Tag: blu ray
Toshiba to have another crack at Sony in the HD war
The battle for the discs may have been lost but Toshiba are not about to give up on the HD war so easily.
According to an insider, who is probably being dragged out and shot as we speak, Toshiba is set to release a DVD upscaler…
LaCie d2 – external 4x speed Blu-ray burner
LaCie has updated its Blu-ray drive, offering 4x speed burning with the LaCie d2…
Panasonic DMR-BW500 recordable Blu-ray and PVR is Australia's first
Panasonic has launched its new all-in-one Blu-ray burner and PVR in the Australian market, claiming it to be the first recorder on the continent.
The DMR-BW500 boasts some impressive features, including a 500GB hard drive, twin TV tuners, Blu-ray burner, and full PVR functionality including up to an eight hour buffer for live TV…
Sharp intros AQUOS Blu-ray DVRs with up to 1TB of storage
Sharp is to launch three new AQUOS combo units in Japan, featuring a Blu-ray player and Digital Video Recorder plus digital and analogue TV tuners.
Available with three hard drive sizes — 250GB, 500GB, or 1TB — they record to the hard drive in the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format in any of three different bitrates (4.8, 8, and 12Mbps), so users can choose what quality to record at and, consequently, how much content can be stored…
Will ASDA slash Blu-ray player prices or must we still suffer rip-off Britain effect?
Early reports suggested that ASDA might sell several Blu-ray players at much cheaper prices, following in the footsteps of US parent company Wal-Mart.
However, it seems that hope was a little premature, with the head of PR at ASDA, Ed Watson, contacting Tech Radar to explain that there were currently no plans to sell really cheap Blu-ray players…
First Blu-ray players for under $300 alert!
The cheapest Blu-ray players in the world have just clocked in at the American supermarket chain, Wal-mart, at under $300 – roughly £150.
Available for $298, the Magnavox NB500MG9 and Sylvania NB500SL9 have some nice features surprisingly, including Blu-ray Final Profile 1.1, HDMI 1.3, and DVD ‘upscaling’ to 1080p. Still, they’re not quite as cheap as those $99 Toshiba HD DVD players…
Marantz BD8002: chunky feature-laden Blu-ray player coming to Japan
High-end manufacturer Marantz has announced it’s bringing the BD8002 Blu-ray player to the Japanese market next month.
It features a Silicon Optix 10-bit chipset, compatibility with Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio, 7.1 analogue audio output, full 1080p video output including 24fps mode for accurate playback of movies, and of course HDMI output…
Exposé! eBay UK not as Blu-ray friendly as other eBay sites
It’s come to my attention, through a recent attempt at flogging my copy of Casino Royale (every Blu-ray player owner has at least six copies), that eBay UK is not anywhere near as Blu-ray friendly as the US, or even Australia, Canada, or France. I’d test more sites, but that’s about the limit to my bilingualism.
Ever tried selling a Blu-ray on eBay UK? Ever other country’s site seems to have Blu-ray listed in the categories field, however not us in Blighty, who’re forced to lump it into the ‘DVD, Film & TV > DVDs’ or ‘DVD, Film & TV > Other Film Formats’ fields.
The winning HD format is not mentioned anywhere, and neither is HD DVD, which is also mentioned on all the aforementioned sites. Although dead formats such as MiniDisc have their very own boxes for you to tick, along with SACD, DAT, audio cassettes, floppy discs and VHS.
So can we cut to the chase already and label eBay UK as being a non-embracing technological Luddite?..
Four months on, Panasonic announces core details of DMP-BD50 Blu-ray player
Trade press first saw the DMP-BD50 in January at CES, however it’s taken Panasonic this long to confirm the pricing and availability, which were just announced in the US this week.
The all-singing, all-dancing Blu-ray player sports Blu-ray Profile 2.0 (BD-Live), and decodes and outputs via bit stream both aurally delicious Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats, making it a key player in the market. In addition, it…
Pioneer launching premium Blu-ray players with full BonusView features
Pioneer has announced two new Blu-ray players — the Elite BDP-05FD and Pioneer BDP-51FD — both offering “premium” features and with full BonusView functionality.
Both players feature HDMI 1.3a with 12-bit Deep Colour, 1080p output, 24fps film mode, Wolfson Digital Audio Converters, handling of all audio bitstream formats, decoding of Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, and DTS HD Master (with a future firmware upgrade), 7.1-channel analogue output, and new graphical interface…
