News Universal no longer HD DVD exclusive

okay so what studios are left on HD-DVD? that are exclusive not ones that supply both formats...

 

Yah, rootkits for all that will take over your computer! All hail Sony!

 

The game/war is not over yet!

 

Except Sony has never used rootkits on their Video media, that was something that occured in their Audio division, and something they've stopped doing since the whole thing blew over.

 

This may still be true. I was reading an article the other day that stated that the new Blu-ray profile 2.0 that is being ratified could leave early adopters out in the cold with regard to new features, but most importantly could lead to incompatability on old equipment for new titles, which may even goes so far as to make some movies unplayable on some equipment.

http://www.hdtv-news.co.uk/2008/01/16/blu-ray-craps-on-customers/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7187179.stm

Apologies for the wording used in the link, these aren't the article I was reading, but they same the same sort of thing. The comments of the Blu-ray big cheese, Mr Simonis, if they are to be believed, scream Sony attitude.

 

It's no different than when DVD was still "ironing out the kinks" in the early days of that format. For example, if some of you recall, many couldn't decode DTS audio tracks because of hardware limitations. This has nothing to do with Sony in particular regarding 'attitudes' or anything, merely growing pains with the format. New tech poses new problems, like anything. The main difference is, this time the virtually all the hardware available have ethernet capabilities so firmware upgrades are rather easy and relatively painless. Some things cannot be upgraded, unfortunately, namely physical hardware. This is why early adoption is always a risk. The users knew this by buying the hardware in the first place.

I can recall my first DVD player. A table-top unit. I paid $800 for it, and it couldn't even play dual-layer discs without issues.

 

The thing is did they? I consider myself relatively tech-savvy and have followed the HDDVD/BluRay battle to a certain degree and I wasn't aware this was the case. I don't think this sort of blanket statement can fly to be honest, especially with the way HD is being pushed in adverts. In all the electrical retailers I've been in I haven't seen any notices stating anything about BluRay profiles and I can't see the staff in Currys or Comet mentioning to a potential buyer that even though Blu-Ray is now top dog the £400+ player they want to sell you now in 6 months is not going to be able to allow you access to all the stuff on any of the £30 BluRay disc, in fact there is a small chance it might not even play it at all.

 

I certainly knew this was the case, from being bitten the first time around with the early issues with DVD.

Oddly enough, here's a quote about this issue recently from Digital Bits: