If I didn’t already own a PS3, I’d be first in line to buy one on June 8th. Why, you ask? Well, from June 8th – 14th, Wal-Mart stores will be giving $100 gift certificates to anyone who purchases a new blu-ray player… and yes, that includes the oh-so-rad PS3.

In addition, the world’s largest retailer will be marking down select blu-ray movies to just $15. You can use the $100 gift certificate to start beefing up your movie collection or spend it on toilet paper and frozen pizza. It’s your call, dude. Either way, you win.

So, if you’re looking to make your move into the world of hi-def movie watching/gaming, which we at the Fayetteville Flyer strongly suggest, but were waiting for a sweet deal to mosie along, your time has come.

Now if we can only get the Steve to buy a PS3 so that he, Burnt Reynolds and I can all play Call of Duty 4 online together, I’ll be set.

*It looks like you can already get a $100 walmart.com gift certificate if you buy the PS3 from walmart’s website.

**Blu-Ray is awesome, FYI.

TOKYO — HD DVD, died February 19, 2008, after long-fought HD disc format war

Born August 2002 to Toshiba and NEC, HD DVD spent it’s entire life competing with rival Blu-ray to become the next generation of movie discs.

HD DVD unveiled it’s first official player in March 2006. Some of it’s first titles included The Last Samurai, Million Dollar Baby, and The Phantom of the Opera.

Following a year of disappointing sales, Warner Bros. announced it was abandoning HD DVD. Soon after, Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-mart made similar announcements.

HD DVD is survived by millions of discs and nearly 1 million worthless players including stand-alone units and Xbox 360 add-ons.

[Via Reuters]

In what some are calling the final, final nail in the coffin for the HD DVD camp, Netflix announced today that it would be exclusively stocking the Blu-ray HD format in response to recent decisions by four of the six major movie studios to do the same.

They’re going to continue renting the discs they already own until the shelf life expires (usually about a year). After that, it’s Blu-ray only.

If you own an HD DVD player and you missed out on the Best Buy take-back offer last month, don’t worry. We’re sure that $800 box will feel right at home in the top of your closet next to all those CDs.

[Via Engadget]

If you’d have asked me a year ago which movie format I thought was going to win out, I would’ve said HDDVD. If you’d have asked me last week, I’d have said Blu-Ray was the hands-down winner. But after last Tuesday’s Macworld conference in which Apple announced iTunes movie rentals, I’d have to say that neither Blu-Ray nor HDDVD is gonna win this format war.

With Amazon, NetFlix and Microsoft pushing downloadable movies and cable companies offering HD on-demand content, it’s only a matter of time before discs are ditched completely. And now that Apple is in the game, the time frame has just been narrowed even more.

The latest version of iTunes will now provide DVD-quality movie rentals with stereo sound for $3-$4. HD movies are just a dollar more. And the newer, less-expensive Apple TV now allows you to order a movie straight from your living room without the need for a computer at all.

The idea of movie downloads is nothing new but nobody is handling it as well as Apple is claiming to be able to. Netflix has been offering streaming movies for a while but they still haven’t figured out how to make it work on a Mac, something that used to be a given but is completely unacceptable for a service in 2008. Amazon Unbox is making a good case for itself but doesn’t work with iPods and you’ve gotta wait until the entire movie has downloaded to watch it (sometimes hours). Apple’s new service works on both Macs, PCs, iPods (latest), TVs and allows movies to begin just minutes after the order is placed.

All we really want is to be able to quickly and easily watch movies on our screens whether they’re TVs, computers, iPods or all three. Be it Apple, Netflix, Amazon or whoever, somebody is eventually gonna get it right and whether you’re a fan of it or not, it’s plain to see that movie discs are headed in the same direction as the CD collection. It’s just a matter of time.

(For a hands-on review of the iTunes movie rental process, head on over to Engadget.)

I’m going to call it. HDDVD is the new Betamax. With the recent announcements by Warner Brothers, New Line and HBO to “Go Blu” exclusively, the final nail in the HDDVD camp’s coffin is about to be hammered in; sealing the deal and making Blu-Ray the unofficial winner in the next generation DVD format war. The only major studios sticking with HDDVD are Paramount and Universal. With Blu-Ray sales currently accounting for almost 70% of the market and Warner Bros. abandoning HDDVD, the format’s days are numbered. It’s looking grim for HDDVD.

I’ll admit that I was rooting for HDDVD to win, mainly because I personally owned a Toshiba HD-A3 HDDVD. The keyword in that last sentence: Owned. Past tense. After everything went down at CES, I knew we made the wrong choice in going with HDDVD. Luckily, through an “inside source” we found out that, after CES, Best Buy began offering folks with HDDVD players a trade. Bring in your HDDVD player before January 31st and we’ll give you full store credit to use towards a Blu-Ray player, no questions asked. With that offer in hand, we dropped HDDVD for Blu-Ray like a hot, maggot-infested potato. I walked in to Best Buy this weekend with my Toshiba player tucked under my arm and walked out with a shiny, new Playstation 3. It was as easy as that. Now if only they’ll take back my HDDVD’s in exchange for some Blu-Ray discs…

So if you, like me, initially went with HDDVD, now’s your chance to jump ship and cross over to Blu-Ray. Don’t dilly dally, though; Best Buy’s only offering this deal until January 31st.

Oh yeah, one more reason why Blu-Ray’s going to win: Porn. Don’t pretend like that doesn’t excite you, perv.