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Blu-ray, HD DVD Target of EU Antitrust Probe
rfunches writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that EU antitrust regulators are turning up the heat on the Blu-ray and HD-DVD format consortiums. The European Commission has demanded evidence of Hollywood studios' communications and agreements on the new generation of DVD formats. From the article: 'The European Commission, the European Union's executive body, appears to be particularly interested in the activities of the Blu-ray group because of its dominance in Hollywood, according to people familiar with the situation. The commission is investigating whether improper tactics were used to suppress competition and persuade the studios to back their format.' The article points out that all of the major Hollywood studios except Universal are backing Blu-ray; Universal is backing HD-DVD. It also notes that while one industry watcher believes the first format to have an installed base of two million homes will come out on top, there were millions of Betamax units already sold when VHS won out in the format wars of the 80's."
How about minding their own business and letting consumers choose not to buy a certain format?
Yep.
This is the ugly death spasms of HD-DVD. The HD-DVD people are crying to anyone who will listen to them to try to save their dead format. And the Dreamcast/Microsoft fanboys who latched on to the dead format are now off in forums all over the net trying to spin the death of HD-DVD by talking about digital movie downloads and how they never wanted HD-DVD or BluRay to succeed anyways.
Come on HD-DVD, do the world a favor and die quietly and quickly.
"they just wanted to be a thorn in Sony's side."
That is just like Xbox fans who talk about Microsoft not caring about getting destroyed in the marketplace last gen because they were just trying to get a foothold or some other blather.
Microsoft desperately did want HD-DVD to succeed due to the licensing money from their codecs. With the death of HD-DVD in the marketplace companies have now for the most part standardized on AVC and Microsoft gets nothing.
I guess you are trying to sound badass with portraying Microsoft as some evil genius the media marketplace but the reality is they are just another company that had their product rejected by consumers.
Microsoft will get no revenue from HD movie sales.
Microsoft is now stuck with a console that developers hate with its last gen storage size.
Xbox,Zune,HD-DVD,Plays For Sure Microsoft has been one enormous failure in the media market.
Dream on Xbox fanboy.
Only a total retard would believe that electronics manufactures would waste their time adding support for a dead format.
HD-DVD is dead. Get over it.
This prove that the SHITDOT SHEEPLE hate to hear the truth that they are nothing more than communist and terrorist sympathizers. SHITDOT NEEDS TO BE FUCKING CRASHED WITH FUCKTARD TACO AND BROKEBACK NEIL FUCKING SHOT AND KILLED!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, well, the word "people" is of limited use when trying to identify a specific subset of the human race. That is why words are created in order to easily identify specific subsets such as "consumers," "professionals" and "oversensitive assholes." I suspect that everyone at Slashdot falls into one or more of these groups. Guess which of those terms I use for you and your ilk?