If they just got rid of J.Ross there would be no budget shortfall at all anyway.

Guess they need to make up for the awful PVR software.

Not a patch on TiVo, but sadly TiVo is no more here and Sky have a monopoly on Sat PVR.

Expensive too still at the box cost plus �10 a month HD sub on top of your normal monthly sub, and few HD channels. Fancy art isn't going to make me buy into it any quicker. Dropping the extra monthly sub might help though.

HD DVD has no region coding. It has Mandatory Managed Copy that can't be disabled. Two huge advantages.

Blu-Ray has no advantage over Blu-Ray other than disc space (and it's not a huge advantage given few releases even make use of it).

LCD is catching up and the big difference between plasma and LCD in picture quality has mainly been down to contrast ratios and backlight issues (i.e. washing out blacks). Many people comparing plasma and LCD in stores are often looking at LCDs that are a generation or two behind the new models.

Once LCDs get backlighting that's akin to the way plasmas light individual pixel/cells (thus eliminating the black level issues) then there's really no need for plasma especially when LCD is so much cheaper to produce.


Negative point with plasma for me though is 1080p is either non-existent or too expensive, they're too heavy, and I've yet to see one where the image is as pin sharp as an LCD (but yeah I've probably not seen one set up right, etc).

Long way from over. The sales on either side are still peanuts compared to DVD. This is still a niche market and both will easily hold on until (or if) it ever reaches mass market proportions.

Sales are so small that a single 'hot' title can swing it the other way (bring out Star Wars or LOTR on HD-DVD only, or cheaper to own on HD-DVD and it would kill Blu-Ray in an instant). In fact sales are so small that fan-boy purchases in bulk can influence the figures significantly (driven by forums/petitions like has been attempted with music sales to influence charts).

Oh, and what's being ignored are the sales stats from the rest of the world, especially Europe where HD is still just emerging (many people are buying HD TVs now just because they are flat, but very few are even considering or aware of HD formats like HD-DVD or Blu-Ray).

More likely the result will be the war will never be over. It will just continue as minor niche formats like SACD/DVD-A, but DVD will reign supreme for many years yet. Eventually DVD might get replaced but probably not by either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Likely something better.

I'd expect these extras for no extra cost at the current UK price!

Looks a lot like Sky+/HD boxes in the UK. Probably no surprise as isn't DirecTV a Murdoch thing now?

He never seemed to like TiVo. Adopted it initially in the UK then ditched it in favour of his own proprietary (and inferior) system. Looks like the same's happened for DirecTV.

First thing of importance is both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sales (players and more importantly titles) are still very small fry. Either camp can claim what they like but it's more like person A saying he's a winner because 2 people voted for him compared to 1 who voted for person B and yet 9 million people didn't bother to vote for either.

Secondly, things are different in Europe with HD-DVD having more recognition with consumers than in the US, so it's not clear cut just based on US sales. Worse we could end up with one format in US and another in Europe, with once again different versions, features and quality of releases in each region just like we have with the different regional DVD releases at present.

Thirdly, the problem with Sony is in my opinion this...

- Quality of Sony kit has seriously dropped in recent years. I was a Sony fan in a way but they've let the consumer down badly with shoddy goods that don't last and also aren't always "the best" any more.

- Heavy handed, anti-competitive, almost bullyboy tactics. As many Europeans know, Sony's big lawyers unfairly killed importer Lik-Sang. They're one of a number behind attempts to kill other importers like cd-wow. In Europe their tactics would actually be illegal under EU law if they tried to block importing between states.

- DRM (not just Blu-Ray, see the root-kit CD farce) and region restrictions (again impacts on Europeans. HD-DVD doesn't have these restrictions). In the case of Blu-Ray ultimately their plans destroy home media networking and portability (except if you use all Sony kit), in particular through their option of disabling of Mandatory Managed Copy (making it non-mandatory effectively and thus allowing studios to force you to buy a copy for every device you want to play it on and blocking network streaming).

- When it comes to Blu-Ray, high costs for manufacturers and consumers. No cheap Chinese ultra-budget players in discount stores & supermarkets with Blu-Ray. No bargain discs.

- PS3 has suffered badly because Sony decided to use it to plug Blu-Ray.

- Caused an unnecessary format war. They were offered a deal with HD-DVD just like the one they took up back in DVD days to form a single format, but this time they refused and the consumer suffers.


I have nothing against Blu-Ray as a physical format. It's just HD-DVD but more capacity (though the difference is largely irrelevant for HD movies), although more costly to produce. The problem is that the consumer will suffer because of Sony's attitudes.

Great. In the UK when?

Ah, never you say :-(. Damn, back to series 1 (which can't be bought officially any more in the UK anyway).

Sadly HD PVR in the UK means Mr Murdoch's piece of crap.

Whilst true, it's hard in the case of some phones and getting harder. Hell it can even hard for those working for phone manufacturers to get an IMEI change these days!

However it's meaningless when exported to countries who care not about IMEI, or to the thieves who flog them on ebay who don't care that the phone is dead to the buyer so long as they get the money before their account is closed and they disappear into the night.

Best thing for phone thefts at the moment is for ebay to just flat ban phone sales. I'm betting the vast majority have some dodgy history.