blu-ray

Now that the era of the Blu-ray Disc is here, the era of Blu-ray Disc copying and swapping is upon us as well. The next-generation optical discs have five times more storage capacity than DVDs (single-layer BD-Rs hold up to 25 gigabytes, dual-layer BD-Rs up to 50 gigs), so if you're itching to share, say, moment-by-moment footage of your son's entire winning soccer season with your 50 closest friends, you're gonna want an easy way to do some assembly line duplicating.

Disc Makers, a manufacturer of CD and DVD duplicators, just launched its first Blu-ray compatible tower … Read more

Earlier today we reported the major details on Sony's new Blu-ray player ($600, comes out this summer), and now we've received the full press release for the BDP-S300 which will be announced tomorrow at Sony's line show. As we mentioned before, the BDP-S300 is similar to the BDP-S1, including features such as support for DVD upconversion up to 1080p and 24 frames per second output on Blu-ray discs. There are also a few new features, such as support for standard audio CDs (a major omission on the BDP-S1) and Bravia Theater Sync, which enables the BDP-S300 to … Read more

Dell's XPS M1710 notebook with a Blu-Ray disc player is stuck on Windows XP until driver issues can be worked out, according to a Dell representative.

In December, Dell unveiled the flashy Blu-Ray-equipped M1710 as part of its high-end XPS lineup, designed to cater to gamers, digital enthusiasts, and those who believe Dell has no style. This laptop comes with all the bells and whistles available on laptops these days, including a 17-inch UXGA display, a powerful graphics card from Nvidia, and a Blu-Ray DVD burner for watching and creating high-definition video.

But you can't get it with … Read more

The underlying encryption on both the Blu-ray and HD DVD high-def disc formats has been cracked. That's the word from user arnezami on the Doom9 forums, where anti-DRM denizens have been hacking and slashing their way through the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) encryption algorithm found on all Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Previously, Doom9 user muslix64 had cracked the encryption keys to individual titles, but the newly uncovered "processing key" is said to be the Rosetta Stone for all current titles on both HD disc formats.

We haven't independently verified this crack, but given that … Read more

Universal, currently the only studio that releases titles exclusively on HD DVD, was eerily quiet at CES, fueling speculation that its support for HD DVD was waning. Well, late yesterday, the studio helped quell those rumors by announcing that it would be releasing 100 new exclusive titles in HD DVD format in 2007, including a CNET office favorite, The Big Lebowski.

The company didn't reveal all the new titles--or their release dates--but said that 40 to 50 would be available in the first half of the year and that 90 percent of them will be DVD/HD DVD combo … Read more

With competing high-definition DVD standards HD DVD and Blu-ray, a clear line has been drawn in the sand. Major technology companies are beginning to line up with their support for one side or the other. But it won't necessarily be the Sonys or Microsofts of the world that determine the winner in this standards war. In the end, it may come down to an often overlooked technology influencer: the porn industry.

Adult film producers have a long history of being early adopters of new technology. When the porn industry pushed hard for VHS in the 1980s, Sony took a … Read more

Developments in the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war kicked into high gear in the past couple of months. November and December saw the bulk of the long-delayed HD product lines finally hitting store shelves: Blu-ray players from Sony, Panasonic, and Philips; the PlayStation 3; the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on; and the second-generation Toshiba HD DVD players. In the new year, both camps came out swinging at CES 2007. With so much news to process, we've taken the opportunity to collect all the major developments into one easily digestible chunk.

Enter the combo player: LG officially unveiled the BH100, … Read more

The LG BH100, the combination Blu-ray and HD DVD player selected by CNET as the best product of CES 2007, is definitely coming out on time, according to LG spokesman John Taylor, but it won't have the official HD DVD logo. The logo pictured on the CES demo unit will not be printed on the shipping player because the BH100 did not gain approval by the DVD Forum, the body responsible for HD DVD licensing. The reason is that the BH100 cannot support HDi (formerly known as iHD), the interactive layer of HD DVD discs.

I've read reports … Read more

Samsung was the first to roll out a Blu-ray player last year, and now they're the first company to roll out a standard form-factor player with HDMI 1.3. The new BD-P1200 offers many of the same features as last year's BD-P1000: 1080p playback; DVD upconversion to 720p, 1080i, and 1080p; and a stylish design. The BD-P1200's HDMI output is also compatible with the consumer electronics control (CEC) format, which should enable compatible products to send commands between each other--for instance, a CEC-compatible TV could send commands to the BD-P1200 and tell it to turn on and … Read more