Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

The courtship began in December with heady bids, chocolate kisses, and flowers. Blockbuster, the movie rental leader was set to hitch Circuit City to it’s star. Making its overtures public on Monday with an offering reportedly worth nearly 1 billion dollars. There were talks of crossing platforms with Circuit City renting movies and Blockbuster selling home electronics. And a day later there were talks that it would never happen. According to published reports, questions about how Blockbuster, a company valued at less then their initial offer to Circuit City would finance such a deal arose. My guess was late fees (I swear I returned that copy of A New Hope and I will fight those charges to the death!) but apparently the pot just didn’t have the gold. So in this post possible merger world how will these companies survive?

MORE »

While Netflix has already announced they will be stopping the rentals of HD DVD titles, they have also announced some good news, but also hinted at some possible bad news as well.

With HD DVD now leaving, Netflix is confident enough to announce they will soon be offering four times as many titles on Blu-ray. This will bring the total of available Blu-ray titles from 400 to around 1,500.

Then in the little hint of posible bad news,

“It seems apparent that content will cost us more,” McCarthy said. “Whether we raise prices will be entirely a function of churn, subscriber acquisition costs and gross margins.”

MORE »

It seems the HD DVD camp just cannot catch a break lately, with the latest bad news coming courtesy of Netflix. The announcement means the end of HD DVD rentals as they have decided to go exclusive with Blu-ray. Netflix had been offering HD DVD rentals since they first came to market back in early 2006, but with four out of the six major studios now supporting Blu-ray, Netflix has taken that as a sign. Going forward new titles available for rent from Netflix will either be regular DVD or Blu-ray with the current selection of HD DVD rentals being phased out by the end of 2008. I think I am just about ready to commit to Blu-ray, even though I had been secretly hoping for HD DVD to win.

Read [Reuters]

• Blockbuster to offer streaming set-top box
• Some Columbia Pictures movies return to NXE streams
• Panasonic makes a move for 3D Blu-ray

Apple announced today that the AppleTV “take 2” update will be delayed. According to Apple the new “software will be available as a free automatic download to all Apple TV customers within two weeks.“ Of course we were told two weeks during Macworld which would have meant yesterday. While its not a reason to hold off on purchasing an AppleTV, it is annoying to those of us who cannot wait to start renting HD movies.

Read [Apple]

• The disruptive spectre of a $99 Wal-Mart iPhone
• Colbert beats West, doesn’t claim top spot
• Psystar backed by a larger company, at least that’s what Apple thinks