The Jeremy

Every self-respecting cyborg/robot needs to prove its superiority by mastering the usage of a toilet plunger as a functional arm.

Europe had a bigger affair for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. Psygnosis, Ocean, US Gold, etc.

...how about the various Microprose titles?

F-15 Strike Eagle
Silent Service (although others swore by GATO)
Gunship
etc.

Microprose got gobbled up by Hasbro Interactive, which was sold to Infogrames, which became Atari, etc.

Personally, on the PS3/PSP side of things, I'd love to see the Atari ST/Amiga ports of the Psygnosis titles. It should be doable since Sony owns the rights to them.

Microsoft would have an issue with it because Commodore Basic (whether on the VIC, the C-64, the C-128, or Amiga) was Microsoft Basic.

They wouldn't allow it unless Nintendo cross-licensed some of their titles for the Zunephone.

Tony,

Be careful with that claim about Costco. Toshiba sells a regular upscaling DVD player which is essentially in the same case as their entry-level HD DVD player. The box art and photo almost looks the same too. This particular DVD upscaling player is about $40 at Costco if I remember correctly. They also stock it in the same isle as the HD DVD player.

I haven't seen the Sony BD player at Costco at $250 but I've seen it at $279. At the Portland (OR) Costco, I saw a stack of HD DVD player boxes with no display unit and very few Sony BD player boxes but they did have a "display" unit. The Costco employees also mistakenly stuck the 5-free-by-mail HD DVD coupons next to the Sony BD player.

In the media section, I only saw *Transformers* stocked on HD DVD and only Disney Pixar BD movies in stock. But that's the nature of Costco and all the other warehouse style stores.

I wonder if the TiVo software update to the Comcast/Motorola set-top boxes disables the Firewire output port functionality. Does anyone know either way?

Well, now that the PS3 can do PiP courtesy of Firmware 2.1, where are these Warner titles?

Personally, I'd prefer Warner to go back and re-encode in AVC with a very high bitrate as opposed to adding these "interactive" features, but since there's room on the disc for both, how 'bout it Warner?

Just for the record, *The Omega Man* looked pretty good on Blu-ray, although it wouldn't break my heart if they went back and digitally scrubbed each frame since there are still defects present...not to mention the VC-1 encoding.

I'd also bet that *Batman Begins* gets a release date on Blu-ray close to the theatrical premiere of *The Dark Knight*.

There's another possibility that nobody seems to be bringing up considering the low(er) price of many HD DVD players. The lower the price, the higher the chance there is of consumers just buying them to replace their aging/failing cheap DVD players with no intention of buying actual HD DVD movie titles.

If Joe Consumer buys a cheap HD DVD player but then actually surveys the titles that are for sale for it - some of it unnecessarily retailing for $35 due to the inclusion of a DVD side - the format then runs the risk of never truly establishing itself and then it becomes a CD+G type of format.

Call me crazy but I doubt many HD DVD owners are going to purchase *Hot Rod* at a "discounted" $26 [at Fry's] price. Of course, to be fair, Sony also put out a few stinkers of their own on Blu-ray at the start, like *Stealth*.

So a word-to-the-wise of the HD DVD fanboys, buy some discs, because us alleged PS3-owners-who-supposedly-do-not-buy-Blu-ray-movies-to-run-on-our-machines are still cleaning your dedicated-movie-watching-players clocks each week. On second thought, don't so we can have this format war concluded.

It has been repeated time and time again on this website and others that WalMart is favoring HD DVD due to the lower prices of the players. However, on Saturday following Black Friday, WalMart will be offering the 40GB version of the PS3 with 10 free Blu-ray titles. That's right...10. Not to mention that the buyer still qualifies for the 5 for free via mail offer. I don't know if the 10 number already counts the *Spider-Man 3* title already bundled in the box though, and they guarantee only 2 units available per store, so jump on it if you want this offer.

As for other retailers, Fry's seems to devote far more shelf space to Blu-ray than HD DVD. However, the smaller retailer RC Willey carries a ton of Blu-ray players but has a rinkey dink selection of Blu-ray movies and carries a lot more HD DVD titles. Best Buy locations seem to vary based upon what their local customers buy more of. Some heavily stock Blu-ray versus HD DVD while others are slanted the other way or are close to neutral with nearly the same number of titles stocked.

As for the idea that the format war has lowered prices substantially for the consumer, well, that's a half-baked story. Sony has been willing to subsidize the cost of the Blu-ray player inside the PS3 but not on their stand-alone units. It is widely thought that Microsoft is heavily subsidizing Toshiba's losses on their HD DVD units. Since only the PS3 is being subsidized on the Blu-ray side, that has left open room for the other manufacturers to make stand-alone dedicated Blu-ray decks at higher prices whereas Toshiba's moves have made it unsustainable for other manufacturers to make non-subsidized stand-alone dedicated players. If Microsoft wants HD DVD to win or at least provoke a long-term stalemate, they do need to swap out the DVD drive in the Xbox360 Elite with an HD DVD drive, but they probably won't because finally after 5 years, they can brag that the Xbox division finally made a profit of $100 million+ [after $5 billion + in losses] and if they were to bundle the HD DVD drive standard, they'd be in the red again.

If both formats survive, I seriously think all the manufacturers should standarize on using the Cell processor in their decks. Not only is that in Sony's best interest, but also Toshiba's since they both are partners in the Cell project, and any PS3 owner will tell you that it is a great decoder. Of course, it would be up to Toshiba/Microsoft to port HDi over to the chip since Sony has no interest doing so since they back BD-J. To my knowledge, Toshiba hasn't made any comments about using the Cell [in the future] in their HD DVD players since 2006.

Ode to finally have *Doctor Who* shot and televised in HD.

Its spin-off *Torchwood* is already shot and televised in HD, yet the BBC [and Warner Home Video here in the Americas] did not see fit to release Series 1 on Blu-ray or HD DVD as of yet. Shame.