HD DVD sales are currently strong in the States, reports the Financial Times.

The doomed high-def disc format was effectively cancelled by backers Toshiba and co earlier in the year, after the rival Blu-ray format emerged victorious, but “tough economic conditions” have breathed new life into the platform.

Aggressive price cuts for the hardware – said to be around $60 for HD DVD players, some of which upscale ordinary DVDs – have apparently made them attractive to cash-strapped consumers.

In addition, the cost of discs has fallen to around $10, and can still be found online at Amazon and Buy.com as well as smaller electronics stores.

“We expected to see a huge increase in Blu-ray sales [with] HD DVD dying but it just hasn’t happened”, Jeff Wisot, vice-president of marketing with Buy.com, told the FT. “HD DVD sales are still very strong.”

Ryan Kugler, president of Distribution Video & Audio, a buyer of excess video and audio inventory, has sold one million HD DVDs that were returned to the studios by big retailers and expects to sell another two to three million for Christmas.

Kugler said:

“Cheap entertainment always does well in a recession or depression”

Buffalo just announced the world’s fastest Blu-ray recorder that is capable of burning through your data at an 8x speed. It’s available in Japan beginning next month. You can get an External version and an internal version. The BR-816U2 External features eSATA and USB port. The BR-816FBS can be connected by SATA.

Buffalo 8X Blu-ray Burner

CDs and DVDs are also supported of course. You’ll get a max 16x burn to DVD±R or 48x/24x for CD-R/RW. Each drive is being bundled with Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 7 suite. The external drive will cost you about $435, while the internal is about $380.

[Via Akihabara]

Samsung BD-P1500

Samsung have been making noises in the Blu-ray market for some time now. But does their latest player offer enough to convince you to switch from your humble DVD? We get watching to find out.

Samsung have a reputation for delivering affordable technologies and the uptake of their LCD panels over the past few years is testament to this. But are too many corners cut in the delivery of their Blu-ray player? Fortunately, we think not.

The unexcitingly-named BD-P1500 replaces the P1400 before it and improves on the design of previous Samsung players, ironically, by being less fussy and taking a more minimal approach. Now you’ll find a simple black gloss front, with only a bare minimum of controls. Continue Reading…

Pioneer has announced the Elite BDP-05FD and Pioneer BDP-51FD Blu-Ray Disc players and Elite SC-07, SC-05, VSX-03TXH and VSX-01TXH A/V receivers designed to give users that true theater experience in their own homes. The Elite BDP-05FD and Pioneer BDP-51FD BonusView Blu-ray Disc players support next generation high resolution audio and video formats, feature picture-in-picture interactivity and a redesigned platform. The new players work in tandem with Pioneer’s KURO displays and new Elite A/V receivers.

The Elite BDP-05FD and Pioneer BDP-51FD of HDMI 1.3 use 12-bit video digital-to-analog converter (DAC) support and 1080p/True 24 frames per second (fps) video output, promising smooth performance of film based Blu-ray Disc movies that greatly image judder. The inclusion of the proprietary PureCinema Deinterlacer, which essentially eliminates lines that can negatively affect the viewing experience, enhances high performance DVD playback in the new players. DVDs can be scaled to a 1080p resolution for improved picture quality and compatibility with HDTVs. The players also feature Pioneer’s Picture Control Suite, which is comprised of an additional 13 video adjustments that allow viewers to fine tune small picture details of a film and deliver an experience that best suits a user’s viewing preferences.

The new players support all advanced audio formats, with the ability to decode Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus, DTS HD and DTS HD Master high resolution audio formats making compatibility a minimal concern. Pioneer selected the professional quality Wolfson Digital Audio Converters (DACs) in the new players and gave the BDP-05FD and BDP-51FD a center loading tray to help reduce vibration, while dedicated audio and video boards are designed to ensure smooth operation and uninterrupted playback of discs. Gold-plated connection ports, capacitance touch key buttons and an aluminum front panel feature in the Elite BDP-05FD and Pioneer also claims to have made significant strides in speed performance, improving disc load, power on, power off and disc eject times that they claim now rival the rapid playback rate consumers have come to experience when using their DVD players.

Continue Reading…

Panasonic have recently come with an exceptional piece of news for all those in search for the newest and niftiest trends in multimedia: the SC-BT100 home theater system, a full and rich package boasting a Blu-ray drive and wireless, surround sound architecture and a heap of other great features to integrate your multimedia needs. And if you think that such a contraption will burn a hole into your budget, you’d better think again, as the Panasonic SC-BT100 is one truly affordable thing to go for.

If you’re looking for a high-complexity multimedia system to offer you a great sound experience while at the same time bring the basic essentials of modern man, the Panasonic SC-BT100 might be one of the best choices available.

We’re talking about a 5.1 home theater in a box, ready to play from the moment you’ve finished installing it: with the wireless speakers, installing has never been easier, especially as the SC-BT100 comes with dedicated signal transmitters, making connecting everything almost a child’s play. And if you’re demanding something extra, upgrading to 7.1 has never been easier, with optional side-speakers widely available. Continue Reading…

The Panasonic DMP-BD30 is the world’s first Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player.

A certain amount of deserved fanfare is in order, as some of you will be aware that the BD market has been cursed by dithering standards.

Profile 1.1 (also amusingly know as the Final Standards profile – which it isn’t) mandates for persistent memory and a second video decoder, allowing for the provision of Picture-in-Picture functionality, aka Bonus View.

Sometime later in 2008, we’ll see the first dedicated BD players compliant with Profile 2.0, which throws a LAN port into the mix, letting the unit go online for greater interactivity.

New Blu-ray special features

Even Bonus View PIP discs are few and far between. The first in the UK is Sony Pictures’ Resident Evil: Extinction. Select its Under the Umbrella special feature and you can watch the film plus a secondary video window featuring talking-head commentary, behind-the-scenes material and storyboards.

Disney will be releasing its first Profile 1.1 disc in the summer, National Treasure: Book of Secrets. In the US, Sunshine has also been issued as a Region-locked PIP disc.

A different proposition to the first models from Panasonic, the Panasonic DMP-BD30’s form factor itself has been much improved. The player is super-slim, standing just 59mm tall. Ergonomics are a bit bonkers, though.

Continue Reading…

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has stated that the company will now support Blu-ray, the winner of the next-generation DVD format war.

“We’ve already been working on, for example, in Windows, device driver support for Blu-ray drives and the like, and I think the world moves on,” said Ballmer at Microsoft’s Mix08 internet conference.

“Toshiba has moved on. We’ve moved on, and we’ll support Blu-ray in ways that make sense,” he said.

Ballmer did not discuss Blu-ray specifically in conjunction with the Xbox 360 – but this seem to back up reports from The FT that Sony’s US president has confirmed the two companies are in talks on a hardware deal.

This year, as last, Sony held its annual line show at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. While it is intended primarily for dealers—which explains the introduction of everything from televisions to digital voice recorders, computers, cameras, cell phones, and alarm clocks (in short, everything you’ll see featured in Sony movies later this year)—the press was brought in to have the first look.

The biggest news for home theater fans is the introduction of two new Sony Blu-ray players, both of them capable of BD-Live (Profile 2.0). The BDP-S350 will be BD-Live-ready (with an optional firmware update). It has an Ethernet port for interactive Internet content and firmware updates and a USB port for local storage. In addition, it supports both 1080p/60 and 1080p/24. Most importantly, it will not only output Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio in bitstream form, but will also decode both of them internally to multichannel PCM. It does not, however, have multichannel analog outputs. The projected price will be about $400 when the player ships this summer. Continue Reading…

Despite Paramount’s official statement that they are sticking with the flagging HD DVD format as their next-gen disc of choice, rumours still abound online that the company will go Blu-ray in the not-too-distant future.

Adding fuel to those particular flames of rumour is the recent discovery of some “coming soon” Blu-ray-flavoured Paramount discs on Amazon.co.uk.

The three releases, due on 10th March 2008, according to info on the e-tailer’s site, are “Trading Places”, “Coming To America” and “Anchorman”.

Although the two Eddie Murphy vehicles did get a US Blu-ray release before Paramount’s switch to HD DVD last summer, it seems Anchorman did not, leading to speculation that this is a slip from Amazon, rather than an admin error.