Malaysia Going Blu

[micrococcus]

Forgot to introduce myself when I first joined this blu community. I’m a Chinese residing in Malaysia and I’m “straight” in blu (HD-DVD is definitely out of my league).

Herein, I’d like to share with u guys the current blu-trend that's going on in West Malaysia. Though Malaysia is kinda slow in picking up the HD fever, to date, every electronics shop in the country is selling HD TVs (Pioneer, Samsung, Toshiba, Sony, LG, etc.). There is now 1 blu-ray player out in the market – Sony BDP-S1E (price: RM4,999.00 = USD 1,486.46) & another new Sony blu-ray player is coming end of October 2007 (retailing at RM3,999.00 = USD 1,189.12). A free blu-ray title will be given for each purchase of the player. All the major AV / electronics retailers are selling only blu-ray players with the exception of Toshiba which is selling HD-DVD Player (I’m not sure about the price ‘cause I don’t bother).

Another good news is, a few of the major computer companies have started selling notebook computers bundled with blu-ray drives. DELL provides blu-ray drives for a few selected Inspiron models (RM2,000.00 = USD 594.69 for the drive) and Sony has 3 notebook models with blu-ray drives (VGN-AR49G retailing at RM 13,988.00 = USD 4,158.88; VGN-AR38G retailing at RM 14,988.00 = USD 4,456.20; and lastly VGN-FZ18G selling at RM 9,988.00 = USD 2,969.95). I bought the VGN-FZ18G notebook for watching blu-ray movies. Again, only Toshiba is selling the Qosmio notebook with HD-DVD drive and Hewlett-Packard has 1 notebook installed with HD-DVD drive (but the HP business notebooks come with blu-ray drives – mmm … guess HP is format neutral). Acer, Asus and Fujitsu in Malaysia have confirmed their blu-ray-only support and they’ll be releasing notebooks with blu-ray drives early next year.

More good news: Besides the blu-ray players and computer drives, Malaysia is also flooded with Playstation 3 consoles (Pricing between RM1,700 – RM1,900.00 = USD 505.43 – USD 564.89). As for X-Box 360, “sad” to say that you can’t get a HD-DVD drive add-on if you purchase X-Box in Malaysia.

Now for the movie (disc) manufacturers and distributors in Malaysia, below is the list (note that Sdn. Bhd. stands for Private Limited): -
(1) Speedy Video Sdn. Bhd. – the largest DVD manufacturer and distributor. The company also has the most number of retail chain outlets in Malaysia (almost all the shopping complexes in Malaysia have a Speedy Video retail shop). Since the beginning of October 2007, Speedy Video has started selling blu-ray movie titles from Twentieth Century Fox only (so far). In addition to the retail side, they also produce their own DVDs (region free) for movies from the US and Hong Kong (examples of DVDs they produce: Halloween H20, Halloween Resurrection, Komodo, etc.). Guess it’s not long before they start manufacturing movies in blu-ray.
(2) Berjaya HVN – the second largest DVD manufacturer and distributor. The company also has numerous retail chain outlets under the name of Video EZY. Berjaya HVN own the rights to manufacturing and distributing movies from Warner Bros, Paramount, and Universal. Their retail chains are the only ones selling HD-DVDs from Universal Pictures (however, they’ve only ordered the first batch with less than 12 HD-DVD titles – The Hulk, Fast & the Furious, The Mummy, etc.; now they’ve stopped ordering which is good news). Berjaya HVN seems to be format neutral at the moment. They’ve started selling blu-ray titles from Sony Pictures since September 2007. Hopefully they’d release Transformers in blu-ray next year.
(3) Movie Magic Sdn. Bhd. – own the rights to distribute Fox and MGM blu-ray titles.
(4) Dragon Entertainment Sdn. Bhd. – own the rights to produce and distribute DVDs from New Line Cinema (Malaysia has its own region-free “Final Destination 3”, “She’s the Man”, etc.) and other smaller movie studios in the US.
(5) Mediamax Sdn. Bhd. – own the rights to produce and distribute DVDs and blu-ray titles from Sony Pictures and Dreamworks (strangely it’s separated from Paramount). Example of the DVD manufactured by this company – our own region-free “The Island”.
(6) Alliance Entertainment Sdn. Bhd. – own the rights to produce and distribute DVDs for some of the Warner Bros titles (e.g. “Batman & Robin").

Wow! Enough said. This article is too long. In a nutshell, just want to say that Malaysia is going blu. Oh, forgot to mention, there’s already a video shop in Malaysia selling ALL the blu-ray movie titles (the shop has only 1 shelf for HD-DVDs and 3 shelves for blu-ray titles). The blu-ray titles in Malaysia retail from RM149.90 (USD 44.57) to RM170.00 (USD 50.55).

My Blu-Ray collection:
Eragon, Flyboys, Hellboy, The Lake House, Mission Impossible III, Disturbia, The Covenant, Speed, & Superman Returns.