By now you know waaaaay too much about Toshiba’s format-war surrender, the death of HD DVD at the hands of the larger Blu-ray armada. You may even be eying the Blu-ray players mounted proudly in point-of-sale displays at Best Buy or Wal-Mart. Pricing hasn’t come down to HD DVD player levels—and with those sinking even further, it’s unlikely they ever will—but the need to get in on the action might provoke you to spend some extra dimes. All we’re saying is DON’T! Not yet. If you don’t know why, let us explain.We’re not going to tell you that HD DVD will somehow come back from the grave to eat Blu-ray’s brains or anything Romero-esque like that. Even China’s CH-DVD—an easily mass-produced sibling to HD DVD—once a looming HD DVD mercenary force on the horizon, now seems to serve the opposite purpose. By keeping Chinese firms busy with something other than Blu-ray, Hollywood’s movie content may be kept safe from piracy, and big electronics brands may be able to hold onto their profit margins—at least for a short while.

No, the earth is Blu, and we are at least grateful for having a winner. Now begins a different kind of shakeup, where once friendly compadres like Sony, Pioneer and Panasonic start to lock horns with one another. This will bring multiple benefits, but here’s what all parties involved need to accomplish:

1. Get the Spec In Order
Now that Blu-ray is fully in the spotlight, it’s got to get its act together spec-wise. You may recall that we lambasted many Blu-ray supporters for only building 1.0 spec players, including the $1000+ home-theater flagships from Sony and Pioneer. Except for Panasonic’s DMP-BD30 and the PlayStation 3 with up-to-date firmware, no current Blu-ray player can even handle the 1.1 spec with picture-in-picture, already appearing in certain Blu-ray discs (and quite the handful of HD DVD titles—but we’ll get to that).

The place to be is spec 2.0, referred to as “full profile.” Suddenly, it’s Sony who is looking the best here, with not only the amazingly upgradeable PS3 but two new players announced this week, the BDP-S350 and S550. For $400 and $500 respectively, they are set to deliver all of the features promised in the Blu-ray palette, including both picture-in-picture and BD-Live internet connectivity (with USB storage for downloaded content). Nobody else, with the possible exception of Daewoo, has even muttered about a 2.0 spec player.

Samsung’s BD-UP5000 dual-format player is purportedly compatible with 1.1, but besides the fact that it’s pricey even at $550 and requires a firmware update for full compatibility, it’ll soon be discontinued. Given our initial experience with it, we say that it’s best to wait and see what its successor, the BD-UP5500, can do. Heck, dual-format playback may not be all that necessary for long. But that brings us to another reason why you should wait…

2. Finalize the Video Library
We only need dual-format players as long as the library is split down HD DVD and Blu-ray lines. We are waiting for Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks to jump to Blu, and even once they do, it’s not a certainty that they can simply re-release everything currently out on HD DVD. Universal claims 150 titles—surely the Bournes will go Blu as soon as Uni does, but how long do I have to wait for a Blu-ray of The Big Lebowski? Hell, it’s almost worth scooping up an ultracheap HD DVD player now just to enjoy that one movie alone, 47 or 48 times in a row. At any rate, some speculation suggests that the remaining HD DVD studios may not even come around until summer or fall, depending on weird smoke-filled-backroom negotiations with Toshiba.

Even when all the studios are on the Blu-ray tip, though, a new problem begins to surface: second-edition releases of movies already on Blu-ray. Think about it: a handful of big Warner titles like 300 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out with more deluxe HD DVD versions which include picture-in-picture and certain online capabilities. Who’s to say Warner won’t re-release their 300 and Harry Potter Blu-ray discs with the same compelling extras, now that it’s feasible on the Blu-ray platform? Warner is easy to single out because we have that comparison, but who’s to say that half of the blockbuster movies out on Blu-ray now won’t get a re-release with more interactive content when the spec 2.0 players saturate the market?

3. Bring On the Old-Fashioned Electronics Store Competition
Sony’s more affordable new Blu-ray player will hit the market this summer for $400. Nothing built by Sony or anyone else should be considered before then, the one exception being the PS3. But even the Sony standalone at $400 is expensive, especially for a player whose capabilities are more or less the same as Toshiba’s HD-A30 HD DVD player, now (in a price nose dive) selling for around $130. Only when Panasonic, Samsung and LG announce their own Blu-ray 2.0 players, will true competition finally exist. (Pioneer will launch a 2.0 player too, but it probably won’t get involved in a price war.) It surely wouldn’t be long after that that we see a full-spec Blu-ray player for $200 or maybe even less. Our bet is Christmas, since Sony doesn’t seem like it will have anything on the market until “summer” and no one else is talking about their next Blu play.

There you have it, the three big reasons why you need to hold off on buying a standalone Blu-ray player, and amassing a library of Blu-ray to rival your intimidating DVD collection. Don’t worry though. Your patience will have its rewards. And Christmas will be here again before you know it.

[Blu-ray on Giz; image source for “halt” parody graphic]

Web-based image editor Picnik, recently integrated into Flickr, now offers its full range of editing tools for free, if you don’t mind a few ads. Going ad-free would cost $24.95/year. [via]

After the Comcastpuff at the FCC hearing on net neutrality (with Comcast and Verizon present,) the almost-omnipotent Federal agency is considering repeating it all. Back then, Comcast paid people to take seats and cheer on their favor. Instead of Harvard, this time it could be celebrated at Stanford and, hopefully, there won’t be any Comcastards present. Expect assorted Verigoons, though. [Valleywag via BB]

Quarterlife, the made for MySpace TV show that became the first internet show picked up by a TV network has bombed.

According to Nielsen Ratings for Tuesday night, Quarterlife managed only 3.86 million viewers for its 10pm debut on NBC, compared to the fan resurrected but short second season of Jericho with 6.9 million viewers and Primetime: What Would You Do Now? with 7.6 million viewers.

Although no decision has been made as to whether Quarterlife will return for a second outing next week, these poor figures would suggest that Quarterlife may not have a long life on NBC.

Some may suggest that Quaterlife’s failure to make a successful cross from online to network TV isn’t a positive for future shows following the same path; certainly it doesn’t make things easier. A first failed experiment won’t necessarily mean the crossover idea will fail again in the future. As more and more people turn to the internet for entertainment, the volume of professionally made video content will continue to increase, and sheer numbers would suggest that Quaterlife may become the first of many crossovers to come as television networks scramble to find new content that viewers want to watch.

(via RWW)

The number of shareholder lawsuits targeting Yahoo over its rejection of Microsoft’s takeover offer now stands at seven.

According to Reuters, four of the lawsuits were filed in the California Superior Court and three were filed in the Delaware Chancery Court.

Yahoo said in a statement to the SEC that they “do not believe, based on current knowledge, that any of the foregoing legal proceedings or claims are likely to have a material adverse effect on our financial position.”

Yahoo is obviously confident of a positive outcome, however seven separate lawsuits would indicate that others may disagree.

See our previous coverage of Yahoo lawsuits here and here.

Microsoft’s sudden conversion to openness and interoperability last week did not impress the European Commission. Today, the antitrust-enforcing arm of the European Union imposed a $1.35 billion fine (899 million Euros) on Microsoft for failing to comply with a 2004 order to supply interoperability data for its products to its competitors. That brings the total fine to $2.5 billion.

At a press conference EC commissioner Neelie Kroes said of Microsoft’s last-minute overture last week: “We don?t want talk, we want compliance. If you cheat the rules, you will be caught.? She also noted that was Microsoft’s fifth announcement about improving interoperability.

One thing is for sure, if Microsoft does not start acting sincerely in its interoperability efforts, the EC will just keep on zinging it with fines.

iPhone Firmware update 1.1.4 is out, the sixth firmware update since iPhone’s launch. Based on initial reports the firmware doesn’t seem to unlock any new features and is more for “bug fixes”, however the good news so far has been that you can still Jailbreak iPhone running firmware 1.1.4 using Zibri’s method. Read about the impact the latest iPhone firmware will have on unlocking, jailbreaking as well as on your favorite third-party iPhone applications after the jump.

On February 7 we reported that a Moroccan man named Fouad Mourtada had been arrested for pretending to be the Moroccan king?s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, on Facebook. The specific charge was ?Villainous practices.?

Well, justice is swift in Morocco. Mourtada was convicted, and sentenced to three years in prison and a $1,000 fine. Moroccan bloggers expressed outrage to no effect. A good roundup of opinions is here.

I’m scratching Morocco off of my holiday list until they get their basic human rights situation in order.

You can sign a petition here to help free Mourtada. My guess is that it ain’t gonna help.

Click Forensics has some data out on click fraud (clicks on Internet ads that are not real) in the fourth quarter of 2007 and for the full year. The industry-wide average click fraud rate for the entire year went up 15 percent, ending the year with 16.6 percent of all clicks on Web ads being fraudulent. The click fraud rate for search engine ad networks alone, including Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network, grew even more. That was up 47 percent in the fourth quarter, ending the year with a 28.3 percent click fraud rate. According to this data, nearly one out of every three clicks on a Google or Yahoo ad is fraudulent.

While the year-over-year growth is cause for concern, the click fraud rates remained pretty steady compared to the third quarter of 2007, when the overall click fraud rate was 16.2 percent and the search-engine click fraud rate was 28.1 percent (see charts above). One quarter does not make a trend, but could the click fraud rate be leveling off? One can hope. If Google can ever get that rate to actually go down, maybe its stock will shoot up again.

Click Forensics also published the handy heat map below showing the countries where the most click fraud is originating. (Red is bad, green is benign). The biggest sources of click fraud are India (4.3 percent), Germany (3.9 percent), and South Korea (3.7 percent). Mexico is also in the red.

The Firefox browser has been downloaded nearly 500 million times, says their SpreadFirefox website. Parent organization Mozilla is celebrating by raising 500 million grains of rice on FreeRice. That, says Mozilla, is enough to feed 25,000 people for a day.

Earlier this month we reported that Firefox 3, beta version 3, had been released. The browser has around 17% market share worldwide and 150 million active users.

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