With HD DVD, things are just going from bad, to really bad, to worse, to car-crash-you-can't-stop-looking-at. You can file this one under that latter category, as Wal-Mart has officially announced its intentions to stop stocking HD DVD players and movies by June. According to reports, the retailer came to the decision after Netflix and Best Buy made announcements concerning their position in the HD format war. Susan Chronister of Wal-Mart wrote on the company's blog, "By June Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware machines, and of course standard-def movies, DVD players, and up-convert players." Susan went on to deliver what we consider a total burn by adding, "if you bought the HD [DVD] player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard-def movies, and make space for a BD player." Look, we're not gonna say that this is it for HD DVD, but... uh, it doesn't look real great.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Finally, Michael Bay has stepped down from Cheese Mountain to pontificate on the finer points of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray war. Speaking from the inner-sanctum of his lair -- located equidistant from the Church of Scientology and a gigantic cotton candy stand -- Mr. Bay reminds us that, "Blu-ray's better, and I told everyone," then goes on to further prop himself by adding, "I was very vocal about it. I knew HD [DVD] was not going to make it." We're glad that Bay can sleep at night, safe in the knowledge that the mere "quality" of the formats decided the winner of this battle, rather than massive business partnerships fueled by the desire for marketshare. He wrapped up his message (actually given at an awards ceremony held by the Visual Effects Society) by saying, "Am I thrilled? It really wasn't my fight, but remember what I said in the press? I was kind of saying HD [DVD]'s going to lose... No one believed me." He then slammed a trophy he was receiving to the floor, pointed to the packed room, and yelled, "In your face, HD DVD!"

[Via Blu-ray, thanks Kiwi616]

Gateway is releasing two new desktops today, both sporting some features we've grown accustomed to, but also introducing some new hotness into the typically stale market. The new models -- the GM5664 and GT5662 -- share a slew of the same features, like the ATI Radeon HD 2400XT graphics card, 3GB of RAM, and 8-channel 7.1 audio, but they also have some notable differences. The GM5664 comes equipped with a Hybrid-SuperMulti optical drive, which gives you the ability to play Blu-ray or HD DVDs to your heart's content, while also handling typical DVD-RW functions. The system is also packed with a 2.3GHz AMD Phenom 9600 CPU, 1TB hard drive array, and an analog / digital TV tuner. The GT5662 includes a 2.2GHz AMD Phenom 9500 CPU, does away with the dual format drive, halves the storage space, and axes the TV tuner. Both are available now for $1,149.99 and $749.99, respectively.

Philips has announced the second generation in its line of Blu-ray players with the BDP7200, sporting 1080p/24 and Deep Color support, and BonusView (aka Profile 1.1) picture-in-picture capability. The player can also upscale DVDs to 1080p, and control connected devices using the EasyLink HDMI Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) protocols. Philips will release the BDP7200 in April for a $349 price, putting it towards the low end on the Blu-ray player price list, but the one thing we wish Philips had let us know was the level of audio codec support, with no mention at all of DTS or Dolby's high-end audio formats.

[Update: Also see our hands-on with the BDP7200.]

Click on for a couple more photos

Another day, another format war rumor. Business Week has a lengthy writeup on the possibility of lone dual-format holdout Warner Brothers switching to Blu-ray exclusively, and how it could affect the outcome of the long-running feud between high-definition disc formats HD DVD and Blu-ray. The rumor gets its seed from vice-chairman of Lionsgate Michael Burns, who claims that Warner will be turning blue soon. With Warner on their side, the Blu-ray studios would hold a 70% market share for the DVD market. Of course, if Warner shifts red, then the studio market will again be split into two equal halves, and consumers are left to wait and see if one format can outsell, outspend, or outlast the other until only one format remains. The stakes are so high that top execs from both camps are banging down Warner's door with personal meetings -- and possibly even truckloads of cash -- to get Warner to turn to their side. One thing you can be sure of is that Warner is going to be keeping an extra close eye on the dual-format release of Harry Potter next week for guidance.

[Thanks, Michael P.]

Sony is said to have yet another PlayStation 3 firmware update ready for download before Christmas, with the gift for movie-loving gamers being Profile 1.1 compatibility for Blu-ray Discs. Competing format HD DVD has had support for Profile 1.1 features such as picture-in-picture, secondary audio, and local storage since its inception, while in the Blu-ray spec they were optional. There aren't any Profile 1.1 Blu-ray titles on the market yet, and only a single 1.1-compatible player for sale from Panasonic, so this is really about having one more bullet point on a box for fanboys to argue about. The only major HD DVD feature that becomes required in Profile 2.0 is Internet connectivity, so downloadable content will still be optional for some 1.1-compatible BD players -- but not the PS3 with its built-in Ethernet jack. Considering the PS3 is still one of the cheapest and most widely-owned Blu-ray players, and Sony continues to improve its capabilities via firmware updates, PS3 fans and Blu-ray Disc aficionados have that much more ammo to use in the never-ending format war.

[Thanks, ag23]

All the action in the next-gen format war might be at the front lines of cut-rate players, but the battle rages on across the entire spectrum of devices -- which is why we've seen the poor $199 DH-401S BD-ROM drive from Philips and Lite-on touted as the answer to those $200 HD-A2s in a couple places. That's quite a stretch, obviously, but it's still much cheaper than any other BD-ROM drives we've seen. The read-only SATA drive pulls data off BD media at 4X, single layer DVDs at 12X, DVD-DL and DVD±RW at 8x, and CDs at 32X. Giving up write capabilites is obviously limiting, but for those of you building out HTPCs, this bad boy might be just the ticket.

[Thanks, AG23]

Denon cares about you, movie-buff, and you need only look at the company's two latest Blu-ray player offerings to realize that. Enter the DVD-3800BD and DVD-2500BT, the former supports 1080p, 12-bit DAC at 297MHz, the exciting acronyms of D.D.S.C-HD (or Dynamic Discrete Surround Circuit-HD), and D.P.I.C. (Denon Pixel Image Correction), plus HDMI, RCA / BNC, and RS-232C connectivity. The latter is a slightly more stripped-down version which axes some of the capital-letter feature flourishes. Both players will be available in Japan in January of 2008, priced at ¥336,000 for the DVD-3800BD, and ¥231,000 for the DVD-2500BT.

[Via Akihabara News]

Alienware -- always at the forefront of rocking your ever-loving world -- has delved deeper into the media server fray with its new Hangar18:HD high definition home media center announced today at CEDIA. Apparently the "higher end" media center we mentioned last month is rearing it's power-heavy head in the form of this new HD server. The Monster of Media (our pet name) rocks up to 4TB of hot-swappable hard drive storage, a built-in Blu-ray player / burner, recording and playback at 1080p (output via HDMI), support for an internal CableCARD (OCUR), and a Dolby Digital 7.1 preamp output. Alienware promises that the Hangar18:HD will, "Crush and dismember all other media centers," and further recommends a titanium table to place the unit atop since other materials, "can't handle the hotness." It should be noted that these last two statements have been fabricated, though this is kind of a sweet box. No word on price or availability, but we'll keep you posted.

Sony is making some interesting announcements at CEDIA today, not the least of which is the new HES-V1000, a "home entertainment center" / massive Blue-ray disc-changer meant to keep all your media in one place... Sony style! Imagine if you will a small tower, stacked with a 500GB hard drive and the outrageous room for 200 discs from your personal Blu-ray collection. That's right, if you've purchased almost every single disc available on Blu-ray right now (or as we like to call it, the Sony Movie Library), you can cram them all into this tall, black, polished drink of water. Of course you can store your other music and movies on the internal drive, and play it all back in 1080p wherever it seems appropriate (living room, family room... boudoir). Stream your hot action wirelessly using the oddball DLNA "standard," allowing connections with ten devices, and four independent audio streams. The HES-V1000 also boasts Sony's x-Pict Story HD and x-ScrapBook, two slide show utilities that probably make your family photos seem more compelling than they actually are. Get one in October for the terrifically low price of $3,500.

That's right folks -- you've read about them, you've dreamed about them, you've written lengthy, iambic poems to them, and now you get to see our gigantic hands on them. As you may remember, the Hitachi DZ-BD70E and DZ-BD7HE are the first ever Blu-ray camcorder models; the former recording direct to disc, and the latter rocking a hybrid disc or 30GB hard drive situation. Both cameras are largely the same, though the DZ-BD7HE seemed to be slightly larger, which makes sense. They've got a very comfortable feel when you're shooting with one, and we certainly could imagine ourselves filming HD "videos" with either. Check out the gallery for a plethora of exciting photos.

It's not like it's too big of a deal, but we happened by this new Blu-ray player from Sony while we were on our mass-wanderings amongst the gadgetry at IFA, and we thought we'd share a few images. Really nothing to write home about, though it does have a snazzy sliding front panel (the one that appears mirrored) -- but we couldn't say what that panel's function actually is. Maybe you can figure it out, so have a look at the gallery.

Alienware, never afraid of spec'ing its machines just a little bit ahead of the curve, has just introduced 4x Blu-ray drives into its Area-51 7500, Aurora 7500, Area-51 ALX, and Aurora ALX desktops, making the systems the first in the industry (or so they claim) to carry the faster drives. The new additions to the PCs will offer a significant performance increase in reading and writing Blu-ray discs (a 100 percent increase, in case you're not doing the math), which should make burning those massive discs just slightly more tolerable. Of course, the whole shebang is backward-compatible with CD and DVD discs, per typical Blu-ray spec, and will set you back an additional $600. Available right now.

Now that Hitachi has announced a Blu-ray camcorder to put some of that high-def footage on, you've got to have something to record onto, right? Verbatim will ship 8cm Mini Blu-ray Recordable/Rewritable (BD-R/RE) blank media in August for Japan, with shipments to North America and points beyond in October. The media will hold 7.5GB on a single side, with recording times of one hour for 1920x1080i resolution, and up to two hours at 1440x1080i. The discs come with Verbatim's standard hard-coat finish for protection against scratching and dust, making them pretty reliable for the kinds of stresses you'll see filming your own season of Survivor: Fargo.