We just got tipped off that Best Buy now has the LG Blu-ray HD-DVD Combo Player available for order online. Brian Lam, being the investigative journalist that he is, insisted on ordering one for himself testing the link before we reported this exciting news to the world.
Despite subsequent controversy around the unit, many saw LG's combo player as THE announcement of CES2007. While its $1,200 price tag means that grandma and grandpa won't be upgrading any time soon, at least some company has taken the initiative to produce the product we've all been waiting for since the next-gen DVD wars began.
Order now for delivery on its real release date of February 4th. –Mark Wilson
Order Page
Thanks Jose!

We just got tipped off that Best Buy now has the LG Blu-ray HD-DVD Combo Player available for order online, despite its Feb 4th release date.


Despite subsequent controversy around the unit, many saw LG's combo player as THE announcement of CES2007. While its $1,200 price tag means that grandma and grandpa won't be upgrading any time soon, at least some company has taken the initiative to produce the product we've all been waiting for since the next-gen DVD wars began.
–Mark Wilson
Order Page
Thanks Jose!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
It's still early on to tell whether this is actually true, but HD DVD cracker muslix64 is back, and with the help of another anti-DRM cracker, Janvitos, claims to have also broken the Blu-ray's implementation of AACS. Although their protection does not yet account for BD+ copy-protection, they claim to have been able to implement the same key-grabbing known-plaintext attack as muslix64 used to crack HD DVD in order to successfully to crack Blu-ray without even using a disc or drive (apparently they just used a raw encrypted data file and nothing more). Unfortunately they haven't yet posted code for us to test this out, so we'll have to take their word for it for the time being.

[Thanks, Ken F] 
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Even though the BDA association (that's Blu-ray) isn't technically against porn, they sure are making it hard for any porn to get produced on Blu-ray. Sony's just announced that it won't allow its subsidiary, Sony DADC Global, from producing any adult film titles. Seeing as Sony DADC is pretty much the largest Blu-ray disc producer, without their support it's near impossible to get any discs out there.
Of course, the adult industry could find another Blu-ray disc manufacturer to step up and make their discs, but they seem to be going the HD DVD route instead. However, HD DVD's not running out into the streets yelling, "Look at us! If you want next-gen porn, come here!" – Jason Chen
Sony says no to porn on Blu-ray Disc [Computerworld via Crunchgear]

If you are still confused about the LG HD/BD Dual Disc Player getting canned due to HD DVD compatibility issues, here's the final word on the release. It's coming. Early February. F' Shizzle.
The official statement from LG is that you will be able to go into Best Buys, Circuit Cities, Comp USAs, and other stores and pick one up around February 4, like we said before. If you're lucky (and your local Comp USA employees are dumb), you may have already seen it on shelves.
Confusion ended. – Jason Chen

Filed under: Storage

One of the consumer worries of Blu-ray Disc vs. HD DVD is the durability of that ultra-thin, 0.1-mm layer protecting your BD-stored data. HD DVDs on the other hand, use a comparatively thick 0.6-mm surface layer just like standard DVDs making them appear -- on paper anyway -- more rugged over the stretch, right? Not necessarily so. At least not when TDK or others apply protective coatings to their optical media. The 6-layer, single-sided 200GB BD disc on the right in the image above is coated with TDK's "Durabis 2" hard-coating technology -- the disk on the left is a standard DVD; both were subjected to equal treatment by the steel-wool and a Sharpie. Any questions?

[Thanks, Dave] 
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After much speculation, it appears that the prophesized — and hoped for — union of XM and Sirius simply isn't meant to be. At least, that's what FCC Chairman Kevin Martin says, posturing that such a merger wouldn't win approval under the FCC's current rulebook, given that the regulations that brought both of them into business also forbid them from being owned by a single entity.
The natural solution would be to alter the regulations, since what we're stuck with now is essentially the pre-Clear Channel state Jack Shafer describes in his column. That is, a lot of the programming on XM and Sirius is redundant, and both have suffered through sluggish growth amidst high competitive costs. (The fact that their stocks tanked following the pronouncement should tell you something.) And in a lot of ways, they're not really competing at all — if you're familiar with how they generate what little growth they do, you know what I mean.
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The original Star Trek has been getting high definition buzz lately thanks to the newly remastered editions beginning to air in syndication and being released in high definition on XBox Live. CBS ...

Warner Home Video has just unveiled that two great Steve McQueen movies will make their high definition debut in February as well on both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc. The 1968 film Bullitt marks one of ...

While it looked for a minute there like the DVD Forum people (the dudes behind HD DVD standards) were about to piss all over LG's dual-format campfire, all they ended up being able to do was keep the HD DVD logo off the new player. Their beef was with the player's lack of support for HDi, meaning you can watch an HD DVD straight through but don't get access to the fancy menus and such.
The LG BH100 will still be released on or around February 4th for $1,200, so you can still go drop an exorbitant amount of money on a product that will only have cheaper and better versions of itself released in the coming months. Saints be praised! –Adam Frucci
LG: No HD DVD logo on combo player [Crave]