No more HD DVD for Xbox 360?
 

I saw this on cnet

Microsoft will end production of the external HD DVD drive for its Xbox 360. They are saying that blue ray is going to be the standard and the high-definition disc format failed. Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy, and all the major movie studios have all now said they will exclusively support Blu-ray.

Not a big surprise as MS is betting on downloads. :thumbsup

toshiba already told us blue ray won

Sony is selling their BluRay manufacturing plant to Toshiba. The only real loser in this all were consumers who bought HDDVD. I have one and about 40 movies. I'm not really peeved. I'll pickup another HDDVD player, saw them online today for $89. I'm sure some people will still pick them up just to watch some movies in HD on the cheap.

Yeah it was obvious, Blu-ray it has such a cool name HDDVD had DD in it but thats the only cool thing about it :/

i sure hope i get a fucking discount on the xbox 360 Bluray player when it comes out since i bought the fucking HDDVD player

No shit... should be able to do a one for one swap as far as I'm concerned. :disgust

MS will just concentrate on downloads. Even though you can't OWN a HD download. And calling their downloads "HD" is sort of misleading.

blu-ray 1080p; bitrate 40 Mbps
XBL "HD" download 720p; bitrate 6 Mbps

Just for reference, even a normal DVD has a bitrate of 8 Mbps.

To say these are even CLOSE to each other in quality is ludacris.

I have read that Microsoft has prepped and might possibly market a Bluray addon. Nothing other than speculation at this point though, as to when and how much.

That right there effectively prevents them from selling anything to 50% of the population since 1/3 do not have internet and another 1/6 only have dial-up. Of course of the 50% that do have broadband half of those have a connection of 2 mbps or less so I'm sure they just can wait 7 hours or more to download a HD movie when for the same price or less they can just rent a blu-ray at Blockbusters.

I'm pretty sure that any blu-ray add-on would be made by a 3rd party. For MS to have a blu-ray add-on means paying royalties to Sony. So why would they want to do that?

All Bluray manufacturing will be now handled by Toshiba, as Sony has sold (or is in the process, rather) the Bluray factory. Sony also sold PS3 chip production facilities to Toshiba. Seems to make sense why they'd essentially give up without much of a fight. I don't think Microsoft will have any problem dealing with Toshiba. :winkwink:

HD DVD will eventually be a classic format

I think you are confused. Sony sold the factory that makes the cell processor chips. That doesn't have anything to do with blu-ray.

"Sony agreed to sell it microchip processing facilities in western Japan for approximately $835M USD. These facilities currently produce Cell processors and RSX graphic chips. Toshiba will enter the joint venture with Sony on April 1, 2008. "

Also that doesn't mean MS wouldn't have to pay a royality to the blu-ray consortium which Sony is a part of. See if you wanted to start a company that made blu-ray players you have to pay a royalty to the people that own the patents. Sony is one of those people. So yes MS would have to pay Sony a royalty to have a blu-ray add-on.

I really don't think they are going to have a problem with that. It was said from the start by Microsoft that if blu-ray won they would probably make an add-on for it.

From Peter Moore way back in 2006

LINK

Again in January of this year:

LINK

That's like if Sony refused to ship their laptops with windows on it. It doesn't make sense, just to avoid paying a competitor royalties.

bluray ftw! It is the better tech after all

HD-DVD is dead, unfortunately ...

Didn't last long did it ??

I just picked up another 360 HDDVD player last night for $50 with 6 movies. The Toshiba standalone players are going for $89 with 5-6 movies as well. Lots of the online shops are selling the movies for $10-15, and there are at least 200 titles with a few more still set to be released.

It's a cheap way put your big HDTV to use. At that cost who cares. I still watch my Laserdiscs.

Yeah I also got a HDDVD player for my 360 today for $50 with 6 movies and got another 5 movies for $10 each. I realize it's like buying a beta player but meh, cheap movies.

should be seeing really cheap hd dvds out there now :)