It seems as though HD-DVD’s advantage is to the consumer where the format promotes easy integration with computers and content is easier to create with less “technical knowledge” and perhaps money. Now that it looks like it might collapse…what will happen to the future of computers.

Is a Blu-ray victory only helping the movie studios? I understand they want to protect the content and all but what will happen to the user community regarding “personal” use of the media.

I don't think so. We see copy protections in CD, DVD and also HD DVD with AACS in addition to Blu-ray.

The computer industry for hi-def is quite overwhelming with Blu-ray products, ie burners, players, software, media. Also blu-ray is currently 3rd generation with its 6x burners. Blu-ray blank media is also supported by more CE industries.

In respect to software, the developers releases many kind of authoring software for blu-ray since the burners are pretty widely available.

Nevertheless, HD DVD blanks media are/were available though from Verbatim, Memorex, Ridata and some other CE. Just too bad that HD DVD group didn't release their burners fast enough.

I wonder if Toshiba was tipped off about the demise of HDDVD in April last year when they were supposedly going to ship the first HDDVD burner for regular PCs? It seems that the only burner they ever released was only available in one of their expensive laptops.

I think Blu-Ray is a victory for movie studios. Clearly the copy protection scheme can be updated beyond AACS with Blu-Ray while HDDVD could not be expanded.

I have also heard that the next generation of standalone Blu-Ray players with Profile 2 will block playback of BD-R and -RE discs in order to stop piracy. However, I suspect there will be some hacks or at least some players that will continue to support it.

They would need to be careful with that. They don't want to piss people who owns blu-ray camcorders and other products and not able to watch their own home made blu-ray movies in the future.

This would be a bad move for the movie studios/hardware industry. Can't play backups of movies you legally own? Then there is absolutely NO point in producing either Blu-Ray burners or Blu-Ray recordable discs.

What about the Java support for Blu-Ray? How does that come into play?

As far as I understand it, Java and derivatives are usually for hard-core programmers and they have stood behind their “geek-exclusiveness” regarding software technology.

HD-DVD was supposed to support some new Microsoft technology and MS has even made programming “user-friendly” such that some “kids” can make decent Apps. Look at all the Pocket PC stuff that over flooded the free-ware markets. And this also yields easy integration with Windows and Office software. I know…not everyone likes MS and their ways…but face it…they do have like 95% of the OS market and practically all businesses use their stuff.

But Java…it’s often free true…but you need some type of computer / engineering degree to use it.
MS stuff is expensive (ehem…most non-enterprises pirate it anyway) but they are really easy to use and really powerful.

Concerning the blocking of BD-R and -RE, I found a similar post & discussion:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=1798

http://forums.support.roxio.com/inde...howtopic=25294

Thoughts?

Yes I read about that a while ago. According to your link, the Pioneer guys said it was Sony who was trying to remove BDMV playback, but the other guys (Roxio and AVS) said it was the studios.

Anyway, whichever is true, there were 2 firmware updates for PS3 after that post in August 2007 and I can still play BDMV on BD-R/RE on the PS3 as of now with firmware 2.1.

Also, Sony BDP-S500 and their flagship model BDP-S2000ES still have specs posted that support BD-R/RE BDMV.