The High Definition DVD movie disc format (HD DVD)launched in April of 2006 as the official Next Generation disc format of the DVD Forum.

In July, Sony's Bluray format came to market also, launching another format war like the VHS/Betamax battle of the 70's and 80's.

But within days, comparisons of the two formats showed a dramatic difference. Users and reviewers were seeing that the Picture Quality was superior on the HD DVD discs, often FAR superior to Bluray, and the players were 1/2 to 1/3 the price of Bluray also.

In most people's opinion, this is due to technical problems of the Bluray format and Sony and the Bluray group's decision to use the older Mpeg2 compression format used on DVDs, instead of the next generation VC1 encoding system used on the HD DVD releases. While both formats can use the same video formats, a concious decision was made by Sony to stick with Mpeg. The reviews of the quality of Bluray movies have been quite savage at times!

HD DVD immediately began a runaway success story and today there are reported to be about 70,000 HD DVD players in homes, compared to a alleged 10,000 Bluray players.

Furthermore, more people are buying the better quality HD DVD movies also. In August, it is said the HD DVD movies outsold Bluray movies by a factor of 8 to 1.

In September, this sales apparently increased to an 11 to 1 margin! HD DVD has more than 10 times the sales of Bluray!

So What's the problem?

Well in the run-up to the launch of the "format war", Sony touted the supposed "superiority" of it's solution and promised the studios and manufacturers that Bluray would be the dominant format as a result.

They negotiated with the Studios and persuaded some of them to only release in the Bluray format at first, to try to shut the door on the HD DVD format. In addition, Sony formed a group of investors which bought 20% of MGM, to attempt to gain control over MGM's Home Entertainment library.

As a result, even though we feel that HD DVD is providing a better product and user experience, the Bluray format is being "artificially protected" in spite of it's poor performance.

Furthermore, because the HD DVD format's movie releases ar very consistent in their quality, we want these other studios to release movies on what we consider to be the better format - HD DVD.

It is said that Disney and Lions Gate are now wavering in their support for Bluray, having been let down badly by the launch of the format and the terrible word of mouth - not to mention the poor sales.

We ASK that these studios currently withholding content on the HD DVD format come to their senses!

For more information on the campaign, or to make contact with us, visit our website at www.hdnowonline.com

Added On (2007-09-19):

***********************************************
* - NOTICE - - NOTICE - - NOTICE - - NOTICE - *
***********************************************

Please Go To - WWW.HDNOWONLINE.COM - to sign...

This older petition is now closed...

Again - - - WWW.HDNOWONLINE.COM - - -

THANKS!!

***********************************************
* - NOTICE - - NOTICE - - NOTICE - - NOTICE - *
***********************************************