Blu-ray Beats the Crap Out of HD DVD

Yes, folks, the ongoing battle between the two competing next-gen DVD formats is far from over and it seems that the scales are slowly tipping in favor of Sony's little Blu-rayed baby, as the latest figures released by the Blu-ray Disc Association show a huge gap between the two formats,
although just in a specific domain, that of recorders.

Thus, according to the figures provided by market research firm GfK, it seems the Blu-ray has really KO'd HD DVD, at least as far as DVRs are concerned. Thus, in the week ending on November 11th, just 2.8 per cent of them were HD DVD units. The remaining 97.2 percent were, as expected, Blu-ray devices (while the previous weeks were not exactly a lot better, Blu-ray reaching a percentage of around 98.7 at some point).

Although these figures might seem to be pretty unfavorable to the HD DVD side, the truth of the matter is that there a few reasons why this situation was to be expected. First of all, the number of Blu-ray based DVRs is a lot larger than that of their HD DVD-powered counterparts. Then, the research was carried out in Japan, where Sony's format is a lot more popular than Toshiba's, partly due to the increasingly higher popularity of the PS3 (although this is quite a strange situation, especially since both next-gen DVD formats are of Japanese origin).

Will these figures affect the future of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray war? Well, it's not very likely, especially since, the "old" DVD is still going pretty strong (it still accounts for around 80.2 of the sales of recording units, compared to just around 19.8 for the next-gen devices) and it will take quite a lot of time for these two new competitors to dethrone it.

NVIDIA GeForce 8800M Preview

When we first looked at the NVIDIA GeForce 8M series of mobile graphics chips, over six months ago in early May, the series had just been announced. At the time, the lineup only consisted of the 8400M mainstream series and the 8600M mid-range series. Although rumors had been circulating about the possibility of a high-end, G80-based enthusiast chip for some time, and hopes were high, none were announced. This was compounded by the fact that the fastest chip in the initial lineup, the 8600M GT was quite a bit slower than last generation's top chip, the GeForce Go 7950 GTX.

A month later, NVIDIA announced what was supposed to be the first enthusiast-class chip in the GeForce 8M family, the GeForce 8700M GT. Again, this wasn't the rumored G80-gone-mobile super chip. Instead the GeForce 8700M GT turned out to be essentially a higher clocked version of the GeForce 8600M GT. While substantial core and shader clock frequency boosts allowed the 8700M GT to handily outperform the 8600M series, it still wasn't enough to take the title of fastest overall mobile graphics chip away from the GeForce Go 7950 GTX.

Several months of silence followed the GeForce 8700M launch and it seemed like the rumored mobile G80 chip was just that, a rumor. The most popular theory seemed to be that the G80's massive 185W TDP simply couldn't be tamed enough for a notebook to handle and we were unlikely to see G80 class performance in a mobile form factor until NVIDIA moved its technology to a more advanced manufacturing process.

This theory seems to be correct as the wait is finally over. Today NVIDIA is finally unveiling the rumored and much anticipated GeForce 8800M series of mobile graphics cards. The 8800M is powered by the new G92M GPU which is built on a 65nm manufacturing process and as its name suggests, it shares a lineage with the desktop-bound G92 GPU announced three weeks ago. The 8800M series will come in two favors, a GTX and a GTS. The GeForce 8800M series is available immediately and over a dozen manufacturers are announcing new products today and in the coming weeks that will support the new chips.

Read on for specifications and preliminary benchmarks.