RSSAmazon Offers Freebie Deal for Blu-ray Movies
By the Betanews Staff | Published November 14, 2007, 10:57 AM
Amazon has begun offering a promotion that would allow customers to receive one Blu-ray move free when they buy another at full price. Although the sale is said to be for a "limited time," no expiration date was given. 72 movies in all are included as part of the deal, with prices on Blu-ray movies either $19.95 or $26.95. As would be expected, the least expensive of the two discs is counted as the free movie.
There have been reports that the discount has not been applied to some purchases, although Amazon.com said that those not receiving the freebie should contact the site to have their orders adjusted. In any case, such a move is not unexpected. With HD DVD now selling their players for as low as $98, pressure is on Blu-ray to answer back. While Blu-ray cannot match HD DVD on player price, it seems to have turned to its ever-growing catalog of movie titles to drum up sales.
Staying out of the 'mine is better than yours' arguments, I'll only say Buy.com also has a similar sale. Not quite as many titles though.
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|Well, my local Best Buy has an equal amount of Blu-ray and HD DVD movies to choose from (and there's a lot of both).
Target has almost twice the shelf space allocated for Blu-ray. Upon closer inspection though, I noticed many of the Blu-ray titles were placed two to a spot, side-by-side... giving the illusion there were more.
Clever.
I counted them... all in all there were only 7 more titles on Blu-ray than HD DVD, when it appeared to the casual observer as though there were about 30 more. That seems a little... oh what's the word? Desperate?
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|And yet an other fire sale.
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|What, no link to Amazon? Hm, not surprised.
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|Not to be rude, but...It's Amazon. Do you really need a clickable link?
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|I wanted to buy PS3 for Xmas. Now, with upcoming DivX support I thought it is even more attractive. What could be better? With 300 US$ it is only possible to buy a crappy Sigma-based junk. But with a little extra you can get 7-core PowerPC computer with great audio potential and fully upgradeable, networking - what PS3 is. Am I wrong, Hollywood__?
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|"with upcoming DivX support"
- You do know it's also coming to the XBox 360 too, right?
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|Not really meaning to nitpick, but "7-core" is a common misconception regarding the Cell BE in the PS3.
It has 1 general-purpose core and 6 DSPs (I know it has 7, but only 6 are available for developers, 1 is reserved for the system). The DSPs cannot operate on their own since they take commands from the Power Processor Element.
It is a single-core processor.
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|"It has 1 general-purpose core and 6 DSPs (I know it has 7, but only 6 are available for developers, 1 is reserved for the system)."
- All of which faces a huge choke-point with only a tiny 256mb of RAM onboard, right?
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|You obviously don't have a clue about what a DSP is and what it can do.
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|256MB of RAM is more then enough. You don't need 4GB RAM to run optimized code. The fact that PC software is nowadays so bloatware that the majority of programmers don't do any real optimizations doesn't mean that it's not possible to achieve better results.
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|"256MB of RAM is more then enough. You don't need 4GB RAM to run optimized code."
- LMAO
It's hilarious how the 'enough' argument gets deployed over something so fundamental as RAM and yet we're not supposed to laugh at that very same point when the Sony/PS3/Blu-ray shill-drone-troll-fanboys claim games & high def must have 50gb (despite the majority of BD products appearing on 25gb BD discs).
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|Errr... it's already available on the Xbox (original) - install XBMC. :P Upgradeable, networked, good audio... not hamstrung by DRM or a ridiculously high price...
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|Then why don't you enlighten me, 'Professor'.
The (up to) 8 SPEs (DSPs) on the Cell Broadband Engine are not autonomous, and rely on the PPE (the main processor) to give them instructions.
Even though the majority of the power comes from those very same DSPs, they are essentially co-processors, and cannot operate solely on their own. Do you need a definition of what a co-processor is?
Your explanation of what they are and what they can do, please?
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|Just like everyone's answer to DivX capability on the PS3 until the update comes out is to install Linux?
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|Uhhh, is that all your going to say? Just say he doesn't have a clue what a DSP is? It makes me think you don't have a clue either.
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|What about my nVidia Riva TNT with 16mb of ram. Is that enough too? As long as they optimize it?
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|Nemoy,
The PS3 is a great gaming machine and an average BD player. If you are going to use it for a true theater environment for watching movies, you will be dissapointed if you like deep black levels and true color.
If it's just for gaming and an occasional BD movie, the PS3 is still the least expensive BD option. No inexpensive PC can keep up with the raw graphics power of the PS3 or the 360 so you are better off with a console for gaming.
I still like the 360 much better (for gaming) because I am on Live constantly and the online experience is way better than PSN. XBOX Live is what draws people to the 360.
The HD-DVD 360 add-on looks pretty good but not as good as a high end HD-DVD player or even the A2, they have better black level and sharper output.
It's a hard call, I would still recommend the 360 over the PS3 for the sheer number of games available but I would love to see someone push the PS3 to it's full potential.
What type of games do you play?
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|Actually, if you've never used it, XBMC remains the best reason to mod your original Xbox (a soft-mod can be installed in a matter of minutes). Add an FTP connection to your PC, and you have a media center that the 360 only dreams of being.
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|Well, according to some developers, the 256mb of RAM is an issue. Here's a dev quote from the article on product-reviews.net, from 11.03.07:
"If you really want to be “technical” the PS3 setup is absolutely lousy - plain and simple - for modern game setups. The majority of the work needed for the PS3 is not the so called difficulty of the CELL processor, but its lack of main memory, lack of video memory, and very slow load data-read speeds, and much slower bus speed, all in comparisson to the Xbox 360."
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|"you will be dissapointed if you like deep black levels and true color."
That's interesting, especially after the supposed ability to support Deep Color with HDMI 1.3.
If it still can't get it right after that...
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|Someone just made them selves look foolish...
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|I recommend doing just a tad bit more research into your upcoming purchases if you think its a 7 core computer :)
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|Hollywood__, I don't need if for games, but rather for watching my home movie collection. As I calculated, decent, quiet HTPC, capable of 1080p will cost about 2000 US$ (and still, without HD sound..HDMI cards are yet to be released..). Other option is 200-300$ player, sort of Zensonic z500 I own - which is good for SD-quality and kind of "jumpy" for high-bitrate content. Regarding Xbox360 everybody says that it is noisy and unacceptable for home theater, and I read somewhere that Microsoft plan to replace the cooler. These media extenders V2 also look like a garbage to me.
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|yes, I do. But I haven't read any official details yet. Again, basing on reviews I read, XBox 360 is kind of too loud for home theater.
I am still looking for player capable of playing HD content - both video & sound - in my HT setup, which is not high-end, but I do have some Onkyo THX Ultra-certified receiver and B&W speakers.. Player up to 1000 US$. HTPC will be either too bulky (if powerful and silent), or too noisy (if too small), or too weak (if both silent and small)..
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|Just as I thought... nothing from Mr. "I work in this field, I know things".
You seem to have a penchant for public self-humiliation. Whatever floats your boat, big guy.
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|Oh yeah, definitely. I agree. I never owned an original Xbox, but I've read quite a bit about XBMC... and it does look nice. Lots of features.
I may still get an Xbox for that very reason, though I doubt it would do anything more than what I'm already capable of doing with my custom media PC in my living room.
Good call, though.
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|Exactly! Good point...
25 GB should be enough if they insisted on utilizing VC-1 or h.264 AVC for all releases, and included just one high-resolution (24-bit, not 16-bit) multi-channel audio format such as Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA.
Let the players or the consumer's existing home theater hardware determine if they can enjoy the benefits of true high-definition, or if it needs to be scaled down for backward compatibility reasons. That functionality is built in to both Blu-ray and HD DVD specifications... but no, Blu-ray needs space-wasting PCM and MPEG-2.
To see dual-disc Blu-ray releases for a single movie, and find out that one of the discs is 50 GB, and that apparently wasn't enough... that's just ridiculous.
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|Don't forget the developers who are struggling with the PS3 version of Assassin's Creed either.
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|Cheaper movies wont solve blu-rays problem, they need a discount on the players. And by players I mean stand alones, not the POS3.
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|You will see a lot of this from both sides this holiday, it will be a mad dash to see who can lose the most money.
As long as they want to give away movies from both formats, I'm good with that. That's the advantage of being format neutral. HD-DVD is clearly superior in the extra features and interactive department. BD tends to have a lot of artifacting but now I realize it's not the movies, it's the PS3's lousy built in BD player.
Anyone who bought a PS3 (like me) for a cheap BD player is screwing themselves because the player is sh!te compared to a good stand alone, just like the PS2's built in DVD player .... junk.
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|What? The PS3 is a great player. Arguably the player that offers the most value today too, since it should be upgradable to profile 1.1 and 2.0.
These BOGO sales though are not a good thing for either format in the long run. Its wise of HD DVD to not have these sales. All this does is give buyers the expectation that they never need to pay full price - wait a few weeks and there will be a BOGO.
While that's great for the buyer, its not good for the studio. They are only doing this now to stay ahead in the Neilson's. And the only reason they are pushing for that is to give consumers the impression that blu-ray is clearly the winning or chosen format.
If blu-ray outsells HD DVD 2:1, doesn't that really mean each side bought the same number of discs and studios on the HD DVD side made more money??
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|I have to disagree, I get substandard blacks, artifacts and oversaturated colors from the PS3. I can switch HDMI inputs from the PS3 to the A2 or XA1 and see the difference right away.
None of the firmware updates allow the PS3 to pass blacker than black over HDMI so far. Toshiba released that update a long time ago for all of it's players.
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|Mmmm... inky black goodness. :P
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|Wow, not one "desperation" comment from the Sony/PS3/Blu-ray shill-drone-fanboy contingent.
Maybe Stringer's recent admission that in truth all was not well in Blu-land and Blu-ray has won f*ck-all so far has rendered them all speachless!
LMAO.
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|Use your p**** at least once and you wont ever make a dumb a** comment like this again. Well known fact.
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|If you were just a little bit better at English or typing you might even make a little sense to someone other than yourself in your own head
(where you also get the amazing coloured lights and that 'special' music)
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|[sarcasm]
Waa...it's a fire-sale to get rid of the old stock now that profile 1.1 is out...
Waa...
[/sarcasm]
Seriously though, I may take a look and see if there's anything that I'm interested in. I own both of the formats, and (just like the HD-A2 from 2 weeks ago), the price is right...
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|I don't think anyone told him that he never actually catches the dragon... :)
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