Plextor will release two new Blu-Ray / HD DVD combo drives. The PX-B920SA writes to BD-R at 4x speeds, DVDs at 16x, and CD-Rs at 40x, and reads HD DVD, while the PX-B300SA lacks the BD-R capabilities and just writes to DVD and CD. Both drives are expected to drop this month according to Plextor. Pricing is still unknown.
Buffalo is dropping a series of external optical devices in Europe. This model features a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combo drive. The drive can write Blu-Ray discs and reads HD-DVD. Expect Buffalo to launch this drive in March in Europe, price is still unknown.
Great news for all you Pr0n fans out there who own PS3’s. Digital Playground will be ditching HD-DVD in favor of Blu-ray in 2008. Joone, the founder of the label, says they’re dropping it because Blu-ray titles outsold HD-DVD versions already. So Digital Playground and many other studios will stop selling HD-DVD titles by the end of 2008, barring something dramatic. Now you can look forward to scenes in high def! Can you feel the anticipation?
Since Blu-ray seems to be winning the HD format war, it might be a good idea to pick the winning side and buy a Blu-ray Entertainment Center. The Samsung HT-BD2 features a Samsung Blu-ray player and an 1100 watt 7.1 channel setup that supports dts-HD and Dolby True HD for exceptional sound.
CES will present the BDP7200 blu-ray player by Philips. It features Dolby® TrueHD and DTS® HD High Resolution Audio, multi-channel audio decoding and digital audio optical outputs. The BDP7200 supports 1080p at 24 frames per second (fps)2 cinematic resolution input with HDMI.
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Keep a look out for this new Fujitsu Penryn laptop with blu-ray! The Amilo Xi 2550 has so much to offer such as a 45nm 2.5 GHz T9300 Core 2 Duo, Radeon HD2700 graphics, 2GB of RAM, 2 RAID 0 / 1 250GB drives, 1GB of flash turbo memory, and a dual-layer burner / Blu-ray player. The best alternative to a blu-ray player and serves multiply purposes for only $2415.
Link Via The Laptop Blog
FastMac has released for the Apple Mac Pro and Power Mac G5 the new FastMac 4X Dual Layer Blu-ray drive. It offers you 50GB of storage on a Blu-ray disc without jeopardizing DVD and CD media compatibility, and SATA connectivity enabling you to burn a whole 50GB worth of data in less than 50 minutes. The FastMac 4x Dual Layer Blu-ray drive retails for $600.
Addonics Technologies released the Zebra Blu-Ray/ HD-DVD player. Which is also an optical storage solution which allows you to play movies in both video formats. The Zebra also does standard DVDs and CDs in different file formats and burns DVD±R/RW and CDRW media,you can choose from a high speed eSATA connection or a combination eSATA and USB 2.0 interface, depending on what you need at the time. The ESATA version is going for $409 and $429 with the version that has USB 2.0 connectivity as well.
Don’t you hate it when your player doesn’t always play the format that your movies are? LG’s second-generation Super Blu Player, known as the BH200, a hybrid player that plays both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs without the format hassle. It also gives you access to more than 50% of high definition movie titles, boasts BD Standard Profile and is compatible with BD Standard Profile 1.1. The BH200 reads audio files that are not MP3’s so you wont have to worry about converting them just yet. LG’s Super Blu is available nationwide for $1000.
