Some time ago LG released a stand alone player with support to both high definition formats, and now they are offering multi format drive for PCs. The GGW-H10NI can record to BD-R and read HD DVD media and comes with a whopping price tag of $1199. While the drive is way too expensive for a regular consumer, it is an interesting milestone achievement which proves that the two formats can be squeezed into a single device.

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The legendary virtual drive emulation software DAEMON Tools has evolved to a commercial Pro version. This new version of the software is offered as shareware or free adware version. A virtual drive emulator mounts disc images on your hard drive as CD/DVD drives, and enables you to access the disc content without the physical media.

Download now!

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Blockbuster has 1450 retail stores for movie rentals, and they have been renting both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats in 250 of them. According to Blockbuster the Blu-ray format was dominant with of the 70% popularity of high definition movie rentals, which indicates an obvious customer preference towards Blu-ray. This has been considered as huge, if not devastating, blow for the HD DVD camp, as a good availability of rentals is a key issue in video format selection, as it was decades ago in the Beta vs. VHS video cassette battle.

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According to DigiTimes, OEM price for blank CD-R discs have dropped to below US$0.10 due to oversupply. Demand for CD-R discs is lower than expected mainly because brand and retail channel clients in the US and Europe had replenished their inventories in the first quarter of 2007 and therefore placed few OEM orders this quarter. In response manufacturers in Taiwan have cut prices to compete for few OEM orders resulting in the low OEM price levels. Despite the OEM price fall CMC Magnetics has declined low-price orders.

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The well known gaming site IGN has made an attempt to forecast the development of game consoles and makes a prediction how will the technology evolve to the year 2010. The year 2010 however is only 2,5 years away, and if you look at the life span of Sony PlayStation 2, one would expect that PlayStation 3 would be just about to reach it’s prime. Nintendo is perhaps the strongest candidate to release a new console, an upgraded version of the under powered Wii. Microsoft most likely has a shorter life span for Xbox 360 than Sony has, and they will keep on trying to trip Sony by releasing the next Xbox by 2010..12. According to IGN, the technical improvements are quite bland. HD graphics will become more popular, online distribution may partially replace discs and biggest leaps in visual candy is predicted to be in the physics modelling.

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Couple of days ago Audioholics.com published an interesting editorial which predicts a dark future for the new high definition video disc formats, the HD DVD and Blu-ray. The author wrote the original article about a year ago with the title Demise of the competing high definition formats and now he returns to the topic with a list of ten reasons to failure. Good reading for everyone interested in HD video and the author really ha some valid arguments to back his opinion. It would not be the first time when more advanced formats fail to penetrate the market. High definition audio formats SACD(Super Audio CD) and DVD Audio have not reached the general public as the people have not seen the benefits of these formats worth the investment.

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Sony is firing their legal guns to all directions. Now they are aggressively pursuing the hackers that cracked the PlayStation 3 copy protection. According to the source PS3 firmware version 1.10 and 1.11 have been cracked, forcing the console to boot copies of games. However, booting is not enough yet - hackers have not been able succesfully play the copied games.

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Their opponent the Blu-ray camp has previously made several statements about the success of their format. Their claims have been backed by PlayStation 3 sales and some success of selling Blu-ray movies. Now the HD DVD party boast that they have a 60% market share in set-top players sold. This is hardly surprising, as their press releases seems to about about dedicated players which rules out PS3. On the other hand HD DVD/Toshiba were first market, and their (Toshiba’s PC based players) are cheaper. Not much to cheer about after all?

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Recently there has been strong rumors that Microsoft would be willing to cut the price of the Xbox 360. Microsoft and especially Sony have a reason to be worried, as Nintendo’s different kind of approach on the ‘next generation of gaming’ has been surprisingly succesfull so far. While the Wii is technically much less advanced, more comparable to original Xbox or PS2, it is very cheap and delivers a whole new kind of gaming experiece. The source however has published comments by Microsoft that no price reductions are on their way, at least not in the near future.

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Korean LG was the first hardware vendor to deliver a player that is capable of handling both of the high definition formats, the Blu-ray and HD-DVD. AVRewview got their hands on to LG BH100, but unfortunately the first impressions seem to be failing expectations. The device is lacking several essential next generation, like the support for HD-DVD’s HDi for interactive content.

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