blu ray or hd?

[Malatory]

Nice thing about Blue-ray is that Japan will be region 1 with the US so import of Disk wont require region free players. I been waiting for this one for about 6-7 years. As I had a customer that would and call to tell me about some of the improvements that were going on. If he wasn't breaking any NDA then he had some good inside sources. (I did find the information about 2-3 weeks later).

HD doesnt have region coding.

[Rankenphile]

100gb is far off though, maybe 2 years. Unless they already have the technology but are withholding it to make profit on lower tech bluray then realeasing high tech bluray and making more. Sound business strategy but tends to piss of the wiser consumers.

Unfortunately, the "wiser consumers" tend to be few and far between, and they know it.

Honestly, I love the idea of Blu-ray, but with Sony's horrible DRM track record, especially with the recent root kit scandal, I don't know how excited I am about it. Frankly, I was a bit of a Sony fanboy before all that, and it really made me take a look at some of their business practices. Now, I'm very turned off by them, as a company.

Regardless, no matter how excited we get, this is going to be one of those things that is decided by the mass market, will lead to market schizms in media for a couple years, and will only hurt the general consumer until it is standardized into one format, regardless of which format comes out the victor.

I mean, anyone remember Betamax? Same deal, except studios are already signing exclusive deals with one media or another, meaning if you want the premium content available on the new formats, you're almost forced to own one of each device.

[crenn]

lol. The 360 is using HD-DVD but not Blu-ray. I hate all PSs

[Hertzberg]

Yes, Xbox 360 is using HD-DVD. ps3 will come with Blu-Ray, Dont know what Revolution will come then though, And 100 Gig Disch have been annouced, So I will come in the right time

[public_eyesore]

xbox 360 will not use hd for games though, its just gonna be an add on to watch movies.

I heard that since microsoft made that decision thought that elder scrolls might be multiple discs, even up to four of them. lol

[Judgement]

Xbox 360 games are set to the standard 7.95GiB of storage available on a dual-layer DVD. Due to the limited space of standard DVDs, some games made for the system may span multiple discs. The Nintendo Revolution will use a proprietary disc of similar capacity while the PlayStation 3 will have the ability to use 25GB or 50GB Blu-Ray Discs, although Blu-Ray specifications are not finalized yet.

ok so Sony 1s up microsoft again WAY TO GO SONY (my 360s great and all but it was just microsofts BS way to make more money they could have easly just put all there games on the PC) Playstation all the way for me

[Dark-hobo]

so 100gb was announced? I missed that , cool.

[Rankenphile]

Yeah, MS kind of missed the mark by failing to incorporate the HD-DVD drive in their system at launch. Big mistake, imho. However, I'm positive they had their marketing goons and their engineering goons go over an dover the reasons for it before the final decision was made, so I'm not gunna stress about it either.

I used to be a big fan of Sony and the Playstation consoles. I still love my PS2, and will inevitably own a PS3 eventually, but I jsut really really feel like Sony burned the world and the consumer base in general with this root kit fiasco, and showed the world what they really think in terms of DRM, copyright and intellectual property ownership. Not only that, but their PSP is an incredible model of wasted potential.

Instead of focusing their attention on creating brilliant applications and games to make the system a standout, truly the next generation of handheld gaming systems, they've wasted it combatting "hackers" (modders) who are writing new applications for the system that they spent a large amount of cash to purchase. To Sony, writing new software for your PSP without approval for them is in direct violation with their EULA. To them, you don't actually own your system, you are licensed to use it until you break their user agreements.

They spent more time rewriting the OS on their damn PSP, doing nothing more than making it harder and harder for programmers to create their own apps and add-ons for the system, than they did actually upgrading it and incorporating a small percentage of applications that there was obviously a need for in the first place - people wouldn't write these apps (aside from the illegal software backup apps) if there wasn't a need for them on a system that had the potential to run it in the first place.

Microsoft did one thing right with the Xbox/Xbox360. They watched the active modding community, and while they never supported it, they didn't actively condemn it either. You can't use a modded Xbox on Xbox Live, that's no problem. It prevents cheating and all sorts of other illegal and potentially dangerous things. But they watched the modding community, saw that they had built an incomplete box, and incorporated a TON of the popular features that people were adding to their systems, such as Xbox Media Center, the ability to boot and restart your system from the controller, and much more.

Plus, that root kit thing, man, that was EVIL. There are thousands and thousands of systems out there now that were ruined, all because they wanted to play a CD on their computer. The only way to fix it is do do a complete reformat and re-install. Harsh.

[adreamtraveler]

Instead of focusing their attention on creating brilliant applications and games to make the system a standout, truly the next generation of handheld gaming systems, they've wasted it combatting "hackers" (modders) who are writing new applications for the system that they spent a large amount of cash to purchase.

that's so funny because even with all of the money that they spent trying to prevent stuff like that, it hasn't changed anything. my friends are constantly showing me new stuff that they got from the web for their PSP's...they are not happy about the fact that they can't upgrade their PSP software, but it doesn't compare to what they can get by being able to use third party programs.

i think it's so funny that companies try and try and spend millions of dollars trying to prevent reverse engineering. it's practically inevitable, people are always going to be curious and want to know how things work and how they can make it even better. companies should be hiring these people, not suing them. ...that's just my poor man's opinion though

[wingman358]

Plus, that root kit thing, man, that was EVIL. There are thousands and thousands of systems out there now that were ruined, all because they wanted to play a CD on their computer. The only way to fix it is do do a complete reformat and re-install. Harsh.

Are you sure about that? Sony issued a patch that un-hides all the software which you can then delete. Even if they didn't, you can do a system restore. Don't get me wrong though, I'm 100% against the rootkit crap. I was really shocked by the whole ordeal which just kept getting worse.

Anyways, we're getting off topic.

I agree with Rankenphile; Microsoft really blew it by not incorporating HD-DVD into the Xbox360. It almost subtracts from their early release (as opposed to Sony).