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Buried under predictions that 2012 will bring dominance for Blu-ray over DVD and breaking news that the PS3 just may have had a hand in winning the format war the Entertainment Merchant’s Association 2008 Annual Report on the Home Entertainment Industry holds survey results  showing 87% of PS3 owners reported they watch Blu-ray movies on their console. That’s a stark contrast to last year’s NPD survey indicating 60% of owners didn’t even know it played them. We don’t know what’s behind the jump, be it better marketing/consumer education, or something wrong with how one the surveys were conducted. You can mull that one over during the fast money round while also peeping results that say 22% of HDTV owners think they’re watching HD programming, but in fact are not — not like we haven’t heard that before. [PS3 Fanboy]

K-Mart stores have discounted Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 HD DVD Player to $5.00 as the retailer moves remaining units of the defunct high-definition peripheral.
A buyer on the discount website Slickdeals.net purchased an Xbox 360 HD DVD Player for $5.00 in Greensboro, NC.
The device, which allows Xbox 360 owners to play Toshiba Corp.’s HD DVD format titles, launched in Nov. 2006 for $199.99.
It was later discounted to $179.99 in a price war against Sony Corp.’s Blu-ray disc format.
Toshiba in Feb. exited the HD DVD format business after companies including Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Best Buy Co. Inc., and Netflix Inc. defected to Blu-ray.
Retailers including Best Buy and Circuit City Co. Inc. have cleared all in-store HD DVD inventory.
Amazon.com has discounted a wave of HD DVD titles by up to 60 percent to clear inventory. [PunchJump]

We have no confirmation or sourcing of our own on this, so, we don’t vouch for its accuracy. But we will be watching the clock at 10 am Crecente time tomorrow, as CrunchGear is rumormongering that Microsoft will announce Blu-Ray Xboxes will be shipping by Christmas, at that time. Rumor has it they’ll cost less than an Elite.
The announcement would apparently be timed to upstage Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference which kicks off an hour later in San Francisco. Here’s the full rumor from CrunchGear’s tipster:

I’m told MS will upstage Apple with a Monday 9am PDT announcement (1 hour before WWDC) via press release that the Xbox 360 will get Blu-Ray before Christmas. Price was “under the current Elite,” but i could get any more details. [Kotaku.com]

Now this is what we were expecting from the next generation of home video entertainment. French site play3-live recently conducted an interview with Manuel R. Gutierrez Novelo, CEO & President of TDVision Systems, in which the three dimensional Blu-ray experience is discussed.
“We’re in the process to enable the PlayStation 3 to playback 3D movies using our TDVCodec and Blu-ray discs at our R&D labs since the PS3 is enabled with the BD2.0 version,” commented Novelo. “Currently we have it working on a PC in 3D and after some changes on the firmware and installing some software for the PS3 we’ll be playing 3D directly from the PS3.” [PSU]

“The objective (and what we are talking to major studios) is to encode their existing and new 3D stereoscopic content with our TDVCodec and have the movies available in every-shop everywhere in the world since one single Blu-ray disc encoded with our format has the 2D and the 3D version and can be played back in 2D over existing 2D platforms and in 3D where the platform is available (PC or PS3 with our firmware update and a Samsung / Mitsibishi / Kerner / TDVisor / Hundai monitor is connected),” he continued.
Obviously, 3D content won’t be visible on every television. Novelo elaborated, “You can use the 3D TV from Samsung (both RPTV DLP or the their newer Plasma), Mitsubishi, Kerner electronics, IZ3D Monitor and Hundai. The DLP based TVs work under shutter glasses (by blocking the left and right eye alternatively) Kerner, IZ3D and Hundai use polarization glasses.”
Here’s the big question though — when can the Blu-ray community expect to view this content provided they have a TDVReady HDTV? The answer — not all that long. Apparently, this technology is set to hit “soon in 2008.”
It’s exciting stuff for sure. If you’d like to read the full interview, check out the translated version right here.

“Two years ago PlayStation was on life support,” Stringer said during The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital Conference on Wednesday.
Lofty development costs for the console were nearly “catostrophic” for his company, he said.
But he says everything is fine and dandy now with PS3, following improved sales and a win in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray format war.
He said he’s “very pleased” with the console’s performance, and is optimistic that games will begin to take more advantage of the PS3’s processing power.
Stringer said as early as January this year that PS3 was “out of the woods” after a rough launch, hindered by a high retail price tag, stiff competition from Xbox 360, and a slim games lineup.
As for the movie format war, Stringer said that if HD-DVD would’ve won, a reference to “Betamax 2″ would’ve been engraved on his tombstone.
He also denied that Blu-ray won because Sony paid movie studios the most money. “We were not in the check-writing competition,” he said.
The future of Blu-ray is promising, even in the face of digital downloads, according to Stringer, who said that consumers will take a long time to move away from physical media to purely digital. [CVG]

Although the so-called console war rages on, the format war has been over for several months. Blu-ray shoved HD DVD out of the marketplace and into the closet at the perfect time apparently, as DVD sales continue have continued to decrease since their plateau approximately three years ago.
“Blu-ray had its second-best week ever in the seven days ending March 23,” commented Steve Beeks, president and co-COO of Lionsgate. “We anticipate Blu-ray sales of $800 million to $1billion-plus for all of 2008, up dramatically from approximately $300 million last year.”
This dramatic 351% increase in Blu-ray sales will help alleviate the somewhat sluggish DVD sales that movie studios are now faced with. Blu-ray will only continue to climb as more people opt for high definition content over the standard DVD fare. This begs the question, how long will Blu-ray last in the face of the ever-growing digital market? We’re not sure, but we do know it’s a great time to own one of the best Blu-ray players available, the PlayStation 3. [PSU]

A lot of you have been wondering when Universal Studios was finally going to start releasing their titles in the Blu-ray disc format, well that question has been answered.  Starting on July 22, Universal will start to release quite a few of their catalog titles, as well as prepare for the release of their five big movies set for box offices this summer.

These include: The Incredible Hulk, Wanted, Momma Mia, Hellboy II, and the new Mummy movie featuring Brendan Fraser and Jet Li.  For those of you curious as to what will be hitting shelves on July 22, you can expect the Mummy Trilogy (which includes the Scorpion King). 

In total, Universal plans to ship well over 40 titles before the end of 2008.  This will definitely help the high-definition crowd expand their collections with an even greater selection of titles.  With Universal being the main supporter of the HD DVD franchise, it’s good to finally know the next generation of movie watching is officially kicking off at 100% [Reuters]

Blu-ray Disc will never win mass appeal - we’ll all be buying out HD movies on Flash cards instead. That, at least, is the verdict of THX Chief Scientist Laurie Fincham. Fincham’s comments come by way of UK magazine Home Cinema Choice, relayed by website DVD Town. Says Fincham: “I think it’s too late for Blu-ray. I think consumers will only become interested in replacing DVD when HD movies becomes available on flash memory.
“By the time Blu-ray really finds a mass market, we will have 128GB cards,” he says. “I would guess that getting studios to supply movies on media cards, or offer downloads, will be a lot easier than getting them to sign up to support a disc format.
View: The full story @ The Reg

Better late than never, right? Sony has just announced that it will be releasing a massive firmware update for the on-board PS3 Blu-ray drives. The biggest change will be the upgrade to  Blur-ray Profile 2.0, which will bring full online support for any Blu-ray titles that offer Profile 2.0 content. The first two titles with such connectivity will be The Sixth Day, and Walk Hard, with many more to follow. Other enhancements will include better DivX and WMV support, more stable PSP interaction, and a more pleasant web browsing experience. All told, this is a worthy update that brings the PS3 in line with many higher-end Blu-ray players currently on the market. Expect to see this hit consoles by the end of March. [BGR]

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Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is not in talks to include Sony Corp’s (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) Blu-ray high-definition DVD technology in its Xbox 360 video game console, an executive said on Wednesday.
The comments by Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for Xbox 360, poured cold water on recent speculation that Microsoft could support Blu-ray after Toshiba Corp (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research), backer of the rival HD DVD format, gave up when key movie studios and retailers abandoned the technology. [Reuters]

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