November 8, 2007

Police Involved In Blu-ray/HD DVD War, AVS Forum Shut Down

The Blu-ray/HD DVD format war has continued to heat up lately, but over at the AVS Forum, one of the most popular audio/video forums on the web, it apparently got a little overheated. The Blu-ray/HD DVD forum is closed to posts until the end of the week after the ongoing debate became, well, threatening:

We have seen members attacking other members not only in debate, which is the right way, but with physical threats that have involved police and possible legal action. This type of behavior is just not welcome here PERIOD. To the extent that some of you have gone to support either format is just, well, disgusting and has no place on this site.

This is an excerpt from a letter from AVS Forum explaining the forum closure. Hopefully the offending parties don't land in the slammer. Imagine explaining your crime to your hardened cellmate named Big Daddy!

I guess the Blu-ray folks are a little upset by the recent HD DVD deals at Wal-mart and Best Buy which apparently resulted in the sale of 90000 units over the weekend, most of them the HD-A2. However, rumor is going around that Toshiba is losing over $500 on each model priced at $99. The HD-A1 costs $674 in parts per unit, never mind other manufacturing costs, so the more expensive HD-A2 would probably cost more. That would add up to a huge $45 million loss over the weekend, so they may have just been trying to clear off the shelves for upcoming models. Then again, these numbers all come from "unnamed sources", so their accuracy can be questioned. $45 million seems to be a huge hit to take over one weekend. But maybe the HD DVD camp feels strongly enough in the quality of their newer models that the publicity alone was worth the financial loss. Who knows? I'm sure the story will continue to emerge.

Via HDTV UK, DailyTech, AVS Forum, and Engadget HD