Click Chunk Whirr | Theory of Operation

Iron Man was the #1 selling Blu-Ray disc on Amazon for something around two months. I personally had it on pre-order since they first posted the pre-order listing for it in June. I don't think it would be a stretch to say I wasn't the only one checking the UPS delivery status of my order yesterday.

Like just about everyone else that got their copy yesterday, I fired up the home theater, unwrapped the disc, popped it into our PS3, hit play and stared at what others called "The Blue Ring of Death".

What the heck happened? Two things.

1. Everyone with this problem has a Blu-Ray player that supports profile 2.0 (BD-Live) which has a default setting of "Automatically download BD-Live content."
2. Paramount grossly underestimated the number of copies sold on release day (and probably in the first three weeks of release) that were going to be played in BD-Live players that had automatic download enabled.

Combine those with the idiotic idea that when a player is set to auto download BD-Live content, nothing else can be done and well, you get the idea.

Anyone want to place a bet on that happening again?

With the exception of Twister (5/29) and Freedom 6 (6/24), the HD DVD pipeline is empty. On the other hand Paramount, Dreamworks and Universal have announced their Blu-Ray releases for the summer.

That said, it's Summer Blockbuster season! Go see movies in the theater. Yes on the BIG screen. When you go, do NOT be afraid to confront other movie goers who aren't showing any movie manners because they believe they're in someone's living room.

Here is a list of what I'll be seeing in the theaters this summer

May 5 - Speed Racer (seen it, good popcorn flick!)
May 16 - The Chronicles of Narnia: Price Caspian
May 22 - Indiana Jones 4
June 6- Kung Fu Panda
June 6- You Don't Mess With the Zohan
June 13-The Happening
June 20-Get Smart
June 20-The Love Guru
June 27-Wall-E
June 27-Wanted
July 2-Hancock
July 11-Hellboy2
July 18-The Dark Knight
July 25-The X-Files: I want to believe
August 1-The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
August 15-Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Wow, June is going to be busy.

Enjoy the show!

On January 4th, Warner Brothers announced that as of June 1, 2008, it would end support of HD DVD. Toshiba CEO Atsutoshi Nishida said that "I didn't think we stood a chance after Warner left us because it meant HD DVD would have just 20% to 30% of software market share."

This was a demoralizing moment for the people in the HD DVD Forum, I know I was shocked, but even more so when they canceled their CES 2008 Press Conference. In hind sight, that was the first indicator that HD DVD was on its way out.

I completely understand Warner's decision. While they never came out and publicly said "HD DVD is the more complete format" you could tell that was what they were thinking. Unfortunately for HD DVD, Sony did everything required to insure Blu-Ray's survival. Big pay outs to studios to release only on Blu-Ray, incorporating a Blu-Ray drive in the PS3, a high profile public marketing campaign and an even more effective program targeting retail sales staff.

Yes, it's almost over now. The last HD DVD releases will be out in May and that will be that.

My personal suggestion for those that do not already have a Blu-Ray player is to wait. Blu-Ray Profile 2.0 players will be out the end of this summer and should be attractively priced around the holidays. If you really MUST have a Blu-Ray player before then, pickup a PS3 and the Blu-Ray remote. It meets all the hardware requirements for Profile 2.0 and only needs a firmware upgrade to get there.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a large stack of HD DVD's to watch.

As many might already know, Warner Brothers announced that as of June 2008 they will no longer be releasing movies on HD DVD. The announcement has been seen by Blu-Ray enthusiasts and the Tech. Media as the beginning of the end of the HD Media format war.

Let me put this right out there. I purchased and used players and movies in both formats for over six months. Both deliver outstanding picture and sound, but truth be told, I enjoy watching HD DVD a lot more than Blu-Ray.  Yes, I acknowledge that Blu-Ray has better technical specs, but so do a lot of other superior media formats. Fact is that a spec sheet doesn't mean diddle if a consumer doesn't enjoy their purchase.

It might be denial, but having a "winner" chosen when the total HD Media sales (combined sales of Blu-Ray & HD DVD movies) for 2007 was a whopping 0.6% of all retail movie sales is a bit premature.

If you don't have an up-converting DVD player, but do have an HDTV, do yourself a favor and pickup an HD DVD Player from the store or off eBay. The worst that can happen is you will have an up-converting player that also has a nice selection of movies in HD that you can enjoy while waiting for Blu-Ray players with the final 2.0 profile are released and come down in price.

I took an ill advised plunge on Saturday and installed Vista SP1 RC1 on my 64 bit workstation. Suffice to say it wasn't a very good idea because on reboot number 2 of three it got stuck in a loop. The restore attempt failed because the install disk driven system restore couldn't see my Vista partition let alone any restore points for it.

My best guess is the failure was due to the install running since January of this year, there were things lurking under the covers which were not SP1 friendly. I have yet to find a good tool that will clean up the registry of a 64-bit Vista installation.

10 hours later my re-install is complete. I've got all the tools I need for BI Development and none of the funky hacks I needed for printer drivers and cd burning on the January install.