YouTube looking to enter rental movies on demand business, says WSJ
by Ross Miller 
posted Sep 2nd 2009 at 6:02PM
WallStreetJournal posts
Does everyone know the war is officially over but us?
by Ben Drawbaugh posted Feb 18th 2008 at 5:16PM
While we all wait for Toshiba to make things official, we're starting to wonder if everyone is the HD DVD camp already has a plan that they haven't shared with us. We can't say we blame them, but just reviewing the series of events since Warner went Blu, it has us convinced that everything that's happened since, is according to schedule. Sure Netflix and the Wal-Mart aren't inside the circle, but it's reasonable to believe that when they got wind of the demise of HD DVD, it seemed like a great time to make an announcement for some shameless free press. If we were to guess, we'd say that Universal and Paramount feel like they're left holding the bag and we'd think that as far as they're concerned Toshiba can't call it fast enough. To add credence to this, the good old WSJ is reporting that both will be in the clear to announce titles for Blu-ray -- as well as for Warner to cease HD DVD production-- as soon as it goes official. We can certainly understand Toshiba's desire to string it out though, cause no doubt as soon as it's official many of the remaining HD DVD players will end up in a landfill somewhere and that's not good for anybody. [Via CEpro.com]
The Wall Street Journal catches on to HD DVD grey market imports
by Ben Drawbaugh posted Oct 18th 2007 at 4:07PM
Hard core HD DVD fans have known for sometime that they can obtain otherwise exclusive Blu-ray titles via overseas websites like Amazon.co.uk; but we were still surprised to see the Wall Street Journal pick up on it. It's not that we don't think people are doing this, but we wonder how many. Sure, early adopter types won't have any problem ordering a title online and paying a bit more for it, but in the grand scheme of the format war, how big of deal is it? The WSJ doesn't know either, but does a great job of describing the reason (distribution rights) for the loop hole and some of the more popular ways (xploitedcinema.com) to do it. Meanwhile, we'll just keep our count to the titles available the average consumer at his local retailer.The Wall Street Journal talks format war
by Steven Kim posted Sep 26th 2007 at 4:39PM
We've talked the HD DVD / Blu-ray format war to death, using everything from officious study group findings to our own Why doesn't your cable provider offer more features?
by Richard Lawler posted May 6th 2006 at 5:44PM 
Across the country people have cable envy, as someone in Hawaii who might even have the same provider can get an extra HDTV channel or VOD selection they can't. Prices vary, rollouts are staggered, capacity is limited etc. etc. etc. This WSJ article does a bit more delving into the wheres and whys of cable feature offering and prices.Among our HD Beat readers, are you generally satisfied with the selection (everybody needs more high definition channels) and features your cable company offers, or are you waiting to/have already switched to satellite or IPTV offering for more capabilities?
