Bad Blu-ray news

Ouch!

Apple announced new Mac-Pro desktop machines, but no Blu-ray support. Guess we'll have to wait at least until January for any hope of that.

High-Def Digest reviewed the same titles from Warner released on HD DVD and Bu-ray discs and found the Blu-ray versions wanting; notably issues with aspect ratio, compression not as good, slow navigation, and Warner dropped the Dolby Digital-Plus track off of the Blu-ray release. Admittedly they were comparing a Toshiba HD DVD player (Toshiba developed the standard) with a Samsung player that is known to have some issues, but this is kind of troubling.

Meanwhile, analysts predict that "the battle between two hyped formats for high-definition DVD will confuse shoppers and turn many of them off the whole technology." I don't think anyone needed a crystal ball to come up with that prediction, but it's making me feel kind of blah again about Hi-Def discs...

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