Free Republic

Dear Blennos, You're receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well. While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements. Toward...

The root of the problem is that Blu-ray did not have a finished specification when devices went into production. Instead, there were two or three "profiles," outlined in the chart above. After November 1, any Blu-ray player had to meet 1.1, sometimes called "final standard profile." Panasonic planned a mid-November launch of its 1.1 player, and a production delay caused Samsung to update its player to the spec. Denon always planned to ship its first Blu-ray player in December, so it planned for 1.1 all along. Meanwhile, Sony, Pioneer and others introduced Blu-ray players in the fall that shipped just...