According to a French message board, a new Samsung Blu Ray Player is to appear on the market and it will be called BD-P2500. Although there are a lot of rumors out there, what is interesting now is the fact that this here blu ray player would be the first one that has hardware to support full spec BD-Live from Samsung. On the other hand, the company also announced that the BD-P1500 will become “BD-Live-ready” if you get a firmware upgrade that is needed in order to get to 2.0 spec. The new rumored blu ray player would come equipped with this 2.0 action and this would make it a lot easier. Still, this might just be a good rumor.

It is now almost official as Neil Thompson, head of Xbox in UK, confirmed that XBox will not include the Blu Ray player in an update as the company did with the HD-DVD drive. Instead, they are going to put a focus on downloadable content. It is not a real surprise as Xbox Live was pretty successful so far and the inclusion of the Blu-Ray drive in the XBox 360 would mean Microsoft bowing their head even more in favor of the high definition format they did not choose to support. A special emphasis was put by Thompson on the fact that nobody was forced to buy the HD-DVD drive although his personal view on things is that this fact is a poor excuse that appeared for the lack of support. It does seem that Microsoft will be focusing in UK on “digital domain”. The people that bought the drive will not receive a free game, as it was rumored in the past. People will be grumpy but hey, you make the decision for what you purchase, right?

In the technology world we are always hit with some sort of war between factions. Something like Apple versus Microsoft, PS3 versus Xbox 360, Google Versus Yahoo and so on. One of these battles does stand in what is currently labeled as the format war: HD vs Blu Ray. One other battle that few of us talk about stands in a different approach: Blu Ray versus Upconversion, although we are basically getting back to HD vs Blu Ray. Let us take a quick look at this!

Blu-Ray or Blue ray or BlueRay (however you tend to find it in blogs due to SEO marketing techniques) is basically an optical disc format that is developed by BDA (Blu-Ray Disc Association). This is a manufacturing group that currently focuses on media, computers and electronics. As time passed this format became better due to the possibility of being recorded, played and rewritten while linked to high definition video. We are talking about using blue laser technology, something that increases storage capacity a lot when comparing to regular DVDs. A single layer Blu Ray Disc can hold around 25 GB of data while dual layer doubles that amount. Read more »

Blu Ray technology is becoming very popular and it is one of the biggest breakthroughs in technology in the last few years, together with the iPhone and a whole lot of gadgets that are very good in terms of reliability and what they can do. People start to purchase and view movies that are produced with Blue Ray technology and we have the PS3 equipped with a blue ray player, one fact that is a big aid in the popularity growth we notice. In order to properly understand the topic, you need to know that all blu ray players come with a violet or blue laser. It helps the disc to be read a lot faster when compared with CDs and works at a shorter wavelength, which translates in the possibility of recording more data on one blu ray disc. As you probably already know, blu ray technology does seem to be a great solution for both computers and the entertainment world. Now with this growth of popularity in mind, we need to think about the possibility of a blu ray DVD decrypter.

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Everybody that has a Blu-Ray burner probably loves it and the biggest mistery that existed so far linked with this topic is how come burners appeared first. Well, this just changed as Sony finally announced a Blu-Ray reader only that is available for both PCs and laptops. We are talking about the new BDU-X10S, which comes at a MSRP of $200. If you are thinking about purchasing one you should know that with the Blu-Ray reader you will also receive CyberLink’s PowerDVD BD Edition. Both drives (the one of laptop and personal computer) come with a SATA interface. Before you jump to any conclusion you need to think about the fact that SATA is the right choice as it is the interface chosen by new personal computers, which will actually come with enough power to play high definition in a proper way. Well, if anyone gets a Sony BDU-X10S before me, make sure that you comment.

Intel has constantly taunted us recently with the launch of their 45 nanometer chips but I am sure they did not expect Panasonic to be a contender in this race. It might be possible that the company is going to beat Intel at its own game with a release that is scheduled one week earlier. It looks like the new Blu Ray recorders presented at CEATEC will use the company’s new UniPhier system LSI, all based on the 45 nanometer process technology. The units will be released in Japan (again Japan, Jesus) no the 1st of November. This is actually 10 days before Intel’s Yorkfield launch. Nobody expected this but it might be interesting to see how things develop.

Now this is pushing it to a whole new level, one that was previously unimaginable. Sony’s HES (Home Entertainment Starship) V1000 comes with a 200 disc changer for CDs, DVDs and (hold on to your seats) Blu-Ray discs. To top it all off, it can also write to those formats. It most probably can burn home movies, photos, music and more from its 500 GB hard drive. This device even has an Ethernet port and a PS3-like cross media menu. The price is seems like a deal for what the HES V100 offers: $3500. Everyone would love such a baby at home. The official press release was:

“HES-V1000 · 200-disc BD/DVD/CD changer · Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD burning (write to 25GB Blu-ray Disc media) · 500GB hard disc drive for burning home movies, digital music and photos (137 hours of video, 2,000 CDs or 20,000 digital photos) · x-Applications: x-Pict Story HD and x-Scrap Book automatic photo slide shows · Xross Media Bar (XMB) ™ · Ethernet connection for access to All Media Guide (AMG) metadata · Wireless music streaming to Sony CPF-IX001 wireless streamer or other DLNA devices including PlayStation 3 — up to ten devices with four independent audio streams · Available this fall for about $3,500″

There is no denying in the fact that PlayStation 3s and Blu-Ray players are popular for theater geeks but there is a problem. The PS3 lacks an infrared port so you can not use the universal remote on in it. This means that you have to get up and do it manually, something that is not acceptable for the true commodity and technology lover. Fortunately, PlayStation 3 remotes appeared and this one here is the newest one. The Messiah Darklite DVD remote looks a lot like the LG Chocolate mobile phone. You slide down to open it and gain access to advanced features like chapter navigation and display.

The remote is fully backlit and this means you can use it while in darkness to operate your home theater system. The device comes with a rechargable battery that can be plugged into the base station. This base station can connect to a PlayStation 3 unit via USB port. The base can act as an IR receiver so you will need to point the remote to it to make it work.

If you plan to purchase the Darklite DVD remote, be prepared to have $30 at hand, a price that is not that big. The shipping date is September 25 but you can pre-order it from Messiah.

All I get to hear lately in the format wars is Blu-Ray. In this note we now see Fujitsu getting in the game with a new line-up of personal computers, including the new FMV-Deskpower, the TEO90X/D. It comes equipped with a Blu-Ray disc player and recorder. The word “media” is definitely in the company’s repertoire as we have a HDMI output included. The problem is that the graphics card is an ATI Radeo Xpress 1250 and it only offers HD-Ready resolution of 1360X768. This might not be such a problem as it is more than enough for regular users and on the whole the PC is quite good. It is powered by an Intel Core 2 DUO T5500 processor at 1.66 GHz, has a hard disk of 500 GB, 2 GB of RAM memory and an incorporated TV Tuner. As expected, it will be sold in Japan for starters, at a price of 1640 EURO. Everything interesting seems to appear in Japan!

Sharp recently announced the appearance of the new BD-HP20S, their first Blu-Ray movie player to be sold outside of Japan. We have here one of the slimmest devices of its kind. It is only 2.7 inches tall and the company claims it still provides the same features as current Blu-Ray movie players. What is interesting is that this unit comes equipped with Java support. This opens the door for advanced commentary and different interactive features on some discs. As expected, we have HDMI 1.3 support and Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD together with increased color deepness. The BD-HP20S can pe linked with the AQUOS TVs through a Link feature and it can also be used with other devices that meet the CEC control standard.1080p upscaling of regular DVDs is of course included and the industry standard of 24 frames per second is respected. Sharp did not mention any price but did say the release in Europe will come this fall. US launch is scheduled for approximatively the same date or shortly afterwards.