Five free Blu-ray site is live

Posted on Friday, June 29, 2007 by MegaZone

The previously posted promotional site www.blueraysavings.com is now up. It clarifies some things and introduces a new restriction – the 21 available titles are divided into five groups, and you have to pick just one from each category.

The qualifying Blu-ray Disc players are: Sony BDP-S1, Sony BDP-S300/301, PlayStation 3, Panasonic DMP-BD10K, Panasonic DMP-BD10AK, Philips BDP9000/37, Pioneer BDP-94HD, Samsung BD-P1000, and Samsung BD-P1200.

And the titles you can select from, grouped by row:

1The GuardianPearl HarborInvincibleChicken Little
2Corpse BridePhantom of the OperaBlazing Saddles 
3StealthResident Evil 2Underworld EvolutionStir of Echoes
4The Italian JobBlack RainBabelDevil’s Rejects
5Kiss of the DragonOmen 666The Transporter 2Species
Hart’s WarThe Last Waltz  

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
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  • Chris

    Just a thought…I love Tivo with a passion and come here all the time. I am starting to feel preached at on BluRay and Sony’s “forcedowntheirthroat” format. I have a feeling many people do not feel the same on the “glory” of Blu and leave with a bad taste in their mouth.

  • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ megazone

    I openly support Blu-ray and want HD DVD to die a flaming death, and I make no secret of that. I encourage people to buy Blu-ray and NOT to buy HD DVD, to hasten the inevitable day when Blu-ray squashes HD DVD once and for all. There is simply no way Blu-ray will go away, so the only two options are HD DVD going away, or we’re stuck with a format war splitting the market forever. And the latter is not good for anyone – not for consumers, not for consumer electronics vendors, and not for content providers.

    One of the misconceptions is that it is a ‘Sony’ format. Sony is one of the primary creators of Blu-ray, this is true. But it is very much a consortium effort. It is *not* like Minidisc, or Memory Stick, or other Sony formats where they create it, control it, and have the final say. I’ve been following these developments since before they were called Blu-ray and HD DVD, when they were just ‘next generation’ formats. Sony assembled a consortium that includes most of the industry and they put forth their concepts, which were combined with proposals from a number of others, such as Pioneer, Samsung, Philips, etc.

    Toshiba held out and decided to go their own way. Toshiba created HD DVD almost entirely on their own. NEC partnered with them, but mainly on drive development. Toshiba worked with Microsoft on iHD.

    In this ‘war’ it is *HD DVD* that is the more proprietary, single-source of the two, not Blu-ray. Toshiba only took HD DVD to the DVD Forum when it was complete. They presented it as a fait accompli for the forum to rubber stamp.

    Toshiba caused this ‘war’ by insisting on going their own way. Make no mistake about it, it is all about money. Back when DVD was developed, there were competing proposals. Toshiba and Philips had a proposal which included their patents, and, to avoid a war, Sony agreed to drop their competing proposal and back them. That became DVD. Sony began working on a follow on to handle HD content, and that eventually formed the core of Blu-ray. Instead of joining the team, Toshiba wanted more licensing revenue, so they refused to drop HD DVD – despite a sound rejection by the industry – and persisted on bringing it to market. This whole war is due to Toshiba wanting a bigger slice of the revenue, plain and simple. And HD DVD is really controlled by Toshiba.

    People seem to assume that Blu-ray is Sony, and there is a lot of Sony hate out there. I’m no Sony fan – I don’t think I own any Sony products (though I do plan to buy a PS3) – and Blu-ray is simply a better format. And I really, really hate the format war and I blame Toshiba for causing it.

    I’ll still post HD DVD news, good or bad. But lately there really hasn’t been good news for the HD DVD camp. And yeah, I take pleasure in that. I haven’t hated a format this badly since DIVX (the discs, not the codec). Actually, the motivation behind DIVX, and the abortive format war with DVD, is the same as HD DVD – money. I was very happy, even gloated, when DIVX died – because I said from the day it was announced that it was a bad idea. And I’ll do the same when HD DVD dies – because I’ve been saying since before it was called HD DVD that it was the weaker spec.

    I really didn’t think we’d have a format war. I thought Toshiba would be smart and back down to avoid it. I didn’t realize how stupid they are.

  • Chris

    I understand both perspectives and respect your views. I am simply letting you know that as a Tivo fan the comments sometimes distract me from the sites great info and I am sure that I am not alone. No hard feeling as I love your site and greatly appreciate the wonderful Tivo info you pull together. I hope you can respect that several hundred thousand people who want to watch movies have chosen HDDVD. Very few customers have chosen to buy a BluRay to watch movies (I will defer to you and recognized some have).

  • Chris

    Accidentally clicked a bit quick :)

    Most bought the PS3 as a game machine primarily.
    The point is simply to thank you and recognize that many have a differing opinion.

    Kep up the great work! This is the #1 TV site on my list…

  • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ megazone

    No problem. I know ~300,000 people have purchased HD DVD – roughly 150,000 each standalone players and XBox add-ons. And certainly not every PS3 owner watches movies on their PS3. The best comparison is media sales – and Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD. More Blu-ray discs are being sold than HD DVD discs, and the trend has been opening that gap over time. It fluctuates week to week, but there is an overall trend toward Blu-ray increasing its lead. Even if only a small percentage of PS3 owners buy movies, the sheer numbers of PS3s sold makes it significant. Just 5% of the PS3 user base would be a majority of users, not counting the 100,000 standalone BD players. And BD still has the overwhelming support of consumer electronics makers, PC vendors, and content providers – there are now more titles on BD than HD DVD.

    I don’t really have anything against HD DVD as a *format*, other than it has no real future since it is DVD pushed to the limit. 30GB is a bit tight for some applications, but probably usable. I don’t think it is likely the 3-layer discs will ever make it to market.

    My main issue is that Toshiba deliberately, even openly, declared a format war when it wouldn’t benefit anyone – other than themselves. They had several opportunities to join the BDA and avoid a war, but they declined repeatedly. Right at the very end, when it was obvious the BDA had completely outclassed them and no one else was going to join their side, they tried to come back to the table. But by then the BD spec was almost completely finalized. Toshiba wanted to make major changes to inject their patents, to increase their licensing revenue. If they had joined earlier, when the spec was more fluid, they probably could have done so. But they waited, and effectively locked themselves out. So they had to choose between joining the BDA and getting a smaller piece of the pie at the last minute – and they might have been able to get iHD included, for example – or starting a format war and trying to push HD DVD via the market, by preying on consumers as their front line fighters. And they did the latter. That just really bugs me.

    One of the reasons I decided to go with a ‘real’ blog and evolve away from the LJ community as I’d been using, was to cover more topics. The LJ community is really supposed to be just TiVo – I also ran/run the ‘bluraydisc’ LJ community. So both of those streams ended up here, along with other topics like Sling Media and Palm, two other technology areas I an keenly interested in. It also gives me more freedom to cover other products in the same markets – like Moxi, DirecTV’s DVRs, etc, which are really on topic for a TiVo-specific environment.

    I suppose those are really the four main subject areas – TiVo, Blu-ray, Sling Media, and Palm – that I focus on. Everything else tends to be connected to those four in some way. And it may change over time, of course. I expect that a ReplayTV user, or a Moxi user, would probably take issue with my clearly pro-TiVo bent, and I respect that. I enjoy discussions of technology and I don’t think even my favorite vendors are perfect. Witness my TiVo RFE list. :-)

    I am glad that you enjoy the site, I do try to make it useful and informative. I have a number of plans to expand the content, it is really a matter of time – I do have my day job, and a house to maintain, etc. :-) Sometimes I get frustrated because there is so much I want to do, but not enough time to do it all right now.

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