Free Republic

NEW YORK — The HD DVD is now the Highly Dead DVD. Toshiba Corp., creator of the HD DVD, dropped out of the battle Tuesday over the next generation of movie-disc technology and conceded to the rival Blu-ray format from Sony. It was the biggest battle between two video formats since Betamax lost out to VHS in the 1980s. In the long run, the end of the latest format war is expected to be good for consumers, who will no longer have to agonize over which technology to choose for high-definition movies, and won't have to go to the trouble...

At the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) trade show in Denver, a company promoting a new high-definition optical disc format demonstrated set-top players and high-definition movies that cost far less than ones that use the competing Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD formats. The only faux pas: Arriving late to a two-party format war that consumers are already reluctant to support. Next month, New Medium Enterprises' 1080p set-top players, which use the HD VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) format, will go on sale on Amazon.com and in stores such as Radio Shack and Costco for around $150--about half the cost...

As the tirade of HD back scratching continues unabated, with the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats vying for market and consumer dominance, supporters in both camps claim superiority at every turn despite the pendulum motion attributed to sales of software and hardware across separate regions of the world. With Sony’s recently released PlayStation 3 making a significant impact on the attraction of the Japanese giant’s Blu-ray high-definition format thanks to the videogames console’s sub-$500 USD price tag (which will soon shift to $599 USD following the production abandonment of the cheaper $499 20GB HDD model) sales of Blu-ray discs and hardware...

I'm not much for vanities, so please forgive me this one. Why isn't ABC showing the Indy 500 in Hi Def? Did they have technical difficulties, or did someone at ABC sports decide it wasn't important enough? I personally couldn't care less who wins Indy, my style of racing starts this afternoon at 5pm, but I thought it would be cool to watch Indy in Hi Def. After listening to the media pundits imply that Indy is so much more sophisticated than NASCAR, you would think they would spend the money to broadcast it at the highest level possible. Almost...