Survey: HD DVD is dead, but did anyone tell the online retailers?

With the HD DVD Promotional Group dissolving, Toshiba abandoning ship, and precious few studios releasing anything on the format any more, you’d have to be totally uninformed and just a little bit stupid to buy an HD DVD player thinking that it was the future.

Enter two fairly benign entities — online retailers and the Great British consumer — which when mixed can be deadly (or at least, good for making expensive mistakes)

Still, surely we can rely on our helpful, informative, reliable, up-to-date online retailers to ensure that visitors to their web site don’t make a stupid purchase they’ll regret as soon as it leaves its cardboard and polystyrene womb?

You’d think…

Here’s a roundup of some key (and not so key) Internet stores, and their current attitude towards HD DVD…

Mobile phones worse than smoking or asbestos, neurosurgeon claims

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A top British neurosurgeon and medical researcher, Dr Vini Khurana, has publicly spoken out about the dangers he sees in the use of mobile phones.

With something of an obsession — he’s published over 30 papers on cell phones and their links to disease — he doesn’t mince his words.

“Mobile phones could have health consequences far greater than asbestos and smoking. There is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours.”…

Grand Theft Auto IV BANNED in the UK

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Certification body the BBFC has thrown the gaming world into crisis today, by refusing to grant GTA IV a UK certificate.

The violent crime series has usually received a Certificate 18 rating in the past – but this time Rockstar has gone TOO FAR.

Saying the game “Glorifies America to an unacceptable degree…

Nine in ten UK homes now have digital TV

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According to last week’s Ofcom report, nearly 90% of British homes now have access to some form of multichannel, digital TV on their main set.

As the digital switchover continues region by region over the next four years, and thanks to the fact that it’s fairly difficult to buy a TV that’s not digital ready now, be it standard definition or HD ready, it seems that most of us have got the message that it’s good to go digital…

Ofcom approves in-flight mobile use for UK and European mile-high texting

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Phone regulator OFCOM has given the go-ahead for UK-registered planes to allow passengers to use their mobiles during flights. Five hours next to a businessman discussing proposals and changes to PowerPoint slides? Can’t wait.

The system lets you use your own mobile, which connect to an onboard base station – which redirects you incredibly important text message about what everyone’s having for dinner tonight to your Earth-based friend. The rules require planes…

Xbox 360 price cut – £159.99 in the UK from Friday

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Crikey, that is cheap. Cheaper than the Wii and nearly half what Sony’s charging for a PlayStation3.

Of course, the new £159 refers to the entry level “Arcade” Xbox 360, which doesn’t come with a hard drive. But it does, fortunately, come with a 256MB memory card, so you’re still able to save your games. And a wireless controller. So you can play them…

UK Government to investigate path to next generation broadband

fibre_optic_cable.jpgThink your pitifully slow “nowhere near up to eight meg” broadband is a joke? You may be vaguely encouraged that the Government is starting to look at how we move Britain into truly fast, “next generation” broadband.

The Business and Competitiveness Minister, Shriti Vadera, launched the independent review on Friday. It will look at the importance of 100Mbps+ broadband to British businesses, and what the potential barriers are to achieving those kind of speeds.

“The way we will do business, access many government services, as well as information and entertainment, will change beyond recognition over our lifetime. New technologies will push the boundaries of today’s communications infrastructure,” she said. “We need to prepare the way for the UK to adopt groundbreaking new technologies to ensure that we do not get left behind – competitively or technologically.”

We Brits are a bunch of pirates… illegal downloaders, that is

dvd.jpgWith the Government planning to get tough on people who illegally download content from the Internet, a lot of Brits could be in trouble according to a recent survey by MoneySupermarket.com.

Nearly one in five have admitted to downloading illegally from the Internet, while nearly half say they’ve bought illegal discs, and two in ten have offered someone else a pirate disc.

12% of those surveyed were confused as to what exactly constitutes piracy.