Blu-ray DVD drive no bonus for some PS3 buyers
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Gamers love Sony Corp.'s new  PlayStation 3 for its graphic capabilities and firepower, but  the advanced Blu-ray DVD drive is annoying some by raising the  cost, slowing production and forcing them to buy into a format  they've not yet aligned with.
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Toshiba&#39;s announcement to end production of HD DVD players and recorders will not affect the Xbox 360, even though Microsoft offers an optional stand-alone HD DVD drive for the game console, Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday.&quot;We do not believe&#160;Toshiba&#39;s announcement about HD DVD&#160;will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace,&quot; Microsoft said. The gaming function of the console is its main attraction, the company added.The company&#160;did not say whether or not it will stop manufacturing the HD DVD drive&#160;for the Xbox 360.Earlier Tuesday, Toshiba formally announced an end to its support of HD DVD, a high-definition optical disc format meant to replace DVDs. Toshiba was the developer and main backer of HD DVD, and its capitulation handed victory to rival format Blu-ray Disc, which has been championed by Sony.Toshiba said its decision came after careful analysis of the long-term impact of continuing the format war, and said a swift decision was called for to help the high-definition market develop.For game consoles, high-definition discs are growing in importance. Sony put Blu-ray Disc drives in the PlayStation 3 as a way to spread popularity of the high-definition discs. PlayStation 3 owners can play HD movies on the drives as well as advanced games. Blu-ray discs can hold far more data than conventional DVDs, and give players high definition graphics on games.At a recent game show in Taipei, Sony showed off a display of over 100 game titles created using Blu-ray Disc. A nearby Xbox 360 booth displayed the HD DVD logo and showed movies and just a few games made for the format.Recent&#160;changes in the market prompted Toshiba&#39;s decision&#160;to phase out HD DVD. Early this year, Warner Bros. said it would stop issuing movies on HD DVD in the coming months and rely exclusively on Blu-ray Disc. The Hollywood studio was one of three major studios remaining in the HD DVD camp, and its defection created widespread belief that the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc was now over.More recently, major U.S. retail chain Wal-Mart announced it would phase out the sale of HD DVD products, moving to exclusivity with Blu-ray Disc. Electronics retailer Best Buy also said it would back Blu-ray Disc, but it did not say it would stop offering HD DVD.&#160;
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Sony confirms that the $500 version of its PlayStation 3 won't be able to play Blu-ray movies at their full resolution. From the Game|Life blog.
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Blog: Originally announced at $599, the BDP-S300 model next-gen DVD player will sell for $499 when it ships this week.
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Watch out, Toshiba Samsung will launch its promised dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc player in Europe next month, the company has said, and industry insiders are already claiming the machine could be priced at just â¬400 ($548/Â£271).â¦
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CHIBA, Japan  - Sony Corp. 6758.T said on   Tuesday it will launch its Blu-ray high-definition optical disc   recorder in Japan in December, with an expected price tag of   around 300,000 yen ($2,550) for a model with a 500-gigabyte   hard disk drive.
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Blog: What did Sony mean when the company said there would be no PlayStation 3 price cut?
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Sony's PS3 price cut may not be quite what it seems.
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Sony Corp.  will launch its  PlayStation 3 with an 80-gigabyte (GB) hard disk drive on June  16 in South Korea for 518,000 won ($556), offering the upgraded  version of its latest game console for the first time ever, the  Japanese electronics conglomerate said.
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Hardware manufacturers are in fix when it comes to settling down for a standard for DVDs. Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo are favoring a next-generation DVD standard called HD (high-definition) DVD while Sony and other
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Sony plans to begin rolling out Blu-ray discs this Fall internationally to coincide with the launch of hardware in those regions, the company said Thursday. Sony says that pricing of discs would be similar to those of standard DVD discs.
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NEW YORK -- Sony Corp. said Monday it is bringing out a cheaper player for Blu-ray discs early this summer, a crucial step in its battle to make the high-definition format the replacement for DVDs.
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HD DVD isn't dead, at least not quite. That leaves many options and potentially expensive mistakes for consumers.
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Giant denies it's working on a console Microsoft will not build an HD DVD drive into a future Xbox 360 because it doesn't want to "limit the user's experience", an insider at fellow HD DVD backer Toshiba has said.â¦
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Philips Electronics unveiled an  optical disk drive on Monday for use in computers that can burn  and play CDs and DVDs in three formats, including the new  Blu-ray standard.
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y new players? The DVD Forum, the organisation that oversees DVD and HD DVD technology, has approved Toshiba's proposed triple-layer, 51GB disc structure. The move paves the way to exceed - for now, at least - the 50GB capacity of a two-layer Blu-ray Disc.â¦
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TOKYO -- A free download upgrade for the Sony PlayStation 3 enhances the image quality of movies and old video games and allows people to check out stored video, music files and digital photos through the Internet with the handheld PlayStation Portable.