From blu-ray.com: [QUOTE] Following Warner's lead, sister company New Line has confirmed that it will support Blu-ray Disc high def releases exclusively. New Line has previously delayed their day-and-date new releases on HD DVD due to the format's lack of region coding, effectively making titles such as Shoot 'em Up, Hairspray, and Rush Hour 3 exclusive to Blu-ray. [/QUOTE]
From bluray.highdefdigest.com: [QUOTE] Warner Home Entertainment President Kevin Tsujihara says the studio took no pay-offs to exclusively back Blu-ray.
In a post-announcement conference call, Tsujihara flatly denied rumors that studio had accepted anywhere from 250M to $500M in exchange for dropping its HD DVD format support. According to the exec, Warner's sole motivation in dropping its HD DVD format support was to ensure growth of the "category" and the long-term health of the industry. [/QUOTE]
From the press release: [QUOTE] In response to consumer demand, Warner Bros. Entertainment will release its high-definition DVD titles exclusively in the Blu-ray disc format beginning later this year, it was announced today by Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros. and Kevin Tsujihara, President, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.
"Warner Bros.' move to exclusively release in the Blu-ray disc format is a strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want," said Meyer. "The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers."
Warner Home Video will continue to release its titles in standard DVD format and Blu-ray. After a short window following their standard DVD and Blu-ray releases, all new titles will continue to be released in HD DVD until the end of May 2008.
"Warner Bros. has produced in both high-definition formats in an effort to provide consumer choice, foster mainstream adoption and drive down hardware prices," said Jeff Bewkes, President and Chief Executive Officer, Time Warner Inc., the parent company of Warner Bros. Entertainment. "Today's decision by Warner Bros. to distribute in a single format comes at the right time and is the best decision both for consumers and Time Warner."
"A two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry," said Tsujihara. "Consumers have clearly chosen Blu-ray, and we believe that recognizing this preference is the right step in making this great home entertainment experience accessible to the widest possible audience. Warner Bros. has worked very closely with the Toshiba Corporation in promoting high definition media and we have enormous respect for their efforts. We look forward to working with them on other projects in the future. [/QUOTE]
From gamesradar.com: [QUOTE] While some developers have been critical of PS3's complex architecture (yes, Gabe Newell from Valve, we're pointing at you) many more are praising the power and potential of the machine.
"The amount of action we're able to put on the screen at 60 frames per second dwarfs what we were able to do a year ago at 30 frames per second," claims Insomniac's (Resistance, Ratchet) Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings, "What's most exciting is I think we'll see just as big a leap from our second generation engine to our third as we did from first to second."
Fallout 3's Executive Producer Todd Howard - from Oblivion developer Bethesda - understands that PS3 "has more than enough power. No single game is using it all yet - not even close". Back at E3 in July ‘07, Mercenaries 2 Lead Designer Scott Warner claimed their game was only using 30% of PS3's power - while EA's Chief Visual Officer Glenn Entis claimed their launch games like Fight Night 3 only tapped 20%. The figures sound hokum, but it wasn't until five years into PS2's life cycle that games tapped even 90% of its power - a statistic measured by Sony's Performance Analyser tools, yet to be released on PS3. [/QUOTE]
From siliconera.com: [QUOTE] Sony is running a survey over in Asia where a question on the list asks "Which of the following offer from PLAYSTATION Store (PC) that you find it appealing?". One of the selectable answers is "Monthly subscription plan (1 price for unlimited download)."
While this is far from concrete information, I welcome the idea of PSPTap. If I can spend $5 or $10 to get unlimited access to a library of downloadable PsOne Classics and a handful of PSP originals like Beats I would do it in a heartbeat. [/QUOTE]
From gamesindustry.biz: [QUOTE] Following the successful digital release of Tomb Raider Anniversary over Xbox Live, Crystal Dynamics' Riley Cooper has told GamesIndustry.biz that Sony's PlayStation Network should offer more flexibility for delivering future titles.
Anniversary was originally developed for PlayStation 2, with publisher Eidos offering the title to Xbox 360 users via Xbox Live Marketplace by splitting the game into episodic chunks.
But Cooper, lead designer on Anniversary, believes that Sony's PlayStation Network could prove to be the better service for developers looking to bypass retail and deliver full games to users, as it doesn't have as many constraints as Microsoft's service.
"We made an in-road with Anniversary on 360, and it was a full game essentially, but Microsoft is only slowly increasing requirements and opening up the constraints of Xbox Live. It's been a slow process, whereas PSN hasn't been restricted by size, they've just done Warhawk for example." [/QUOTE]
From cnet.com: [QUOTE] How many times over the past few months have you heard that "the worst is over" and the chances of the high-def format war finally coming to a close were increasing by the day? If you haven't heard it at least once, you're probably not reading the right stories.
But with all that going on, the war is officially a quagmire for both sides and the chances of getting out of this quickly are diminishing at an astounding rate. Consider this: as it stands, the Blu-ray camp commands roughly 49 percent DVD market share, while HD DVD is trailing slightly behind. To make matters worse, some reports suggest HD DVD may be gaining strength, although most buyers are sitting out.
So what's really going on with this war? Is there an end in sight? Even better, is there a solution in sight that can finally put this to rest? If you ask me, I think this could be over in a month if the Blu-ray camp follows three steps.
Step 1: Warner Step 2: Slash prices on all players Step 3: Get in contact with HD DVD's supporters and inform them of the bad news [/QUOTE]
From ps3fanboy.com: [QUOTE] Every year, PSP Fanboy made predictions on what will happen in the year ahead. So far, they've been quite successful with many of their visions of the future coming true. Now, we'll have some fun with the PS3. Here's what we're seeing in our crystal ball ...
PS3 Prediction #1: Warner Bros. will go Blu-ray exclusive. PS3 Prediction #2: A new color for PS3 will be introduced. PS3 Prediction #3: Video rental service will begin this year. PS3 Prediction #4: Expect more price drops. PS3 Prediction #5: PS3 sales will get better, but won't be able to beat Xbox 360 in 2008. [/QUOTE]
A tool has been released on ps3hax.net to read the PS3 NAND chip with the Infectus chip: [QUOTE] This tool is used to interleave, then byteswaps both dumps of the PS3 NAND. Upon completion, it creates a 'user readable' file.
This file is then scanned by the tool, and the flash files are extracted to a folder. This folder is named PS3Nand-XXX.XXXX, where XXX.XXXX is the SDK Version magic in the flash (usually the version number of the firmware)
.B .A usually works, however in some cases .A .B order is required. The tool was made by mainman, assisted by the PS3News.com Developers! [/QUOTE]
A new version of TVersity Media Server has been released. TVersity allows you to stream pretty much any media (music/pictures and video) format to your PS3 (with on-the-fly transconding if required) from a Windows PC. What's new/fixed: * Transcoding o Transcoding configuration can now be done on the file/folder/url level, in which case it wil supersede the system wide settings. * Customizable Menus o It is now possible to set the menus to be organized by folders only, this is in additon to the default menu organization and the custom one. * Devices o Turn off transcoding of AVI/DIVX (version 4 or higher) for the Sony PS3 (Divx3 is still transcoded) since firmware 2.1 can play them natively. o AVI/Divx that do not play natively can still be manually configured to be transcoded. This for examples solves the PS3 problem with Divx files larger than 2 Gb. * Bug Fixes o Do not register a Windows shell context menu command for files (since it gets invoked when double clicking on file types that have no other handlers). The context menu command for folders is still kept since it has no undesirable side effects.
From poisonous-pixels.com: [QUOTE] There are sure a lot of "best of lists" coming out of the woodwork now since the year is beginning to come to a close. And not surprisingly, many of the lists read basically the same. Many of the games that are on those lists are definitely must play games (Super Mario Galaxy, Call of Duty 4, The Orange Box), but whatever happened to the other games that were fantastic throughout the year like World in Conflict, Persona 3, or Lunar Knights to name a few. With just an avalanche of triple A titles hitting us at the end of the year, many excellent games were overshadowed by the sheer amount of press coverage and excellent PR campaigns that were given to those games that were at the top of those 2007 lists. So here are the games that are the ones that have been forgotten because they came out early in the year or worse, never got the credit that they deserved in the first place.
The PS3 games in the list: 03) Super Stardust HD (Playstation 3) 16) Virtua Tennis 3 (PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Sony PSP) [/QUOTE]
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