Whoa, this plague really spread fast 

My first BD was 300 heheh now i'm asking more and more 

Two Years of Blu-ray Disc Milestone Reached
Posted in Milestones on June 21st, 2008 by Dave

Yesterday marked the second anniversary of the release of the initial slate of Blu-ray titles from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The initial slate included 50 First Dates, Hitch and XXX. This first wave of discs were all single layer BD25 discs with MPEG2 video encoding and PCM lossless audio.

A lot has happened since 2006, including the remastering and replacement of one of the launch titles The Fifth Element - with the new version being much more representative of current releases, featuring AVC video on a BD50 disc with Dolby True HD Lossless audio.

As well as the shift towards BD50 discs, the more modern AVC and VC-1 codecs and the more efficient Dolby True HD or DTS-HD Master Audio codecs, we have seen the introduction of both Bonus View Picture-in-Picture and BD Live, right around the time that Warner announced their intention to discontinue HD DVD - an announcement that effectively killed the competing format. Since then we have seen Paramount and even Universal join in with Blu-ray release announcements, effectively making Blu-ray the standard for High Definition Disc movie releases.

As much as things have improved, I still think that there is a need for attention in a couple of areas - namely the lack of availability of capable hardware and also the lagging by some studios to bring their releases in line with what we expect from Blu-ray.

While studios like Sony, Fox and Disney have lossless audio on pretty much every release, Warner continues to drag the chain with titles being announced and released with 640kbps lossy audio. One has to wonder why this is. Even Universal is promising lossless audio on their Blu-ray releases and Paramount has moved almost entirely to lossless as well after rejoining the format.

On the players side, we still see the PS3 as the most capable player, offering both Bonus View and BD Live support. One has to wonder where the likes of the Sony BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 or Panasonic DMP-BD50 players are. And while we have seen the Funai player appear at Walmart and Best Buy, we have to wonder also what is keeping the Chinese manufactured players that are expected to be even more cost effective.

One has to hope that the hold up is in quality control. We saw the release of both Blu-ray and HD DVD players two years ago - neither performed to expectations, with buggy firmware and a not so great user experience over all. With no format competition to drive release dates, at least the manufacturers have the opportunity to get things right before release. Still, it is a frustrating wait.

Feel free to share your thoughts on the events of the last couple of years for Blu-ray - what moments stood out as important, trends you like or don’t like, or anything else … though please stick to Blu-ray - some of that history is best left behind!

bought ex machine and happy feet for the USD 30 promotion but when the order price came out, its USD 38 .. wondery why is that .

mpyw family all the ear dem tok kong one

wah.... what are titles inside? Taukeh, your stim's leather nice oh

Just wanted to ask a simple question. Will BluRay movies shows full screen on LCD TV or there will be black bars on top and bottom just like DVDs??

BDs are hot items these days. This is my second time all my BDs to sell was sold in one night!

Sorry to those who missed it. Maybe next time.