LaCie have just released a new Blu-Ray burner, the d2 which slaps down the zeroes and ones at 4x speeds via USB 2.0 and FireWire 400. The unit also boasts whisper quiet performance and a durable design just in case you want to, err, bash it occasionally. Here are a few more numbers on this puppy for you

* writing speeds - BD-R (single or dual layer) 4x; BD-RE (single or dual layer) 2x
* DVD±R 16x; DVD±RW 6x; DVD±R DL 4x
* CD-R 40x; CD-RW 32x
* 172.8 x 44.8 x 251.1 mm
* 1400 g
* talks nicely with Windows XP with the latest service pack, Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher

The d2 will be shipped out with a US$690 price tag, not cheap, but now the fomat war is over there’s one less excuse not to take the plunge.

Source: LaCie

Featured tags: blu ray d2 lacie

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With the format war over, we haven’t seen a great plethora of new Blu-Ray integrated products now that sitting on the fence isn’t an option. Neither have we seen the usual great price hikes associated with a monopolistic market. In fact Dell are now offering a laptop with a Blu-Ray drive (not burner) for under US$1000.

Their Inspiron 1525 laptop range start as low as US$879 with a Blu-Ray Disc Combo option, tack on another $200 for the Blu-Ray burner. Here are the specs on the $879 Blu-Ray player, err, laptop

* Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 1.83 GHz
* Vista Home Basic
* 15.4 inch 1280 x 800 res display
* Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
* 1 GB DDR2
* 80 GB SATA hard disc drive
* Dell Wireless 802.11g card
* 28 Whr battery

And of course your Blu-Ray combo drive. The laptop has an HDMI output so you can hook it up to your HD home system and supports 720p.

So $879 for a laptop/Blu-Ray player, not bad, eh? Obviously the specs are nothing special, but if you’re looking for a basic laptop and a HD player then this could be a great option. Hopefully this also heralds price reductions with other Blu-Ray integrated hardware.

Featured tags: blu ray blu ray player dell laptop

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Another day, another Blu-Ray drive and today it’s the Optiarc BC-5500A a slimline Blu-Ray drive for your laptop. Unlike yesterday’s Blu-Ray drive, the Sony BWU-200S, this sucker will only read your discs but obviously being able to watch your fav Blu-Ray movies whilst you are out on the road with your laptop could be handy. Optiarc is a joint-venture between Sony and NEC and this is its first Blu-Ray drive for laptops and with a price tag of around US$335 they are hoping it will enable laptop manufacturers to make Blu-Ray drives available in ‘mid-range’ units.

Just in case you were wondering it can burn to single-layer DVD±R/RW at 8x (dual at 4x) and to CD-R/RW at up to 16x.

Source: Reg Hardware

Featured tags: blu ray blu ray player laptop optiarc

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Looking for a 4x Blu-Ray writer that still writes to DVD at 16x? Then the Sony BWU-200S writer should be the latest upgrade to your PC build. It sports the ability to write to Blu-Ray discs (both BD-R and BD-RE) at a speed of 4x enabling you to pack 50 GB of hi def entertainment onto a BR disc in around 45 minutes. Still using standard def too? Well it’ll also make your old DVD 16x writer redundant as it can slap the 4.7 GB DVD standard onto a disc at the same speed as your standalone unit and can also handle dual layer discs at the same speed.

A space-saver with increased speed? What’s the catch? A US$600 price tag. Actually that doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me, but expect that price tag to be a lot smaller in oh say around six months time, but can you wait that long? ;)

Source: Sony

Featured tags: blu ray blu ray writers BWU 200S Sony

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The boffins over at Hitachi have knocked together a quad layer Blu-Ray disc capable of holding up to 100 GB of glorious movie action. Whilst 100 GB Blu-Ray discs are nothing new, the good news about the Hitachi version is that it is the first 100 GB BR disc to only require a firmware update to existing Blu-Ray players to handle the extra capacity sported by these discs.

There’s still one glitch in the system to sort out regarding stabilising signal quality, but once the boffins have figured that out look for a commercial rollout not long after and of course the deal-clinching price tag on these suckers.

Hitachi are also currently researching an eight layer (octo layer?) disc which boosts the capacity up to a massive 200 GB. So it looks like the boffins won’t be unemployed any time soon.

Anyway the game continues with no end in sight, as disc capacity increases, at a rate possibly surpassing demand judging by the sales or lack of sales of hi def movies, however the increase in media capacity drives the storage manufacturers to squeeze more zeros and ones into their boxes. Also the processor guys have to ramp up the grunt at their end to handle larger files and of course memory sticks have to increase their size appropriately too.

Do we really need all this extra media capacity, processor power etc? Are we becoming more savvy in our entertainment and data needs and these advances are only keeping up with an existing consumer demand or are the manufacturers trying to strip every single hard-earned penny from wallets? Let me know what you think.

Source: Electronista

Featured tags: blu ray blu ray disc hitachi

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Just in time for Christmas, Sharp has released a couple of Blu-ray HDD recorders. The BD-HDW20 sports a 1 TB HDD and the ability to record to BD-R discs whilst it’s little brother the BD-HDW15 only 500 GB of HDD. I’m a bit bemused as to why Sharp have not offered the ability to record to re-writable BD-RE discs on these machines, their non-HDD recorders the BD-AV1 and BD-AV10 both sport this functionality so why not have it on the HDD recorders?

These puppies have a lightening fast 0.8 second start-up time, gold-plated HDMI ports no less, Dolby HD sound, i-Link connectivity and the 1 TB model can record up to 127 hours of glorious hi-def TV. Both units are able to record to lowly DVD-RW/R and DVD-R DL discs as well in case you wanna go ‘retro’ ;)

Unfortunately Sharp are only planning to release these suckers in Japan at the moment, on the 1st of December for the equivalent of US$1,730 for the 500 GB unit and US$2,600 for the 1 TB big boy. So come on Sharp give the rest of world’s hi-def enthusiasts some Christmas cheer and get these suckers on Santa’s sleigh.

Source: I4U

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Whilst the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray format war rages on, there are still some manufacturers telling us to ‘give peace a chance’. So for those of us who want to sit on the fence and have the best of both worlds LG have kindly launched the BH200, their second generation combined Blu-Ray and HD-DVD player. For those of you who have already invested in the BH100, here are the extra bells and whistles that you’re missing out on ;)

* The HD-DVD has played catch up and now has the HDi features of the Blu-Ray
* The Blu-Ray portion features the latest Java functionality such as storyboards
* There’s an ethernet connection for Internet features
* HDMI 1.3 output
* 1080p res at the oh-so important 24 fps

The BH200 will also set you back US$1000 slightly less than the BH100 was originally released for, but presumably still more than what a BH100 will now cost you assuming the BH100s are even still for sale!

These dual-format units are obviously targeting the hesitant and indecisive and the manufacturers are also hoping consumers will ignore the fact that the players cost more than twice the price of a single format player. So whilst they may be the way of the short-term (peaceful) future, with such prohibitive price tags I’m not so sure they are the long term answer. However imagine if a manufacturer released a dual format player that was only say 25% more than a cheap single-format player, now that could bring ‘peace in our time’!

Featured tags: bh200 blu ray dual format hd dvd lg

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