CORP TALK: Japan’s Toshiba Corporation will be entering the Blu-ray Disc market, after more than a year of abandoning the HD-DVD format market. According to an AFP report here, the company will be launching Blu-ray products as soon as this year, encouraged by the rapid growth and demand for the format in Japan.

Navin Danapal, Technical Editor, HWM Malaysia

Navin (HWM MY): If this doesn’t seal the next-gen DVD war then nothing else will. Toshiba was the biggest advocate for the rival HD-DVD format going against Sony’s Blu-ray Disc (BD) format in the past few years.

Over time we began to see Sony’s BD standard taking up the storm while Toshiba’s HD-DVD began to wither in support.

However, to see Toshiba themselves entering their rival’s market is ultimately the nail-in-the-coffin for the HD-DVD format, as there were some rumours that the Japanese are not known to take kindly to defeat, and that Toshiba won’t back down from their HD-DVD war. Now with this entry, it’s clear the days of HD-DVD is over for good. (more…)

Warner's Watchmen Blu-ray Disc will allow viewers to create live commentary with their Facebook friends using BD-Live.

BD-Live basically links your Blu-ray movie to the World Wide Web via the Net-connected Blu-ray Disc player and allows peer-to-peer interactions and new content downloads.

CORP TALK: The Hollywood Reporter has news that Warner Home Video will be putting forth a plan to sync up friend networks on Facebook with a unique BD-Live feature starting with the Watchmen Blu-ray Disc. What will happen is that when buyers of the Watchmen Blu-ray Disc views the film on their HDTVs and Blu-ray players, they’ll be able to share comments (ie. live commentary) with their Facebook friends at the same time (without ever leaving the couch).

What makes this different from the Buddy List function on BD-Live is that these lists are now synchronizable with the viewer’s Facebook’s friend networks, creating a larger network beyond just the existing BD-Live community. This isn’t the first time that Warner has embarked on a community first for the Blu-ray Disc initiative. Last year, the studio staged a live community screening of The Dark Knight, except that it was limited to just the BD-Live community and had director Christopher Nolan interact with 50,000 fans on a dedicated Web site. (more…)