Hi-Tech enthusiasts who will visit this year's IFA Consumer Electronics show ( Berlin Aug 31 - Sep 5 2007 ) will have the chance to witness the official showcase of the new LG GGW-H20N drive, the first 6x Blu-Ray burner which is also capable of reading HD DVD media.
The GGW-H10N Super-multi Blue Blu-Ray/HD DVD was LG's pride up until now.

Samsung a world leader in Audio , Video devices announced earlier this week in a conference held in Germany the projected release of its Duo HD (high-definition) BD-UP5000 Player.
The BD-UP 5000 supports both HD DVD and BD and comes second to the LG Electronics BH100 only when it comes to the release time.
The device will be initially introduced in the European market at a price of about 400 euro (US$545) in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Or, to be specific, the EC is investigating why movie studios chose to back either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. This investigation is to ensure that there are no monopolies or any other shenanigans going on with either format.

HD-DVD is mainly being promoted by Toshiba, with help from movie studios Universal, Warner and Paramount. The last two also support Blu-Ray. Sony and 20th Century Fox only release HD content via Blu-Ray, and several other studios support Blu-Ray. There is no clear winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war at this point.

Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced the 1,000 HD DVD Indies Project, designed to lower the barriers to entry for filmmakers to produce and distribute movies in the HD DVD format through the innovative manufacturing-on-demand technology of CustomFlix, a part of an Amazon group of companies. Jointly sponsored by Amazon and Microsoft, the project will provide free authoring and setup services for up to 1,000 selected indie titles.

The latest titles coming to the HD DVD format will take advantage of their player's internet connection. For example, the soon to be released HD DVD '300' will allow users to re-edit the movie by selecting scenes and reordering them as they see fit. The edit can then be uploaded to a server hosted by the studio and viewed around the world. '300' will be released for Blu-Ray but will lack the re-editing feature and other web based extras because not all Blu-Rays can connect to the internet. As of May, Toshiba's HD DVD owns 70 percent of the high definition player market share, while Sony's Blu-Ray owns 30 percent, excluding the Playstation 3.

Consumers are already torn between choosing Blu-ray and HD DVD for their high definition format, but that's only the surface competition. If you dig a little deeper, you can find that there is another battle commencing between HDMI and DisplayPort, two different interface standards. Although HDMI seemed to the main choice among manufacturers, DisplayPort 1.1 has now been approved which could reignite the competition, giving yet more trouble for people moving to high definition. The main improvement of 1.1 is that it boasts High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) version 1.3, however groups backing HDMI still argue that HDMI can still do everything that DisplayPort can and more, urging manufacturers to stick to HDMI. But with the backing of large companies such as AMD, NVIDIA, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, DisplayPort won't be defeated too easily, and consumers could have some more HD headaches still to come. DisplayPort could well become the replacement for DVI among graphics card companies, whilst HDMI looks to have control of the TV based market.

ASUS showcases the W1 and W2 notebook series with HD-DVD high-definition solution at CeBIT this year that will dramatically raise expectations of visual and audio satisfaction. Incorporated with Toshiba's HD DVD-R optical drive, the W1 and W2 notebooks can read discs with up to 30GB of data, including video, photo and music all from a single HD DVD disc. The HD DVD-R optical drive also plays HD DVD movies at a resolution that is six times sharper than the DVD format, presenting a vibrant, incredibly sharp and state-of-art multimedia experience. The W1 and W2 series offer an all-round high-definition experience with built-in digital TV tuner and HDMI interface, supporting standard, enhanced, or high-definition video, plus muti-channel digital audio on a single cable.

The Inquirer noted that Slysoft promised it's customers that their software would be able to remove Blu-ray Digital Rights Management (DRM) software by the end of this quarter. It seems that the people at Slysoft have not only done this, but accomplished their goal an entire month ahead of schedule. AnyDVDHD version 6.1.3.0 adds more than just true Blu-ray support. It also promises to run on Windows Vista and XP x64 (along with all the other operating systems it supports). The free upgrade also removes region encoding. Now it seems that the only problem people will have with upgrading their PC's to support high-definition optical drives is affording the drive and Slysoft AnyDVD HD. You can get AnyDVD HD here, and if you already have it, you can patch yourself for Blu-ray support here.

Samsung has been seen before as an official maker of Blu-ray hardware, and a supporter of the standard. So their announcement of an HD-DVD laptop took a lot of people by surprise. The Samsung M55 features a 17" widescreen capable of an impressive 1920x1200 resolution (more than enough for 1080p HD DVD's), powered by an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 with 256MB GDDR3 graphics memory. The laptop also carries an HD-DVD player (of course), 2GB of DDR2 667 system RAM, a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, a 120GB hard drive, and support for all wireless standards, excluding 802.11N. All this is run with the help of Windows Vista Home Premium. The laptop will go on sale in Korea for KRW3m ($3,186/£1,627/€2,419).

A lot of *nix users know SourceForge as a great place to find (source code for) programs. A SourceForge member decided it would be a good idea to post a program called "BackupHDDVD". BackupHDDVD literally "backed up" HDDVD's, allowing for multiple copies to be stored and produced. SourceForge recently got a letter saying that any program that cracks copy protection like that is breaking a federal law, and so they decided to remove the program.

Blu-ray has now sold more disks overall than rival format HD DVD, selling in a ratio of 100:98.71. Blu-ray has been outselling HD DVD for a few months now, but HD DVD had a head start in sales thanks to an earlier launch date, but due to PS3 there are now five times as many Blu-ray players in homes, making Blu-ray is the obvious choice for most consumers. Blu-ray wasn't helped by its high initial price compared to HD DVD, but that has once again been helped by the relatively cheap PS3. There is still confusion in the market for many consumers as some companies stick exclusively to one format, but studios such as Warner and Paramount are willing to sell on both formats, which has helped boost overall sales.

Although both HD-DVD and Blu-ray have already been hacked to get around copy protection measures, a Doom9 forum poster has managed to find the most effective method yet. Until now, each different film has needed its own unique key to decrypt it, but now all you need is a single Processing Key, which works on both high definition formats. The method used by the hacker was to record all the information that was being read from the disk into the memory and therefore managed to find the processing key. This Processing Key will probably stop working soon however - once the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator gets word of it future disks are likely to be updated.

According to the latest figures published by Nielsen VideoScan, sales of pre-recorded Blu-ray media have outsold HD DVD by a huge margin in the USA. During the first week of January, HD DVDs were selling at 47.14% of the rate of Blu-ray disks, with that figure falling to 38.36% during the second. Although overall more HD DVD disks have been sold so far (they have been out for longer), the PS3 (which can play Blu-ray) seems to have given a huge boost to Blu-ray sales after shipping over a million consoles in the same time that just 175,000 HD DVD players were shipped to the US. The Xbox 360 HD DVD drive may help to balance this out a little, but for many the PS3 seems the best value way to move to High Definition.

Despite numerous reports last week (including one on techPowerUp!) that the adult entertainment industry has gone for HD-DVD over Blu-ray, DailyTech claims that this isn't completely true. In an interview with the site, founder of Vivid Entertainment (one of the big names in pr0n), Steven Irish, claimed that his company fully intends to back both formats. The adult entertainment industry has a big impact on sales despite its secretive nature - when the industry chose VHS over Betamax it was deemed to be a big factor in VHS' success. Other companies such as Digital Playground still intend to stick with HD-DVD to start with, but the industry isn't being exclusive. However, it's very possible that online downloads could be the future of all films, not just adult ones, and that could be a big deciding factor. All that can be said so far is that the ball isn't in HD-DVD's court just yet.

The war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD has yet to be won, though HD-DVD did win a battle for the porn industry has chosen HD-DVD. This multi-billion industry, even though not everyone publicly admits they fund it, already finished off Betamax in the VHS - Betamax war, it might just be the ultimate weapon again. However, since this specific industry spreads across the Internet like a plague it might not be the determining factor in this war. Many viewers prefer the anonymous nature of the internet which makes both HD-DVD and Blu-ray less interesting.
Apparently the reason behind this choice is rather simply, money. HD-DVD is cheaper and easier to produce, and according to the adult industry there are more HD-DVD players available at the moment.

In due time we shall know if this battle turned the tides. And on a more personal note, I shall download my pr0n until the future HD standard is final.

Warner home video may just have the answer buyers have been waiting for. If you have been holding out on buying a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player, because it is not yet set which will prevail - wait no more. Warner is now offering "Total Hi Def" discs, which combine the Blue-Ray and HD-DVD discs on one disc. So no matter what player you own, the movie will play in HD. First movies using the format will be released in the second half of 2007. The buyer only needs to pay the extra licensing fee for both technologies, as Warner will not charge more for the special discs themselves.

Toshiba today brought the wide ranging capabilities of HD DVD to the desktop PC with the announcement of a standard height HD DVD drive able to read and write to HD DVD and to standard DVD and CD discs. Sample shipments of the new drive, SD-H903A, are scheduled to start this month. The new SD-H903A integrates a blue-violet laser diode that can read and write to HD DVD-R discs and that offers support for high-density HD DVD-ROM discs, including high definition movie and video images. The drive also offers all the functionality of a super multi-drive, with high performance, high-speed read and write to all flavors of standard DVD and CD discs. It comes with SATA interface and 8MB buffer. Toshiba will feature the new drive at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007.

Considering that there is no clear winner in the high definition media content battle, Warner Brothers patented dual-format technology in September. With this technology, Warner Brothers will take a dual layer high definition disk, put the HD-DVD version of a movie on one side, and the Blu-ray version on the other. Paramount will also begin producing movies on this universal disk, which should not cost more than an HD-DVD or a Blu-ray disk.

Seoul, Korea, January 4, 2007 --- LG Electronics (LG), a leader in consumer electronics and mobile communications, announced that it will launch the world's first dual-format high-definition disc player, capable of playing both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD content. The unit will be released in the United States in early 2007. Details will be provided at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held January 8-11 in Las Vegas.

AMD will begin offering AMD Live! computers with Blu-ray and HD DVD drives in Q3 2007. This should definitely increase AMD's market share in multimedia PC's. While both AMD and Intel are working hard on making a nice multimedia platform, AMD with AMD Live! and Intel with Intel Viiv, neither of them have very much market share. This is probably due to a lack of enthusiasm from any major computer vendor. AMD's support for HD DVD and Blu-ray should help the Blu-ray drive gain popularity.

After three years of work, 20 of the largest DVD manufacturers in China demonstrated 80 EVD players today. EVD is intended as a low cost alternative to the relatively pricy Blu-ray and HD-DVD and uses more conventional data storage methods. By using advanced compression techniques the manufacturers intend to store high definition movies without requiring a large increase in capacity over a standard DVD.

Japanese Buffalo announced the release of the first HD DVD ROM drive for PCs, offering playback of double-layer 30GB HD DVD video movies. Dubbed "HDV-ROM2.4FB", the ATAPI drive will retail in the Japanese market late December at a suggested retail price of 37,000 Yen ($322). The drive is based on the Toshiba SD-H802A HD DVD ROM drive, and is capable of reproducing both single layer (15GB) and double layer (30GB) HD DVD-ROM media at 2.4x (CLV, 10708.8 KB/s). Other specifications include reading of DVD-ROM and DVD±R (SL and DL) as well as DVD±RW media at 5x. As for the CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW formats, the Buffalo drive supports reading at a speed of 15x maximum. Buffalo HDV-ROM2.4FB is one of the first HD DVD ROM drives for the computer market that have been publicly introduced. NEC(HR-1100A) and HP(hd100) also introduced HD DVD ROM drives earlier this year, which never showed up on the market.