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Tech NewsHD DVD and Blu-ray Compared Using Identical Source Material
Until earlier this week, there was no way to directly compare a Blu-ray disk to its competitor on HD DVD using identical source material. But then Warner Home Video released Training Day, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Rumor Has It… on Blu-ray, making them the first movies available on both formats, allowing a direct comparison … Continued
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Tech News
PlayStation 4 To Be Neutered, Rendered Disc-Less
The PlayStation 3 isn’t out yet, but that doesn’t stop Sony’s Phil Harrison from making wild speculations about the capability of Playstation 4. According to him, the PS4 won’t support physical discs. At all. He opines: I’d be amazed if the PlayStation 4 has a physical disc drive. So you mean in 5-10 years, our … Continued
By Jason Chen -
Tech News
Logitec LBD-A2FU2/WM, First Mac OS X-Friendly Blu-ray Burner to Ship
Logitec says it’ll be shipping its LBD-A2FU2/WM Blu-ray writer to Japan in the next couple of weeks, and it’s calling the product the first Mac-friendly Blu-ray disc burner on the market. The drive will be compatible with both Windows and Mac, and will include Roxio’s Toast 7 Titanium Blu-ray burning software for Mac. The FireWire … Continued
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Tech News
Tuning Fork
The Week In TV By Brian L. Clark There they go again: Last week AT&T rolled out Homezone, its initial “IPTV offering” in San Antonio and Ohio. Turns out Homezone is less IPTV than just another package deal that brings together a phone company and a satellite service—in this case, Echostar—to provide the same types … Continued
By Brian Lam -
Tech News
Hitachi-LG Readies World’s First 4X Blu-ray Burner
Still haven’t picked a side in the high definition disc war yet? Perhaps being able to burn a Blu-ray disc at 4X will help decide your allegiance? If so, keep your eyes on Hitachi-LG, since they just announced to availability of a Blu-ray burner that will burn discs at a speedy 4X, rather than the … Continued
Nicholas Deleon -
Tech NewsGadgets
Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray First-Gen Players Have Errors, Won’t Be Updated Until September
Samsung’s just released a statement that the softness in video playback that some reviewers noted was due to an incorrect setting in the noise reduction chip. This setting, unfortunately for early-adopters, isn’t user accessible. That means their only choice is to wait until September—says Samsung—to download a firmware update that they can burn to a … Continued
By Jason Chen -
Tech News
Sony to Ship BWU-100A Blu-ray Burner Next Month
Sony has rolled out an internal Blu-ray burner for computers, the BWU-100A, which writes both 25GB and 50GB BD-R and BD-RE (rewritable) disks at 2x speed. The company says a 25GB disk will take 30 minutes to burn at that 2x speed. In addition to those Blu-ray formats, the drive will also be capable of … Continued
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Tech News
HD DVD vs. Blu-ray, Yet Again
If you’ve just tuned in, there’s a next generation DVD “war” going on to vie for the cash you mooch from your parents. Our veteran readers probably already made up their mind about which format they’ll support, but the choice isn’t as clear to the rest of us. The humor site Cracked gives an illustrated … Continued
By Jason Chen -
Tech NewsGadgets
Samsung MV55 Blu-ray Desktop
“Imagine a new world of incredible detail”! The Samsung MagicStation MV55 for the Korean market has a Blu-ray burner built right into the machine. Other than that, well, it’s pretty much a standard desktop computer. The MV55 has a 3.2GHz Pentium D940, a GeForce 7600GT and a bunch of nifty card-reader and USB ports in … Continued
By Jason Chen -
Tech News
That Blu-rayin’ is Hard, Sez Microsoft
Now we hear from our beloved basement-dwelling brothers at Kotaku that Microsoft spokespeople are saying that Blu-ray discs are apparently “hard to make.” There’s an extra layer of copy protection on Blu-ray discs, called BD+, and that makes the manufacturing of those disks a whole lot more complicated. In a recent podcast, a couple of … Continued
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Tech News
Ricoh Announces Blu-Ray/HD DVD Combo Player
First we hear that Ricoh has developed an optical device for playing back both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs, and now at Interopto 2006 in Tokyo, the company has officially announced a player using the device. Details are sketchy at this point, but Ricoh says the player supporting its 3.5mm diffraction plate will be available … Continued
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Tech News
ComicBase 11: First Blu-ray Software
There’s lots of talk of Blu-ray movies shipping, and now here’s the first software to ship on Blu-ray disc: the entire ComicBase art archive, a good candidate for the massive storage capability of Blu-ray because it consists of over 150,000 cover scans, filling up 26GB of Blu-ray goodness. We knew Blu-ray was good for something. … Continued
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Tech News
Blu-ray Delayed In Europe Until 2007
With the World Cup now officially over, what do Europeans have to look forward to? It’s definitely not Blu-ray, as many companies in the Blu-ray camp won’t be ready to deploy into Europe until January 2007. Pioneer says it doesn’t have any “concrete” plans for their European launch, but they’d have something figured out by … Continued
By Jason Chen -
Tech NewsGadgets
Ricoh Develops Optical Device for Blu-ray/HD DVD Combo Players
As companies such as Toshiba, Samsung and LG allude to dual-format Blu-ray and HD DVD players, Ricoh jumps in with a tiny optical device that makes a goes-both-ways player easier to execute. The company said it has created a 3.5mm diffraction plate that can rock pretty much any format, including Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD and … Continued
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Tech News
Blu-ray and HD DVD Hacked Already
There’s a hole in the copyright protection for Blu-ray and HD DVD movies that you could drive a truck through. The funny thing is, it’s an alarmingly easy and obvious hack: Print Screen. Sure, you’d have to hit Print Screen and save each one for days to capture the thousands of frames that make up … Continued
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Tech News
BenQ to Ship Blu-ray Burner in August
BenQ decided it didn’t want to let those other weasels steal all the thunder, so it decided to finally release its own Blu-ray burner next month. We saw the model BW1000 back in April—a shiny, strange toaster-like device which will be able to burn BD-R discs at 2x, and will also handle most flavors of … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgets
Samsung BD-P1000 Unboxing
I haven’t gotten a chance to try this puppy out with real BRDs yet, but this is Samsung’s first Blu-Ray player and it has all the fit and finish of a fine Saab or maybe a Volvo. We’re not talking Ferrari, here, but you wouldn’t kick it out of bed for eating crackers. It’s pretty … Continued
By Johnb -
Tech News
Plextor PX-B900A Blu-ray Burner
Now that big names like Samsung and Sony have their Blu-ray burners out, it’s time for the smaller guys like Plextor to jump in the party. Plextor’s planning to ship their new Blu-ray burner in September, supporting 2x write and both 25GB and 50GB discs. It writes also standard and dual-layer DVDs along with CDs. … Continued
By Jason Chen -
Tech News
HD DVD vs Blu-ray, What You Need to Know
With HD DVD and Blu-ray finally hitting the shelves there are still a lot of questions to be answered before deciding on a format. Dan Costa over at PC Magazine has an excellent write-up of what you need to know when it comes to choosing a new DVD format. Thanks for the information, Costa. I … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgets
Toshiba Wants Combo HD Player
Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida weighed in today with his opinion on a dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray player, joining the chorus of other manufacturers who have edged ever closer to a unified format for high definition DVDs. Nishida said to an annual shareholders meeting: “We have not given up on a unified format. We would like to … Continued