As reported last week, Samsung Blu Ray players were stymied by the new Fox Blu Ray movie releases that utilized BD+ copyright protection.

It was initially reported that a firmware update that addressed this issue would be a few weeks in the making. Samsung BD-P1200 owners will be happy to hear that a firmware update for the Samsung BD-P1200 Blu Ray player is now available via the player's ethernet connection. Owners of the Samsung BD-P1000, which does not have an ethernet connection, will have to contact Samsung to receive a firmware upgrade disc to make their BD+ woes go away.

It's no surprise that Blu Ray, with it's unfinished specifications, is giving early adopters fits. Kudos to Samsung for taking care of their customers so quickly in addressing this issue.

Video Business has a new article revealing that HD DVD is back in the high definition optical disc players sales lead.

According to Toshiba, HD DVD regained first place in sales mid September. Year to date, HD DVD enjoys a 53% slice of the stand alone market, with Blu Ray holding 44% and combo players accounting for 3%. August sales for Blu Ray were boosted by the arrival of Sony's $499 BDP-S300 Blu Ray Disc player. Paramount's announcement on August 20 boosted lagging HD DVD software sales, and is beginning to show in hardware sales as well. HD DVD recently shipped it's third generation of HD DVD stand alone player hardware. The middle and top of the line third generation units are now available, and combined with discounts on second generation hardware, sales are strong. The new entry level HD DVD player, the Toshiba HD-A3 will ship this November. HD DVD has made a strong showing in both software and hardware sales this last month.

With the holiday shopping season just around the corner, things are heating up for a fierce battle this Christmas. This is a crucial financial quarter for both sides in the format war. It will be interesting to see how far the two sides are willing to go to win the consumers' hearts, minds and wallets.

HD DVD owners benefit from a lack of regional copyright protection. The upside of this is that for a few extra dollars sometimes an HD DVD owner can buy an import HD DVD of a title that is Blu Ray-exclusive in their region. The negative is that sometimes you have HD DVD covers that stick out like a sore thumb because they are in another language.

Two sites are addressing this problem by offering custom HD DVD covers for download. Both Blu Ray and HD DVD custom covers are available in the download section of Evangelos Angelides' site, and more HD DVD covers are available from Bunny Dojo. I have used custom covers for a couple of my own HD DVDs, and am pleased with the results. Both offer covers that will make great replacements for import titles, in addition to a wide variety of custom covers for domestic releases. The image files are large, and I burn them onto CD to take into a copy shop to have printed. For those of you without a CD burner, most, if not all, of the big chain copy stores have internet access, so you can download the files there in the store to have printed.

Thanks to both Evangelos and Bunny Dojo for providing a service that I'm sure many, many HD DVD enthusiasts have taken advantage of.

Last time in Format War 101, I talked about the exceptional video and audio Blu Ray and HD DVD both offer. In addition, I covered interactive features that the new formats make possible. Lastly, I discussed features like copyright protection and digital rights management (DRM), features that are very attractive to publishers.

This time in Format War 201, we'll do a brief history of the two formats, and look at the relationships the two sides have forged with content providers.