Blu-ray

Before Blu-ray has even been completely accepted into American households, the hacks have begun. Bluraymods.com is selling two new products: a completely region-free Panasonic Blu-ray player that they've modified, or a do-it-yourself kit that lets you alter the internal coding to allow the same Panasonic player (DMP-BD30) to play Blu-ray discs from any region. But it ain't cheap.

Dr. Evil had it right. One billion dollars is a lot of money. Apparently, it's also the lucky number that Hollywood execs are looking for to call Blu-ray a success. They believe they'll hit that number, and are aiming for $2.5 billion at the end of 2009. Optimistic, or naive?

As we predicted last month, Bond's going Blu. Blu-ray, that is. Just announced from MGM and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, the same six titles that were being released in France will be available in the States, just one day after their October 21st European release, not November.

The year is 2208. The bad news: the earth is so toxic that even intergalactic invaders avoid the planet like the plague, which in fact is rampant here.

As you'll recall, Paramount came up a loser in the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle. Its exclusive support for HD DVD proved to be as adept as the $100 I put on Big Brown at Belmont. DFL, as they say. Anyway, Paramount is now embracing its inner Blu — kind of. Its first BD movies were released on May 20 (with the corpse of poor HD DVD still warm in its grave).