Warner Home Video has announced that it would postpone the release of its hybrid Total HD discs that combine Blu-ray and HD DVD layers to 2008. The company explains the delay with the decisions its management yet has to make and remains tight-lipped about technological side of the project.

Currently Warner releases movies in both next-generation formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD, but in this case the company’s retail partners have to carry two hi-def video disc for every movie from Warner, which effectively means that the company has two times less shelf space at retailers. In order to tackle the issue, engineers of Time Warner developed the so-called Total HD technology that allows to have both BD and HD DVD layers on a single optical disk. However, even though Total HD was promised to be rolled out in mid-2007, the company now postpones its release to Q1 2008.

“That is one less SKU to sell. With high-def, we’re trying to put Blu-ray and HD DVD on the same disc. Total HD is not coming until first-quarter 2008. We will find shelf space, said Warner Home Video’s vice president of sales and planning and operations Dan Miron at a session during the

Entertainment Supply Chain Academy conference.Separately, another Warner executive said that the company wants to have 10 to 20 titles for Total HD roll out, but declined to reveal when exactly the company will release its first discs compatible with both Blu-ray and HD DVD players, reports Video Business web-site.

“There is no expiration date on the viability of this concept, so we’re not in a rush to do it. We’ll do it when it makes sense and when it’s right,” said Steven Nickerson, Warner senior vice president of marketing management.

Both Blu-ray and HD DVD use 405nm wavelength laser to read data from the recordable media of the discs. However, the data layer of the Blu-ray discs is located 0.1mm from the disk’s surface, whereas the HD-DVD data layer resides 0.6mm deep from the disk’s surface. Warner’s engineers plan to create a disc with a Blu-ray top layer that works like a two-way mirror: it should reflect just enough blue light for a Blu-ray player to read, but it should also let enough light through for HD-DVD players to ignore the Blu-ray recording and find a second HD-DVD layer beneath, it was reported earlier. Theoretically, triple-layer DVDs can be created too, if DVD layer is located on the other side to the Blu-ray and HD DVD layers.

Even though the Total HD project sounds like a simplistic one, it involves pretty complex technologies on the optical disc side as well as custom-made replication equipment, which makes Total HD a pretty expensive initiative. Moreover, in addition to increased cost of the disc itself it involves increased cost of replication, which adds several dollars to already not really affordable Blu-ray or HD DVD, which cost $20 - $27 online. Moreover, Warner also has to standardize its Total HD with both Blu-ray disc association as well as DVD Forum. Given that LG Electronics has already released its hybrid player that sports both BD and HD DVD and Samsung Electronics is expected to follow, Warner Home Video may wait and see whether it actually makes sense to release dual-format discs.

Success! Paramount and Dreamworks Animation are exclusively running with HD-DVD. They have said sayonara to Blu-Ray and hello to HD-DVD. The rumor mill is fully buzzing on this one as well. Saying that a $150 million dollar “consideration fee” was payed outright to the studios. People are already screaming “bribe”, “consideration Fee” or “bribe” does it really matter? Don’t you think the Blu-Ray fellows had to lay some dough out for the Blockbuster and Target deal ? I think this is a great thing for HD-DVD, I am a bit bias though since I have already purchased an HD-DVD player and HD-DVD’s. So you will get nothing but bias reporting from me on this one. I did this silly tango when laser-discs came out as well, so I pray I wont have to eventually buy a Blu-Ray player, I better not be wrong like I was with the laser-discs, those things were awful.

I cant wait for Transformers on HD-DVD. Take that Blu-Ray! More info on this deal below.

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Major Nelson writes to tell us that 300 has hit the Xbox Live Video Marketplace! You can download both SD and HD versions of the film. The HD version is a whopping 5.3GB download but I bet looks absolutely wonderful on a HDTV. 300 did break HD video records when it hit stores at the end of July.

I’ll be starting my download later this afternoon on my Xbox 360.

I don’t want to get into the Console war thing (XBOX360 owns on content) but they are still over priced. $599 for 80GB, granted they have the 20 GB model for $450 which is not bad. I would buy the 60gb model though for $499, seems like the best deal to me. But the question I have still is what kind of content can you download to fill that large Hard drive. Its not like you can download movies now from the Playstation Store. They have trailers for games and movies, and they have music. But the real lump of stuff is Movies. That is why the 360 is still better to me. Not because of the graphics, not because of the controllers, or really even games. Its all about the online content. The 360 would be useless to me if I was not able to use it online. Granted the one great thing about the PS3 is that you can browse the net, which you cannot do with the 360. But whenever MS decides to release IPTV for the box is the day that the 360 will solidify itself in console greatness.

But this is me. Not anyone else, I love gaming but I do have to say I am not that hardcore as some. I am only good at sports games, I love all games but those are the only ones I care to play. Sometimes I do need a little “boom head shot” action but other then that I love the sports games. So what do the PS3 owners think, its a beautiful device I think when it comes to performance it wins by a hair, but the lack of online content must bother a lot of you. I know this topic has been touched on by so many people. But after the release of this model and pricing it just makes me ill.

Now I am not trying to bash the ps3, but I want to know what you PS3 owners think.

So I read this morning over on engadget that Best Buy was offering the XBOX360 HD DVD players for $149.99. Then Brandon my counterpart wrote about it here at The Geekery. Then a saw a counter post by engadget saying that they were wrong. So I hop on over to Best Buy’s site and I see them for $179.99. I was all like WTF govna! So I called my good pals at the local Best Buy and probed them with a good amount of questions. So in the end I am picking up an XBOX360 HD DVD player tonight for $149.99. He said he read $149.99 on the internal site. So I don’t think it was a mistake, I just don’t think they are ready to sell them in the wild yet for $149.99. But the nice gent stamped my name on the thing and took it to the front counter. Plus get this, Toshiba is upping the ante with the HD DVD give-away, the nice chap at Best Buy told me today that whenever you buy a HD DVD player from Best Buy you will receive a form, you fill out this form with your choice of 5 HD DVD movies you would like and Toshiba sends you those movies for free. WOW!

Now I am not sure if this is just the XBOX HD player and if it is just with Best Buy that you receive this offer from Toshiba, I didn’t want to barrage him with anymore questions. Hopefully he was not feeding me lines just to get into the store.

“So tonight we dine in hell!!”, because I am watching 300 in HD tonight!!!

The fight continues!!!

Well we here at TheGeekery are no porn buffs, or at least we don’t admit it. Some of you might be wondering why the hell am I going to write about the porn industry. Well lets face it, the porn industry is huge, according to forbes in 2001 the porn industry was a 14 billion dollar industry. Now it is an estimated 50 billion dollar a year industry. The porn industry is kind of like the illegal drug industry no one talks about it, no one talks about the profits, no one talks about the growth of that market.

Sony Corp. has started offering more technical support to the adult film industry in Japan, movie makers said at the Adult Treasure Expo 2007 in Chiba, Japan, and the problem of finding companies to mass produce their movies appears to be over.

It’s an important step for Blu-ray Disc. HD DVD has already taken over the U.S. adult film industry through its lower costs and ease-of-use. People in the industry say they’ve received plenty of help from backers of the format, including Microsoft Corp. and Toshiba Corp. But Blu-ray is different. Sony and one of the biggest movie makers in the world, the Walt Disney Co., object to pornography, and Disney maintains a policy against having its own movies replicated by any company working with adult movie titles.

“In Japan, there are some problems. Companies cannot press Blu-ray discs because they cannot touch adult-related contracts,” said Kiyotaka Konno, director of administration at Assist Corp., a Japanese company that authors and replicates DVDs for the adult industry in Japan. “So we asked some makers in Taiwan to do the work, and then we import the discs back to Japan. The Taiwanese company was able to obtain a pressing machine from Sony and will start mass production in August.”

The adoption of Blu-ray Disc by the Japanese porn industry could make all the difference in the format war. The adult film industry has long been a first mover in using new technologies, and many analysts say the industry played a key role in making VHS the winner in the video cassette fight against Sony’s Betamax video tape standard years ago. Blu-ray Disc, also a Sony technology, is now vying with HD DVD to be the high-definition disc of choice in the 21st century.

Now because I love HD DVD, and I am planning on purchasing an HD DVD player, so I am going to ask all of our Canadian porn moguls to the north to start stamping those HD DVD’s out. Don’t give in to the Blu-side.

Honestly their were no purposeful puns in this article…