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Popular HD DVD Disc Hits a Snag
An anonymous reader writes "Following weeks of headlines touting strong sales for Blu-ray discs, rival next-gen format HD DVD looked like it had its own success story in the making with this week's HD DVD release of the cult hit 'Children of Men.' The disc recieved a stellar review at High-Def Digest, and went on to out-sell the most popular Blu-ray discs on Amazon. But now comes word of apparent incompatibility issues with the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, with some (but not all) consumers reporting that even multiple returns of the disc are unplayable on the format's leading playback device."
My first DVD player refused to play The Matrix properly when it was released (quite common at the time). IIRC this was due to an interactive feature (follow the White Rabbit?) not being compatible with the firmware version of the player, looks like a similar story here.
They're both going to lose to digital distribution once the telecoms get off their asses, so it's kind of a moot point. I think half the push toward HD is fueled by the content providers desire to make the files bigger and harder to download.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, there was a fairly lengthy technical investigation, and it turned out that the Warner release of "The Matrix" was improperly mastered--it didn't actually meet the DVD standards.
Annoyingly, Warner didn't bother to remaster it, which is the main reason why I never bought the DVD. Warner have generally done a bad job of DVD mastering over the years--consider also the initial Kubrick DVDs, the continuing lack of widescreen releases of many Warner movies, the crappy cardboard packaging...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak