HD DVD Corrections: The day after Consumer Electronics Daily quoted a source at Meridian saying that Microsoft was funding the development of Meridian’s HD-DVD player, Microsoft’s resident DVD “evangelist” Kevin Collins denied it. But he did allow that Microsoft was working with Meridian “on the development side to bring an HD DVD player to market utilizing the Broadcom/Microsoft reference board.” That suggests Microsoft is lending its staff and expertise – which is almost like funding the project, don’t you think?
In a recent column, I wrote that the latest round of firmware upgrades for Toshiba HD-DVD players are not yet available, as a customer hotline rep told me. Not exactly. You can get the upgrades for the HD-XA1, HD-A1 and HD-D1 – but only by an internet download. Toshiba has yet to issue the gen 2.2 upgrade on disc – which is the way this gun-shy guy likes to install ’em, just for safety sake.
FYI- Microsoft has just updated the firmware for the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive. It improves audio functions, networking support, parental controls and playback of MPEG-4 and H.264 encoded content .
