The dust has settled. Black Friday 2008 has passed. The question remains…was it worth it?

Dyna and our buddy Jason camped out at Best Buy to get the cheap laptop. I wussed out because, honestly, there wasn’t a deal I really gave a crap about. If anything, I would have gone for a Blu-ray player, but the “deal” at Best Buy wasn’t that great. That said, I’m really glad I stayed home and got some sleep. (more…)

Here’s a list of the Blu-rays, DVDs, and video games that were released today. Go easy on that credit card…Black Friday is just around the corner. (more…)

We here at Average Dudes are huge fans of HD movies. If you’re going to sit through hours of some of Hollywood’s worst ideas, they had better at least look and sound fantastic. With the HD format war long gone, the market can now unite behind one format. The problem is that, with one format, there’s no competition which means there’s no motivation to drive prices lower.

Case in point, Netflix has decided that, because Blu-ray discs cost more in retail stores, people won’t mind paying more to rent them. Their bull-shit reasoning after the break. (more…)

You may be sick of our posts about this HD format war, but there’s good news if you are. This will be the last one.

Toshiba announced today their plans to cease all HD DVD hardware production by March, leaving Blu-ray the victor. There had been rumors flying for a while about this announcement and they were all right. The part that a lot of people got wrong was the assertion that Toshiba would begin manufacturing Blu-ray players. During a Q&A session after their press release, they formally said that they had no plans of entering the Blu-ray business. Although just yesterday they said they still hadn’t made up their minds about HD DVD, so obviously what they say and what they’re planning are two very different things.

So that’s it. If you’ve been on the fence waiting to enter the HD disc market, you can now purchase without fear. Just make sure you study up on Blu-ray players because they are not all created equal. In fact, that sounds like a good Dumbass’s Guide to replace our now-defunct Format War one.

Follow the link for the full press release from Toshiba. I’m going to go cry in the bathroom now.

[Engadget]

People who frequent message boards and blog comments crack me up. If you were to read some of the comments on posts about the HD format war, you’d think it was bigger and more important than Iraq. People defend their format of choice so jealously that they’ll get into ridiculous spats, call each other names, call each other’s mothers names, etc. Then there are the people in the middle; the fence-sitters. They’ll say things like, “AHH I can’t WAIT for this war to be OVER!” and “This has gone on long enough. Can we please just call one a winner so that I can start spending all my money?!” Ok that was an exaggeration, but that’s what they might as well be saying. Seriously though, let’s step back for a second and analyze this. (more…)

Wal-Mart announced today that it plans to phase out HD DVD products completely by June. Seriously, it’s like salt in a wound. I would love for this format war to be called by someone official so that I can stop reading about it and hoping that HD DVD drops a nuke on Blu-ray. Engadget has already called it and supposedly Toshiba is on its way. It’s probably a matter of hours before there’s a press release. Then maybe I’ll start searching for a backwards-compatible PS3 on eBay.

[Hi-Def Digest]

If you haven’t been following the HD format war very closely, you might have missed Michael Bay’s newsworthy blog post late last year. In it, the Pearl Harbor director expressed his disappointment that Paramount, distributor of his latest blockbuster cheese-fest Transformers, had chosen to exclusively support HD DVD. He whined about how he felt that Blu-ray was superior and that he wouldn’t make Transformers 2 if Paramount continued to back the opposing format. A few days later, possibly after sobering up, he quickly recanted his statements, saying he’d be happy to make shit-loads more money do Transformers 2 but he was still disappointed in Paramount’s decision.

Fast-forward beyond all the recent defections from HD DVD, and we get to hear from Mr. Bay about just how right he was: (more…)

As I posted earlier, Netflix has decided to go Blu-ray exclusive. As far as I’m concerned, that’s fine. Then I got their e-mail regarding the switch.

The part that gets me is the “In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles…we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well.” Yes, because taking things away provides more of a selection.

Our Dumbass’s Guide to the HD Format War is becoming more and more obsolete as the weeks pass. The latest bit of news comes from Reuters. It seems as though Netflix has chosen to support Blu-ray discs exclusively and phase out their HD DVD collection by the end of this year. Sucks for me since I’ve got the XBox 360 HD DVD player and I can’t afford a PS3. Plus I hate Sony for taking away backwards compatibility for PS2 games, but that’s another post altogether.

(Picture courtesy of Gizmodo. Ok I stole it…)

[Reuters via Gizmodo]

The Consumer Electronics Show ended on January 10th after four long days of companies climbing over each other to show off their latest and greatest innovations. As you can see by checking out a site like Engadget or Gizmodo, the sheer amount of crap that is shown off is nothing short of overwhelming so it’s difficult for a non-nerd to sift through and find things to really look forward to. That’s where we come in. We’re just nerdy enough to check out all the coverage, but just normal enough to spot the things that will really have an impact on our lives (and wallets) in the coming year. (more…)