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Well despite the fact that HD DVD is now a dead format, Toshiba is not yet willing to part with those patents. A recent report coming from the Economic Daily News, a Chinese-language newspaper is claiming that the Taiwan Information Storage Association’s (TISA) has contacted Toshiba in an effort to acquire the HD DVD patents.

Its being speculated that they were looking to purchase Toshiba’s patents in an effort to further develop the CBHD (China Blue High-definition Disc), which according to estimates is based on “more than 90%” of HD DVD patents. Had they acquired these patents it was also believed that it would have helped them by adding some extra bargaining chips in their Blu-ray royalty negotiations.

Of course without the patents being sold, it seems that why they really wanted them will remain nothing more than speculation. One does have to wonder just what, if anything that Toshiba will bring to the table in the future that may require those patents.

Via [DigiTimes]

Trying to lure in customers to replace their DVDs or HD DVDs with Blu-rays, Paramount is offering ten bucks per title to do just that. Although Paramount and Dreamwork titles are involved in the offer, it isn’t good for just any Paramount movie.

According to HighDefDigest, the promotion will start with the release of Transformers on Blu-ray coming in just a few days on September 2nd. Hopefully you won’t mind messing up those boxes a bit though, since you need to include the proof-of-purchase tabs from both the DVD and the Blu-ray disk, along with the promotional certificate from inside eligible Blu-ray movies.  You also have to buy your Blu-rays before December 31, 2009 and have your rebate envelope postmarked before January 31, 2010.

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Although HD DVD has conceded defeat in the race to become the high definition successor of the DVD, and left the path open for Blu-ray, its still not been an easy going to convince consumers that they need to invest in this next generation disc format. In a situation that is reminiscent of the DVD growth over VHS, only 1 in 10 people are currently intending to invest in a Blu-ray player.

After news that Blu-ray players are becoming significantly cheaper, the news also surfaces that only 9% of HD TV owners are planning to buy a Blu-ray player. This is nothing if not surprising, as one would have thought that if you were to spend $2000 on a new HD TV, you would want to be able to play HD movies. 

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Here comes yet another effort to push Blu-ray into more households. Wal-Mart is currently offering a $100 gift card along with the purchase of any Blu-ray player. The promotion will run from June 8-14 and to kick off, Wal-Mart is even adding more Blu-ray brands to its inventory with units from Magnavox, Samsung and Panasonic. In addition, Wal-Mart will also offer Blu-ray movie titles at a reduced price of $15 per regular title. Some of these movies will include titles such as “3:10 to Yuman”, “Shooter” and “300.”

Wal-Mart’s promotion may yet be the biggest campaign thus far in the drive to promote the Blu-ray format since it won the drawn out format war. It was only a couple of months ago that Blu-ray beat its rival format, HD DVD and it looks like that it has not yet reached maximum sales.

Wal-Mart seems to have good intentions with this promotion, but will it be enough to convince customers to replace their standard DVD players and movies?

Read [Eweek]

Following in the path of Samsung, LG has officially announced they will be discontinuing their production of the HD DVD/Blu-ray combo players. The end of line from LG will come this fall with the LG BH200 that will retail for $587.

“Surely, it is a very tough decision for us to halt the production of the combos, however, we will stop manufacturing the Super Blu series from the second half of this year,” said a spokesman from LG Electronics.

Via [DVD Town]

Even though Microsoft has “officially” stated that a Blu-ray drive would be sold for the Xbox 360, this rumor just does not want to die. The latest information is coming courtesy of the Chinese newspaper, Economic Daily News, and it seems to indicate that Microsoft is still interested in utilizing the apparent winner of the HD disc war for their game console.

The Economic Daily News is reporting that Pegatron Technology, a subsidiary of Asus, has orders, from Microsoft, to assemble Xbox 360 consoles that are equipped with a Blu-ray drive. This purported assembly is set to begin in the Q3 of this year. Microsoft has yet to comment on this latest chapter in the Blu-ray/Xbox rumor, so more as it happens.

Read [Digitimes]

Well, they may be a little late to gifting HD DVD purchasers something to help cover the blow, but better late than never. For those who purchased an HD DVD player before February 23, 2008, Amazon is giving $50 Amazon credit to anything, to which there are, of course, some restrictions. The biggest restriction being the items have to be sold by Amazon and not a third-party merchant. You can also only get up to $500 back (which means you can redeem up to 10 HD DVD players), so that eleventh box, you’re just going to have to hang on to. Check out the letter from Amazon below:

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Wal-mart has announced that it is now offering refunds for HD DVD players purchased on or after November 1 2007. Consumers have until April 30 2008 to return the players with or without the original packaging. Consumers just need to present their proof of purchase to get a refund.

If you are one of those who bought HD DVD players, only to find out later on that movie companies will no longer support it and instead put their videos on Blu-ray discs, now is the chance to get your money back or add a few more bucks to purchase a Blu-ray player instead. Similarly, other big box retailers such as Best Buy, Circuit City and Future Shop all have similar return policies for HD DVD players.

Via [Engadget HD] Read [Wall Street Journal]

While the announcement from Toshiba pulling HD DVD support essentially killed of the format, we can now officially declare it dead. The HD DVD Promotion Group has officially been closed, which removes any chance of resurgence of the format. The group, as of March 28 quietly shut themselves down, and so we have it, HD DVD is done. A quick visit to the HD DVD Promotion Group website, presents the simple message:

“The HD DVD Promotion Group was dissolved as of March 28, 2008, and the website was closed accordingly.”

Now lets move on to the next question; Will movie downloads begin to take shape, will we begin to see Blu-ray adoption or will most people just choose to continue with the standard DVD?

Via [Register Hardware]

Best Buy has updated their HD DVD Trade-In website and is now offering up some pricing details. Sadly it seems that most people would be better off keeping the players and simply using them as an up-converting or spare DVD player around the house.

Remember those Toshiba A2 players that we were seeing become quite affordable, they are now, according to the Best Buy Trade-In website worth a measly $39.60 and that is assuming its in good condition with the remote, power cord, and manual included. Coming in a little less than the A2 is both the A3 at $32.40 and the A1 at $36.90. As for the Xbox HD DVD player add-on, that is at a sad $18.90.

While the pricing may seem low, I suppose it is nice that the offer is at least available, just not sure how many people would find it worth the time to complete the offer.

Read [Best Buy Trade-In]