Singulus, Sony Team Up on Blu-Ray Development
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German compact disc and DVD equipment company Singulus and Japan&#39;s Sony have teamed up to develop a new technology for music and video discs, Singulus said on Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - Supporters of the Blu-ray Disc format came to Berlin armed with key announcements to underscore their commitment to the next-generation movie disc. The announcements included a flood of new Blu-ray Disc releases, a decision by Acer and China Huala GroupÂ to join as hardware partners, and the establishment of a Blu-ray Disc authoring center in China. They were made Thursday at a news conference organized by the Blu-ray Disc Association at the IFA consumer electronics show. Among some of the big-name movies to appear in the Blu-ray Disc format in the coming weeks are Spider Man from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 300 from Warner Home Video, and a special edition of Sleeping Beauty from Walt Disney. "We've been involved with Blu-ray Disc from the very beginning," said Stephen Foulser, vice president of marketing and business development for Disney in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. "We will be launching 30 new titles in the format." More than 300 movie titles are currently available in the Blu-ray Disc format, a number that studios plan to nearly double by the end of the year, according to David Walstra, vice chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association. Eight manufacturers of consumer electronic products are now on board, he said. The number of studios supplying content and manufacturers building players are key to the take-up of any new disc format, according to Danny Kay, executive vice president of research and development at 20th Century Fox. Based on the numbers of both of these groups, "the market for Blu-ray Disc is very compelling" he said. "We believe Blu-ray Disc is really the only way to go." Kay declined to comment on the decision of Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation to throw their support behind rival HD DVD, saying only that both studios had access to the same market data as Fox and the other studios. On the device front, Acer will join Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and LenovoÂ as contributing members to the Blu-ray Disc Association, said Walstra, a Sony executive who is also deputy chairman of the association. Huala, a major manufacturer of consumer electronic products in China and supplier of content, has also agreed to become a contributing member, according to Walstra. In addition, the company will team with the China Film Group to establish a Blu-ray Disc authoring center in China, he said. None of the industry executives associated with the Blu-ray Disc Association were prepared to answer a question on whether the expansion into China could lead to greater concerns about software piracy
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Company, one of the core backers of Blu-ray, will also support its rival format. Thomson, one of the core backers of the Blu-ray Disc format for high-definition video discs, plans to offer players supporting
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In the battle between the competing standards for the next generation of DVD, the Blu-ray group has raised the stakes again with the announcement that the Walt Disney Corporation is backing the Sony Corp led group and has joined as the 15th member of the
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Japanese consumer electronics company JVC has created an optical disc that contains both regular DVD and Blu-ray Disc zones. The announcement comes a month after Toshiba and Memory Tech, both members of the
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Universal Studios, one of the two major studios that was putting out HD DVDs, will focus its attention on the rival Blu-ray movie disc format.
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The home video unit of Sony Corp. said on Friday it will release four movies in April on a new disc format designed for Sony's PlayStation Portable handheld video game device.
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It is being billed as the DVD equivalent of the Betamax versus VHS video format battle of the early 1980s. Disney announced yesterday it has signed up to Sony&#39;s Blu-ray technology for the
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Sony Corp. is increasing its bet on Blu-ray Disc and plans to ditch DVD and use the high-definition video disc format in all future digital video recorders in Japan, the company said Wednesday.
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Sony Corp. said yesterday 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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Sony Corp. is planning to launch a Blu-ray Disc player in the middle of this year that's significantly cheaper than many current models on the market.
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Sony Pictures is turning  its online acquisition Grouper into a ministudio that aims to  move some of the best user-generated content onto movie and TV  screens.
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Sony has won Disney&#39;s support for its Blu-ray Disc (BD) hi-definition video optical format. Disney&#39;s home video operation, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, said it will ship &quot;popular new releases and classic
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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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Sony Corp (6758.T) said it will launch  four models of new Blu-ray high-definition optical disc  recorders in November in Japan, as its format battle with the  HD DVD camp heats up.
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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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Digital entertainment download service CinemaNow has announced a partnership with Sonic Solutions's QFlix, a system which enables consumer burning of protected DVDs that promise to be identical to those available off the shelf, with one very big catch.