Archives for the 'Hardware News' Category
Best Buy offers gift card to HD DVD owners
Best Buy is giving $50 gift cards to customers who purchased an HD DVD player or HD DVD Xbox 360 attachment from its U.S. stores before February 23, 2008. Customers will get a gift card for each player or HD DVD attachment that they purchased. Through this program, Best Buy will distribute more than $10 million in gift cards to customers across the country.
Most Best Buy customers won’t have to do anything to receive their gift card. Best Buy will proactively mail cards to all customers that the company can identify as having purchased an HD DVD player. Members of the Best Buy Reward Zone program, customers who purchased Performance Service Plans (PSPs) or who made their purchase on BestBuy.com should look for their gift cards in the mail by May 1. Other customers who may not be easily identified can call (888) BEST BUY to receive their gift cards with proof of purchase through a credit card or their Best Buy receipt.
Why is Best Buy doing this? Because they want you to use that gift card to hopefully purchase a Blu-ray player, some movies and some of those overpriced Monster cables.
Sony to invest nearly $110 million in Blu-ray plant
Sony is planning to invest nearly $110 million in new equipment and property improvements to upgrade its Terre Haute, Indianapolis plant following Blu-ray’s victory in the “high-def war”.
Sony will invest more than $101 million in new equipment and more than $7.4 million in property improvements, for a total of $108.5 million. Along with new equipment, the company will hire at least 65 new employees.
Acer reveals Blu-ray laptop
Acer today presented the Aspire 8920G, a brand new notebook PC series designed to take full advantage of Blu-ray discs. To enjoy the full 1920×1080 resolution, these new laptops will include a huge 18.4″ screen.
To power this beast, Acer includes an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and either an NVIDIA GeForce 9650M GS graphics card or an NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS card. Both of them support NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology, Shader Model 4.0 and Microsoft DirectX 10.
And if you have an HDTV with an HDMI input you can hook up the laptop to it to enjoy HD goodness on your big screen.
Microsoft to support Blu-ray
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quotes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer when asked about Microsoft’s support for Blu-ray:
“We’ve already been working on, for example, in Windows, device driver support for Blu-ray drives and the like,” Ballmer stated. “I think the world moves on. Toshiba has moved on. We’ve moved on, and we’ll support Blu-ray in ways that make sense.”
The comments were made during an on-stage conversation at Microsoft’s Mix08 Internet conference in Las Vegas.
Exchange your HD DVD player for a Blu-ray player at Circuit City
Circuit City has announced today that they will be extending their HD DVD return window for those who may have been stuck with an HD DVD player. Circuit City spokesman, Jim Babb, said Circuit City will “accept returns of HD DVD players within 90 days of purchase.”
Customers who purchased HD DVD players to return them for store credit. The policy doesn’t apply to HD DVD movie discs. The reason why Circuit City is doing this is because they hope you will use your store credit to purchase a Blu-ray player, some Blu-ray movies and perhaps some of those overpriced Monster video cables to “get the best possible quality from your new player!” Word of advice — don’t waste your money on Monster brand cables.
Panasonic to Release DivX Certified Blu-ray Player
DivX today announced the DivX Certification of Panasonic’s Blu-ray Disc Player, scheduled to be released in March and expected to be the first DivX Certified Blu-ray Disc Player available in Europe and Russia. The model number, for those interested, is DMP-BD30EG/EE.
“In order to give our users access to the extremely popular, high-quality DivX format, we have introduced the first DivX-Certified Blu-ray Disc Player for Europe and Russia,” said Yuki Kusumi of Panasonic. “The timely launch of this strategic product is a direct response to the strong demand for DivX playback among consumers. We are very confident this product will be very popular in the European and Russian markets.”
Mitsubishi steps up rewriteable Blu-ray Disc production
Trading Markets reports that the Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Company is stepping up production of writable Blu-ray Discs, anticipating higher demand since Toshiba’s decision to exit the HD DVD business has left Blu-ray as the sole next-gen disc format.
At its Singapore plant, the firm will install a production line for recordable Blu-ray Discs which will go into service in July or August and is expected to produce 500,000 units a month.
The new line at the Singapore plant will raise monthly companywide production to 700,000 units. In addition, the firm will begin outsourcing some production to foreign manufacturers.
Sony reveals two new Blu-ray players, S350 and S550
Sony updated its Blu-ray Disc player line today with two new models that will be capable of accessing advanced interactive features such as BonusView and BD-Live.
The BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 models both support BonusView (Picture-in-Picture) featured on some of the new Blu-ray Disc theatrical releases. The BDP-S350 model is BD-Live ready featuring an Ethernet port for an easy firmware update and access to Internet-based interactive content features. The BSP-S550 is BonusView and BD-Live capable when it ships.
Both models also feature an external port for local storage, so users can add optional storage device. The BDP-S550 ships with a 1GB storage device.
The players feature 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema output. They are compatible with most standard DVDs and feature 1080p upscaling through an HDMI connection to capable HDTV sets, improving the picture performance of existing DVD libraries.
The models offer 7.1 channel Dolby TrueHD and Dolby(R) Digital Plus decoding and bit-stream output, as well as dts-HD High Resolution Audio and Master Audio bit-stream output. The BDP-S550 adds dts-HD High Resolution Audio and dts-HD Master Audio decoding as well as 7.1 channel analog audio output.
The players support AVCHD discs encoded with x.v.Color (xvYCC) technology, an international standard for wide color space reproduction. The standard expands the current data range of video by about 1.8 times, allowing the players to output more natural and vivid colors similar to what the human eye can actually see. The players also feature compatibility with an array of video formats, including BD-R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW (CD-DA format), and JPEG on DVD//CD recordable media.
The new BDP-S350 ships this summer for about $400 and BDP-S550 will be available this fall for about $500.
Golmund announces $16,900 Blu-ray player
Goldmund introduced today the company’s first Blu-ray player, the Eidos 20 BD. With the announcement of the Eidos 20 BD, Goldmund becomes the first high-end audio/video manufacturer to issue a Blu-ray player.
Goldmund signature features found on the Eidos 20 BD include the “AC-Curator” power supply circuit which dramatically improves picture and sound stability and dynamics, and the “Mechanical Grounding” construction which removes from the player mechanism spurious vibrations blurring the video signal and increasing jitter. In addition, the new Eidos 20 BD uses the Goldmund “Magnetic Damper,” a device lowering the reading errors, a feature that previously was exclusive to Goldmund’s highest end devices.
Oh and it costs $16,900. Yea… sixteen thousand nine hundred dollars!
Sony announces Metal Gear Solid PS3 bundle
At its annual retail and publisher conference Destination PlayStation, Sony announced details of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots PLAYSTATION 3 bundle.
To coincide with the North American launch of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in late Q2 2008, Sony will introduce a PS3 bundle, which will include an 80GB PS3, the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and a DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller for $499.
Why am I posting this news here on BlurayWire? Well because the PS3 is also a Blu-Ray player! For those wanting to make the leap from DVD to Blu-Ray, this new bundle is a great deal. You not only get a gaming console w/ one game — you also get a Blu-Ray player!
