blu-Ray exclusively.

(And no, all you revisionists, I'm not dropping HD's old hyphen, anymore than I'm putting the word Ray in lower case. Both things look dumb, so forget it.)

Normally, a studio jumping ship like that would be news on it's own, but this time it's major news because it also opened the door for Paramount to dump HD-DVD. Why? Well, according to a report in the Financial Times, Paramount is planning to drop support for HD-DVD because of a clause in its contract that lets it switch sides if Warner Bros. moved solely to Blu-Ray... which Warners just now did.

Although paramount hasn't officially announced their switch yet, it looks like a done deal, since the final sales figures for 2007 just came in, showing that between 90 and 93 per cent of all high-def DVD sales went to Blu-Ray. After Paramount goes to Blu-Ray, that will leave Universal as the only one backing HD-DVD, flapping its lonely little flag in the wind.

Both formats had worried about falling prey to HD online downloads, if the "high-def wars" had continued for several more years, but that's all over now. Blu-Ray has clearly won, and nobody's going to quit buying reliable hard copies of DVDs.

So now that Paramount is set to tip over, what about the last holdout - Universal? They very unwisely had no such Paramount-like "get out of jail" escape clause in their HD-DVD contract.

"Who it boils down to, for all intents and purposes, is NBC Universal," Van Baker, vice president of media industry research for Gartner Business Consulting, told TechNewsWorld.com.

"Universal has been in the HD-DVD camp since day one, they haven't moved once, they haven't wavered," said Baker. "They are the kingmaker, and if they flip, it's over," he explained. "The only remaining obstacle for Blu-Ray is to get Universal to flip. And if I was a bettin' man, I'd say that was probably going to happen sometime this year."

There you have it, then - HD-DVD is dead and buried as of this year. And to think that at this same time last year, the HD-DVD guys actually thought they still had a chance. But that was before all the defections started. How quickly such things can change!

What was that old HD-DVD slogan? "The look and sound of perfect." Ya, make that "the look and sound of perfectly DEAD!"

Wait so you ressurected a thread that is almsot 8 months old to post an article that contains news that is itself a month old to gloat? Is that your point?

You forget to mention that the new post has nothing to do with the original topic.

Swing, and a miss! Strike-out.

I vote for pointless.

Pointless? Strikes? You bums can't even play the game! I posted news about a Christmas financial disaster that was only officially confirmed the following month. So what? YOU guys bring up stuff from YEARS ago! So much for your weak excuses, then.

I think this thread will be closed today.