Home Media Magazine is reporting some statements made by a Warner Brothers VP from the two day Blu Ray Festival industry pep rally.

Dan Silverberg, VP of high definition media at Warner Home Video, was quoted Monday as saying "One thing that may be changing is our strategy. When both formats launched and hardware prices were high, we made a decision to support both formats and let the consumer decide. But now that hardware pricing is affordable for both Blu Ray and HD DVD, it appears consumers no longer want to decide, so the notion of staying in two formats for the duration is something we are re-evaluating now that we are in the fourth quarter.". Silverberg also said "We can definitely talk Blu Ray. We are commited to the format.". 

Warner abandoning either side for exclusivity would be a crushing blow to the unlucky side. Again, fourth quarter sales are going to make or break this Format War, so we'll just have to keep an eye on things and see if any more telling quotes surface. 

According to makers of AnyDVD Slysoft, a version of their disc copying software with support for BD+ encrypted Blu Ray discs will be available by year's end.

Sony and their adherents have trumpeted the impenetrability of Blu Ray's BD+ encryption asone of the major points of Blu Ray's superiority to HD DVD. It has been stated on record that it would take ten years for BD+ to be cracked. Well, much like DVD's 'uncrackable' encryption, it took the hacker community no time at all to devise a workaround. 

Didn't anyone tell Sony, Fox and Disney that going around bragging up BD+'s strengths was only going to make it fall faster? There is no uncrackable encryption and there never will be. Severe DRM schemes only make things harder on the consumer. 

Paramount has released some pre-Nielsen figures for sales of their highly anticipated Transformers HD DVD release.

In it's first week, the HD DVD version sold 190,000 copies, the most ever for a single high definition format. I say single, because Warner's 300 still holds the record, with Blu Ray and HD DVD combined sales at 250,000 in it's first week. The Blu Ray version of 300 sold approximately 165,000 copies it's first week. Of the 190,000 Transformers HD DVDs sold last week, over 100,000 were sold on the first day of sales. It's good news for both Paramount and the HD DVD format, which is still fighting an uphill battle against rival Blu Ray despite a run of good sales weeks since Paramount announced HD DVD exclusivity in August.

To keep things in perspective, the DVD version of Transformers sold 8.3 million copies in the same week.

Smarthouse has posted an article regarding an unconfirmed new version of the Xbox 360 videogame console with onboard HD DVD.

They state that "insiders" at Toshiba have revealed that Microsoft is developing a new Xbox 360 with an internal HD DVD drive. Also rumoured for the new hardware, extensive wireless capabilites, HDMI, and 1080p playback. In addition their source claims that a dual HDTV tuner and an iPod/mp3 player docking port are possibilities. With these features one might speculate that Microsoft would be adding some additional media center capabilities to the dashboard, and marketing the new unit as a media hub that bridges your home network and home theater together. They quote a "senior Toshiba executive in Singapore" as saying "An Xbox with a built in HD DVD drive is critical. They and we are working on it. It also has to be more than a gaming machine. Microsoft recognise this. A version of the device may also be sold under the Toshiba brand name". If this new hardware does make it past development, it's anyone's guess whether Microsoft will reveal the new unit at this spring's E3, or whether they would choose to wait for a consumer electronics expo, in which case CES 2009 would be the obvious pick.

The Xbox 360 already has the capability to stream music and images from your home computer. The new capabilities would have to be more ambitious than just an additional dashboard "blade", and would hopefully enable the ability for users to play alternative video formats, namely divx and xvid.