With today’s releases we hit a milestone - blu-raystats now has 500 titles in the database!

Granted we still have the Paramount and DreamWorks titles listed when technically they are discontinued - though I get a feeling that they will become available again before too long.

It has certainly been fun for me at least watching the mix of titles shift over the last year and a half or so from predominantly BD25 titles encoded with the less efficient MPEG2 to the current dominance of the dual layer BD50 discs encoded with AVC and to a lesser extent VC-1 - all the while largely maintaining lossless audio tracks for the major Blu-ray only studios at least.

During this time it has also been fun to grow the site, adding new features and new databases, including a new details page (which will become even more detailed in the future) , actor and director searches, and databases for showing all titles available on Amazon in the UK, France and Germany (as well as the USA of course). Naturally we also now have this News Log as well as a small forum for feedback. In the near future we hope to add review information for the titles, giving new ways to find the best movies for your collection. If you have any requests or ideas for features, feel free to leave comments here or on the forum.

In any case, it is nice to see this milestone met - looking forward to 1000 title milestone - may it come sooner than the first 500!

In this report on semiconductors used in Blu-ray and HD DVD players, we read of an interesting expected trend for the player core silicon as well as retail pricing.

The article notes that chip makers like Zoran and Mediatek are intending to join Blu-ray veterans Broadcom and Sigma Designs in releasing chipsets for Blu-ray players.

Mediatek spokeswoman Sophia Liang said her company has “a project on schedule to launch chips” for Blu-ray players, though she declined to provide further details.

Zoran demonstrated multimedia processors for both Blu-ray and HD DVD at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in January. “While we have proceeded cautiously during the format wars, planning to go as the market and our customers direct, going forward we will fully support Blu-ray,” said Dave Pederson, vice president of corporate marketing.

An increase in the number of chip building for Blu-ray seems destined to speed up chip commoditization and price declines, and consumers will be the winners. Ken Lowe, vice president of strategic marketing at Sigma Designs, said it’s widely expected that new Blu-ray players from China and Taiwan will be in stores at prices near $200 in time for Christmas.

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting what most believe to the the inevitable outcome of Toshiba’s ‘war ending’ announcement - Paramount will begin releasing titles on Blu-ray Disc (again).

This statement was sent exclusively to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday:

“We are pleased that the industry is moving to a single high-definition format, as we believe it is in the best interest of the consumer. As we look to (begin) releasing our titles on Blu-ray, we will monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly.”

It is not clear if the statement included DreamWorks.

I guess over the next few days Paramount will release more information regarding (re)releases, but it is nice to know their intentions.

We read at DVD Times that the BDA has held a press conference in London to draw attention to a new sales milestone in Europe.According to speakers at the even, since launch there have been 2.37M Blu-ray Discs sold across Europe.

At IFA last year (which is Aug/Sep time frame) the total was said to be around 1M discs, indicating significant sales growth in Europe.

The 2.4M discs equate to 79% of the HD Media market for Europe.