Samsung's Blu-ray player improved
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Samsung Corp's 000830.KS Samsung   America Inc on Thursday said it would make some improvements to   its Blu-ray high-definition DVD players ahead of the holiday   season.
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The next big thing? IFA 07 Watching your favourite film in high definition and on a monster screen is all well and good, but it still doesn't make the film leap out at you. Texas Instruments claims it's overcome this problem and has teamed up with Samsung to develop a 3D TV.â¦
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Gamers love Sony Corp.'s (6758.T)  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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An unusually high number of reports of intermittent playback freezes during Blu-ray movies and some games have been posted to Sony's PlayStation 3 forum, as well as to the AVS Forum and other sources, after PS3 owners upgraded to version 1.5 of the system firmware.
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In the second hit to HD DVD in less than a day, retailer Best Buy announced Monday afternoon that it will begin showcasing Blu-ray to customers and recommend it as the "preferred format" over HD DVD.
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HD DVD continues to show some fight in its seemingly unending war with Blu-ray. Meanwhile, LG and Samsung introduce new dual-format players.
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Sony's Blu-ray technology is emerging as the likely winner in the format battle for the next generation of DVD players after Toshiba appeared ready to ditch its HD DVD business
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Imageon boosts DVD resolution, and new Geode conserves power.
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(InfoWorld) - Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. unveiled an MP3 music player with video playback and its first high-definition player supporting the two rival movie disc formats -- Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. The devices are among several new products that the South Korean manufacturer announced Thursday on the eve of the IFA consumer and electronics show in Berlin. The YP-P2 is an MP3 music device that can also be used to view video. The device comes with a high-resolution screen that displays 30 frames per second in DVD movie format and the 16:9 screen ratio. It also features a touch screen that uses Emoture input technology. The Bluetooth-enabled YP-P2 allows up to three people to listen to music at the same time when using the company's YA-BH270 headsets equipped with the same short-range wireless technology. The slim 9.9-millimeter player comes with 2G bytes, 4G bytes and 8G bytes of memory. Samsung also announced the YP-S5 music player as a successor to the YP-K5 launched last year. The 14.95-millimeter device comes with integrated stereo slide-and-tilt speakers to allow others to share music. It also includes a text viewer, photo viewer, flash game and Bluetooth connectivity. The 7.9-millimeter thin YP-T10 MP3 player features an animated interface for younger users. Jong Woo Park, president of Samsung's Digital Media Business, demonstrated during a news conference how the new music players can use short-range wireless Bluetooth technology to connect with a mobile phone and answer calls. When listening to music, users hear a phone ring and can tap a button on the player's screen to answer the call on the music device, Park said. The general message from Park was that the company aims to have all its products easily connect and interact with each other to improve the user experience. In addition, Samsung launched its first Duo HD disc player, the BD-UP5000, which supports Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. The company previously supported only the Blu-ray Disc format. Samsung is also targeted the home cinema market with a new product line of LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs. The devices, part of Samsung's F9 series, feature the company's new LED (light emitting diode) SmartLighting technology. The technology intuitively senses the TV signal and adjusts the brightness level by turning on and off the right combination of the backlight units to produce a contrast ration of 500,000:1. Â
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(InfoWorld) - It's an interesting contrast: consumers are fast ditching videotape for DVDs and hard disks, but the people who make TV shows are sticking to tape for some cutting edge applications. When it comes to recording broadcast-quality HDTV, today's optical disc systems just can't spin fast enough to keep up with the video -- but that may be about to change. Current optical disc systems are speed-capped at about 10,000 rpm (revolutions per minute.) Spin them any faster and there's a danger the discs will physically disintegrate in the drive leaving nothing but a pile of sharp plastic splinters and data that is gone forever. And even if they don't break apart the disc can begin to wobble making reliable recording a problem. Engineers at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) of Japan's public broadcaster, NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), are working on an optical disc recording system based on consumer Blu-ray Disc technology that can spin as fast as 15,000 rpm without these problems and demonstrated it last week. It's needed because broadcast quality HDTV signals of the type NHK records stream at 250MbpsÂ making a fast-spinning optical disc a necessity. A 1X Blu-ray Disc records at 36Mbps so the new system is equivalent to 7X speed. NHK has gotten around the stress problem by making a flexible disc that is just 0.1 millimeters thick. The disc, which was co-developed with Ricoh, is essentially the recording layer from a Blu-ray Disc without the 1.1 millimeter plastic substrate that is used to give the disc rigidity. It won't break apart at higher speeds but is not rigid enough to be useful in a drive at any speed. To solve this second problem a thick stabilizing plate has been added into the drive. When spun, the disc is kept steady by the stabilizer and can be used up to 15,000 rpm, said Daiichi Koide, an engineer at NHK STRL. The set-up is similar to Hitachi Maxell's Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc (SVOD) that wasÂ introduced in prototype formÂ at last year's Ceatec exhibition in Japan and shown again at Cebit in Germany this year. SVOD packs several 0.1 millimeter thick optical discs into a cartridge and holds them against a stabilizer in the drive to keep them steady while in use. However there is a key difference between the two, said Koide. In the NHK drive the stabilizer doesn't rotate. If it did it would be susceptible to the same stresses that as the discs. The result is that NHK can spin the disc up to 15,000 rpm without any mechanical problems. The system is still under development and there's no word on when it will literally be ready for prime time. NHK envisages cartridges stuffed with a number of the thin discs that can replace videotapes. Â
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You pay for Blu-Ray... Review We previewed LG's Blu-ray drive a few weeks ago and it's the third Blu-ray burner we've tested, the first was the SH-B022 from Samsung, the second being Pioneer's BDR-101A. That had a 2x BD-R burn speed and cost Â£699 back in August, although it now fetches Â£520. In comparison, this new LG has a faster burn speed and retails for Â£459 - still a huge amount of money but an indication that prices are moving in the right direction...â¦
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Samsung announces new details on its BD-UP5000 HD DVD/Blu-ray combo player and cancels the BD-P2400 Blu-ray player.
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Online and interactive IFA 07 Daewoo has given the Blu-ray Disc next-gen optical disc format the thumbs up by showing off its first BD player, the slim, blue-hued DBP-1000.â¦
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Microsoft makes a more concerted move into the living room with a freshened version of its entertainment-oriented operating system.
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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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Sony on Monday said it is lowering the cost of its upcoming Blu-ray player to $499 USD. Although it claims the $100 price drop is due to falling production costs and growing demand, Sony's move is likely more in response to rising sales of HD DVD players.
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Rolling out dual-layer BD support first, though IFA 06 Pioneer will follow up the release of its... er... pioneering Blu-ray Disc recorder with an updated model that supports dual-layer media, it has emerged. And the company said it is planning to offer a version that can also handle HD DVD.â¦