Winner of the HD-DVD vs BLU-RAY war? BOTH!

NEC Electronics, a Japanese producer of chips, on Tuesday said it has built a dual-format chip capable of playing discs in both the HD DVD and Blu-ray next generation DVD formats
—an announcement that could help put an end to the war between the two …

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Blu-ray and HD DVD Missing Early Projections by Almost 60%

While there has been much focus on the developing battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD, it seems that both formats are underperforming with consumers in the early going. Thus far, only $30M has been spent by consumers on the new formats, $25M on hardware and $5M on software, as reported by Reuters.

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Discovery Atlas: China Revealed coming to HD DVD, Blu-ray and DVD

From engadgethd, the soon-to-be released Discovery Atlas will be released on all three DVD formats, starting with their first episod “Chines Adventure” narrated by James Spadar. The disc is currently available for pre-ordering on the Discovery Website for $19.99 but the discs are also going to be on the shelves of Discovery’s 100+ retail locations sometime late next month.

Matsushita to Fire Blu-Ray Salvo In Battle of Latest DVD Formats

From The Wall Street Journal, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said it will start marketing next-generation Blu-ray format video-disc recorders in Japan on Nov. 15. Matsushita will launch two Blu-ray recorder models with different hard-disk-drive capacities and plans a monthly output of 3,000 for each model. The recorders will come with a high price tag, but Takuya Sugita, Matsushita’s video equipment business director, said in a news conference their price should come down as sales grow. The company expects retailers to sell the high-end model for around 300,000 yen, or about $2,550.

New technology could nip DVD format war in the bud

From Reuters, Britain-based New Medium Enterprises (NME) said on Tuesday it had solved a technical production problem that makes it possible to produce a cheap multiple-layer DVD disk containing one film in different, competing formats.

The production costs of a multi-layer DVD using the new NME technology are estimated to be around 9 cents, compared with the 6 cents for a standard single-layer play-back DVD. This 50 percent cost increase compares favorably with the current generation of multi-layer recordable DVD disks which cost 3 to 5 times as much to produce than a single layer disk, due to low yields.

By putting the same film on a single disk in the two competing formats, movie studios can save money and consumers do not have to worry if they are buying the right disk for their player, potentially making the outcome of the format war a non-issue for consumers.

Early Adopters Say: Round 1 of Format Wars Goes to HD DVD

Technological specifications and support from electronics, computer and videogame makers will clearly be important factors in deciding the outcome of the latest format war. But we think that user satisfaction with actual products are often overlooked. So HDBlu took a look at what early adopters of high-definition video technology were saying …

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Superman Returns to DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Nov. 28th

From HD Beat, the Superman Returns standard DVD will be available either as a single disc (MSRP $28.98), 2-disc special edition (MSRP $34.99), HD DVD Combo disc (MSRP $39.99), or Blu-ray (MSRP $34.99).

Patent Filed for Disc That Bridges Blu-ray, HD-DVD Format Gap

From The Wall Street Journal, patent application has been filed by three Warner Brothers employees for a disc that would play both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats, as well as the standard DVD format.

The “multilayer dual optical disk” would have one layer of data in the standard CD or DVD format, a second layer able to play one high-capacity format and a third layer for the competing high-capacity format.

Pioneer BDR-103: HD DVD/Blu-ray Combo Burner to Ship Next Year

From Gizmodo, Pioneer will be releasing a dual-format HD DVD and Blu-ray writer sometime next year. The writing speeds have not been released and it is not known how fast it will write to single or dual-layer Blu-Ray discs. It is also not known whether it will support CD-R/RW.

Sony ships recordable Blu-ray discs to U.S.

From News.com, Sony has begun shipping 50-gigabyte recordable Blu-ray Disc media to the United States. The new recordable discs are dual-layer, meaning that a total of 25 gigabytes can be recorded on each side, and Sony estimates that they can hold about four hours of HD video. They will retail for about $48.