MCE Technologies released MCE Drive, which allows Mac users to read, write and print labels on optical discs.

The drive can read and write up to dual-layer Blu-ray discs at 2X speeds for BD-RE, 4X for BD-R. It can read BD-R at 6X and BD-RE at 2X speeds. The drive can read HD-DVD at 6X speeds. All DVD and CD reading and writing formats are supported. The drive comes with Toast 9 Titanium as an option for $100 extra.

This drive comes in two major variants, the external drive which connects using Firewire or USB 2.0 for use by all Mac users, or the internal drive version for Mac Pro and Power Mac users. The external drive sells for US $750, and the internal drive for $500.

Even though Microsoft has ceased all production of its HD DVD add-on accessory for the Xbox 360, apparently its team of software engineers weren't quite done with supporting the peripheral. Microsoft released on Tuesday a software update for all Xbox 360 HD DVD users. As soon as an Xbox 360 owner with the drive attempts to play an HD DVD movie, Xbox Live will immediately prompt for an update. Those without Xbox Live access will be able to download the update separately later this week, according to Microsoft's Larry Hyrb. This update includes compatibility improvements with certain titles and extended support for network features.

Microsoft apparently didn't get the memo about HD-DVD being dead until late this week. Microsoft announced that the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 is no longer being manufactured. Those that have already been manufactured and haven't been sold yet will most likely be sold at a discounted price until they're all gone. Despite the fact that they are no longer making an HD-DVD add-on, Microsoft will still provide a full warranty for the thing. They will also provide as much support for the device as if HD-DVD didn't die earlier this week.

Retail stores around Japan apparently got the hint that Toshiba recently gave up the HD format war. As piles of outmoded equipment pile up, retailers are anxious to get rid of them. In some stores, HD-DVD recorders can be found at the same price as older DVD recorders. At this point, the real savings can only be found in places around Tokyo, where the original story was recorded. However, expect retailers around the whole world to begin seriously discounting HD-DVD equipment. After all, the industry has decided on Blu-ray.

Samsung Electronics will concentrate its ongoing efforts to strengthen Blu-ray products since Toshiba virtually pulled the plug on its HD DVD products.

Samsung is expected to show more interests in Blu-ray products than rival HD DVDs

the company said on Sunday. Samsung officials have declined to further comment. The Korean electronics firm has currently been developing dual-format Blu-ray and HD DVD movie players such as the UP5000, but according to experts it will now focus on Blu-ray only with no plans to phase out any combo players.

Samsung, which has been adopting a dual-strategy for both Blu-ray and HD DVD products, is likely to cut the HD DVD portion because of aggressive marketing and closer industry connections over the technology

a market expert said.

This is an extraordinary week for the Blu-ray disk format. Aside from exclusive treatment from business giants Best Buy and Netflix, this week also witnessed Blu-ray sales topping two and a quarter million sales. This translates into an impressive 79% market share for Blu-ray in Europe. This epic landmark was reached two months after the previous landmark of 1 million units, which is an impressive feat, to say the least. Odd enough, HD-DVD is also trying to claim some victory. Apparently, 60% of all stand-alone players are HD-DVD.

While just earlier today we told you that Netflix is going Blu-ray exclusive, it seems like the folks over at the HD-DVD are taking another blow. Best Buy is happy to announce a new policy: Best Buy "will give preferential treatment to Blu-ray movies and hardware when it comes to floor space and positioning in its stores." Best Buy CFO and President Brian Dunn has this to say over why they chose Blu-ray:

Consumers have told us that they want us to help lead the way. We've listened to our customers, and we are responding. Best Buy will recommend Blu-ray as the preferred format. Our decision to shine a spotlight on Blu-ray Disc players and other Blu-ray products is a strong signal to our customers that we believe Blu-ray is the right format choice for them.

Best Buy believes that their decision will help make customers "feel confident in their high-def content choices". Best Buy mentioned that they will not cease selling HD-DVD products.

Even with the tide apparently shifting in Blu-ray Disc's favor, the HD DVD camp isn't about to relent in the on-going high-definition format war. HD DVD still commands a significant portion of exclusive content and the most affordable hardware, giving the format a fighting chance. One part of HD DVD's new strategy is on lower prices and selling the hardware's ability to upscale regular DVD movies.

According to announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), New Line Cinema has joined Warner Bros in revealing that in future it would only be supplying its movies in Blu-ray format - the competitor to Toshiba's format. The news means that just two of Hollywood's major studios have retained support for HD-DVD, which is mainly supported by computer companies such as Microsoft. The Blu-ray consortium - which consists of a wide range of entertainment companies as well as manufacturers including Sony and Apple - now has the potential to become the de facto standard for next generation DVDs. The two formats - which both offer higher capacity discs that are able to hold larger, high-definition video files - are incompatible with each other.

Blu-ray is an extremely popular HD media format at the moment, mainly because 2.5 million out of the 3 million Blu-ray players out there are PS3s. In an attempt to follow this success streak, the HD-DVD promoters are trying to promote their format by making sure everyone has more than enough HD-DVD movies to go around. When a customer buys a Venturer SHD7001, they get seven free HD-DVD movies. These disks come as a voucher for seven disks, which is redeemable at any store that sells HD-DVDs. This sales event is confirmed in the United Kingdom, and it is very likely that it will soon spread around the world. At the moment, the Venturer HD-DVD player promises to cost under £200, and should become available exclusively through QVC on December 29th.

Upon hearing that nearly 75% of all Blu-ray drives people own are built in to the PS3, Microsoft decided that the Xbox360 was a great way to promote the adoption of HD-DVD. However, if the player costs too much, nobody will go for it. And so, Microsoft lowered the price of the HD-DVD add-in drive to $129USD. You can nab one for yourself at Amazon and Toys R Us, if you're looking for a low-cost HD-DVD player. The drive can also be plugged into any PC and work just like it would on the Xbox360.

What was once a stalemate on the HD format front now seems like a landslide victory for the Blu-ray team. The latest Nielson figures shows that Black Friday really put Blu-ray in the chips. As of this week, Blu-ray now has a 72.6% market share over rival format HD-DVD. The most likely reason for this sudden push in sales was the release of "Live Free or Die Hard". Despite cheap HD-DVD players, Blu-ray has managed to maintain a sales advantage for quite some time, and currently is holding off HD-DVD with a 2-1 average sales advantage. Last week's sales advantage was roughly 3-1 in favor of Blu-ray.

Regardless of how successful Blu-ray and HD-DVD are right now, HD-DVD has almost always had the edge as far as pricepoint goes. Venturer Electronics is proud to continue that legacy with the SHD7000 HD-DVD player. In stores just in time for the holidays, this player is currently $197.88 at Wal-Mart, and will hopefully permeate other stores around the world. While some would argue that the SHD7000 arrived too late, considering the success and low price of the Toshiba HD-A2, current prices say otherwise. While you could get the HD-A2 for as low as $99 during in-store special sales at Wal-Mart, the price is now hovering at around $250. The SHD7000 is nearly identical to the Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player as far as features go, boasting HDMI, 1080i output resolution, and Dolby TrueHD support.

While the Blu-ray party claims that over one million Blu-ray movies were distributed in the United Kingdom a few days back, the HD-DVD promotional group has their own victory to celebrate. Over three-quarters of a million Americans now are the proud owners of some form of HD-DVD player. This recent success is most likely due to the low-priced availability of HD-DVD players ($200 for the Toshiba HD-A2, and less than that for the HD-DVD Xbox 360 add-on drive). Considering that in June a relatively low 150,000 units were sold, this 400% increase in sales is nothing to shake a finger at. However, this rise in sales may not last. Most HD-DVD owners are movie aficionados, and most Blu-ray drive owners are gamers (thanks to the Blu-ray integration with the PS3).

The HD-format war stalemate seems to have been smashed to pieces. Thanks to the PlayStation3 shipping with a Blu-ray drive, several million gamers have a Blu-ray player already attached to their HDTV, and are not bothered to buy an HD-DVD player. Now that several million gamers have a Blu-ray player, they're buying Blu-ray movies to watch. Of 1,369,863 HD movies sold last month, a relatively paltry 369,863 of them were HD-DVD. What's more, if Blu-ray sales figures included actual Blu-ray games sold, then there would have been more than 21 million Blu-ray disks sold. The main movie that attributed to such successful Blu-ray sales was the extremely awesome movie "300", which was a very graphic portrayal of the battle of Thermopylae.

Apparently the "why can't we all get along" mentality does not apply to the current HD format war. While Blu-ray admits a stalemate and HD-DVD players get cheap, Warner Brothers was hoping to promote a "Total HD" format, which would play on both players until either Blu-ray or HD-DVD was chosen. However, without many other studios supporting this format, Warner Brothers felt like this project did not have much merit. And so, they have at this point abandoned it, and plan to simply release their movies in both formats, a move most other studios refuse to do. Jim Noonan, Senior Vice President of Warner Brothers Entertainment Group, explains the economics of this move in Layman's terms.

For the moment, the [Total HD] is on hold. We're the only studio producing content in both formats. If we were to put out Total HD with just our titles, it wouldn't really provide the solution to our retail partners that it was intended to provide. If anything, at this point, it would further complicate their life, because there would be another product looking for shelf space. Our job is not to further complicate the lives of our retailers

.

While the proponents of both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD format would love for you to think that either format is ahead, current data shows that neither side has any major lead on the other. Toshiba has $200 HD-DVD players, which is half the cost of the cheapest Blu-ray player. Paramount also recently decided to "change sides", and is now a proponent for HD-DVD. However, the Blu-ray camp has several million Playstation 3 consoles already sold and in homes around the world. Sony CEO Howard Stringer was quoted as saying that he wished Sony could go back in time, and make sure that instead of this HD-DVD vs Blu-ray mess, there was one universal format.

The Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player has been earning a name for itself lately, and be exactly what HD-DVD proponents need to spread their HD format. While Wal-Mart will price their HD-A2s at $198, and Circuit City will offer them for $197.99, Best Buy has both retailers trounced. For $179.99, you can get yourself an HD-A2, and everything that comes with it. Best Buy is sold out of HD-A2s at the time of writing.

The Toshiba HD-A2, the only HD DVD player to be offered for less than $200USD, is not going to be a Wal-Mart exclusive. Circuit City is already stocking HD-A2s, and Best Buy will likely soon follow suit.

Toshiba HD-A2 is an entry-level HD DVD player capable of HD DVD, DVD and CD playback as well as hardware decoding of H.264 (MPEG4 AVC), VC-1 and MPEG2 (standard DVD) streams. Additionally, the player features Sharc DSP to process audio in Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD (2 channel), DTS and DTS-HD formats. The player can output video in 720p (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080) resolutions using HDMI or component interconnection and multi-channel audio using HDMI or S/PDIF connectors.

The players will likely make their way to stores just in time for the holiday season. There are rumors of a $299 package, which includes 5 HD-DVD movies.

Transformers director Michael Bay is "feeling Blu". The main reason is because he feels that his decision to release Transformers exclusively on HD-DVD was "short-sighted and it has delayed consumers' moving to HD. As a director, my critical eye is that Blu-ray is where my money is. Consumers are smart, and they are going to wait it out."

Regardless of where Michael Bay's money is, Paramount already announced incredible sales of the Transformers movie, on both HD-DVD and DVD.

While Blu-Ray may be getting more sales as of late, HD-DVD proprietors have a figurative ace-in-the-hole. They know that regardless of how good a product is, nobody's going to get it if it is not reasonably priced. And so, they are trying to get an HD-DVD player into customers' homes by offering players at $200 at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is currently stocking said HD-DVD players, and will formally begin selling them on November 3rd.

Microsoft recently aspired to steal some of the Nintendo Wii's thunder by creating a low cost counterpart of their console with the Xbox 360 Arcade, and Sony quickly followed suit with the 40GB PS3. However, Microsoft may be working on another version of the Xbox360: one with an HD-DVD player built in. If this is true, and Microsoft does release an HD-DVD Xbox360, then Toshiba will officially be getting paid by two console manufacturers: Sony will pay Toshiba for the Cell, and Microsoft will pay for the HD-DVD player. This rumored HD-DVD Xbox360 may also bring new features to the table, such as a larger hard drive, an HDTV tuner, and a "port for MP3 players".

Back in January, Toshiba brought their 51GB triple-layer HD-DVD to the DVD forum. Six months later, the DVD forum has officially green-lighted the new disk. The new disk should play fine on most HD-DVD players, and even if it doesn't, the majority of people that bought an HD-DVD player probably wouldn't mind an upgrade anyways. There is no word as to when production will start, or when we'll start seeing this disk. The DVD forum is also working on a new format. By placing a double-layer HD DVD disk on the back of a standard DVD, they hope to create a future proof DVD disk.

Two major movie studios, Dreamworks Animation SKG and Paramount Pictures said Monday that they will offer movies exclusively on the HD-DVD format rather than the competing Blu-Ray format. Jeffrey Katzenberg, Chief Executive of Dreamworks said the cost of HD-DVD players is dropping and may hit $199 by the end of this year making it more affordable for families. Experts still believe Blu-Ray is going to win the format war and that the decision by Paramount and Dreamworks is oddly timed. Despite being more expensive, Blu-Ray has outsold HD-DVD by a margin of 2 to 1 this year.

The epic tale of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans who bravely defended Greece from the Persian Empire is now an epic and successful film. In this day and age, it's not surprising to see that 300 was put on both HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Warner Brothers soon proclaimed that 300 was the fastest selling HD-DVD movie ever. However, the Hollywood Reporter has recently (figuratively) burst Warner Brothers' bubble by reporting that twice as many copies of 300 were sold on Blu-ray than on HD-DVD.