If you recently jumped on the Blu-ray bandwagon, chances are you’ve got a bunch of DVDs that are pretty much useless now. Warner Bros. wants to help. The company is now offering a trade-in program called Red2Blu that allows people to trade in 25 Warner Bros. HD DVDs and have them replaced with Blu-ray versions.

The new program isn’t free though. It will cost you $4.95 per disc plus $6.95 for shipping on each DVD. Interestingly, you don’t have to send in the discs to the WB, you just need to send in the cover art for the HD DVD discs you want replaced.

You folks who have been putting off the purchase of a new Blu-ray player can finally lay down your money and get a great deal if you hold off just a little while longer. Say, around Christmas. That’s when the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) will make the technology and licensing available to manufacturers in China, which means the usual. Cheap products. Hopefully you pick one that is quality as well as cheap.

Around that time you should see affordable $99 Blu-ray players hitting the market. What’s the poor PS3 gonna do when it isn’t the cheapest Blu-ray player anymore? Shake a tin cup at you as you enter Gamestop? This also means that prices for Blu-ray discs should lower some.

Remember that crazy slim Blu-Ray player that also happens to be the world slimmest? Well, the Samsung BD-P4600 is now available for purchase in Korea. Some features include BD-Live (2.0), DVD upscalling, DviX support, Wifi B/G/N, 1GB of internal memory, USB 2.0 etc.

The player is only 1.5-inches thick. We have no idea when, if ever, this makes it’s way to our shores, but it has us wanting an ultra-slim Blu-Ray player in our lives.

Sony intros a couple of new Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players: the BDP-S360 and BDP-S560. The BDP-S560 will feature built-in Wi-Fi connectivity that taps into BD Live content, as well as the ability to download future firmware updates without a cable.

It is also fully DLNA-ready, upscales your DVD collection, bit-streams audio via HDMI, decodes Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio and is compatible with external media loaded up on a USB drive. The BDP-S360 is the same player, it just lacks Wi-Fi connectivity.

Samsung’s new value priced Blu-ray player has been overlooked in favor of other better equipped players, but that doesn’t mean it’s not out there and being spotted at retail stores. This one was spotted on a Best Buy shelf.

Supposedly Blu-ray player prices will be dropping across the board, and it looks like Samsung is positioning the BD-P1600 as one of their lower-end models. $300 may not be dirt cheap but Netflix subscribers will probably like the unit. However wireless networking requires purchasing a Samsung USB accessory that isn’t released yet and BD Live requires at least 1GB of external storage.

Marantz unveiled it’s flagship Blu-ray player known as the BD8002, which they describe as “an ultimate-quality, reference standard High Definition source component”. That’s probably why it will cost you at least £1,799 to bring home.

The BD8002 features full HD resolution at 1080p, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding, DVD upscaling, HDMI 1.3a, 12-bit/297MHz video chipset, 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta processor, and SD memory card slot. It only supports Profile 1.1.

If there’s one certainty in life, it’s that gadgets get smaller and smaller while storage size goes up. Thin is in. And it’s not just TVs and display screens that are shedding pounds, but even the portables. Now there’s Samsung’s slimmest Blu-ray player. The player is only 1.5-inches thick.

With the BDP4600, other manufacturers are sure to follow and scale down their Blu-ray players as well. Because let’s face it, most look like crap. No other specs at the moment, but we’ll let you know if anything is sacrificed to gain that trim exterior. It sure looks pretty.

LG isn’t standing still with their Blu-ray disc players. Instead they are taking them to the next level for ‘09, promising support for YouTube and CinemaNow videos on their next generation decks. Along with Netflix, which is now standard, owners can browse CinemaNow pay-per-view offerings and other stores powered by the service.

You’ll also be able to sort through YouTube’s immense catalog directly from the device. No word yet on price and we’re waiting for some more detailed specs, but hopefully we will know more in early January.

Denon has the world’s universal Bluray player that can playback CD/DVD/SACD/DVD-A and of course Bluray, with the DVD-A1UDCI. It’s got all the high-end features you want, including an Ethernet port, SD card slot and BD Live support. A 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta chipset enables simultaneous 1080p scaling to two different outputs and the Advanced AL32 processor upscales 16 and 24-bit audio signals to 32-bit.

Outputs include 7.1 channel analog outs and two HDMI ports. Obviously you’re gonna pay for all of those features. The DVD-A1UDCI comes with a price tag of $3800 when it becomes available in February.

Blu-ray won the HD format wars a bit less than a year ago. Since then Blu-ray has been adding features and updating the specifications for more interactivity and features. Many Blu-ray players are now Internet connected offering interactive features like BD-Live.

Warner Home Video has announced its first BD-Live enabled Blu-ray film is coming. The film is The Dark Knight, the latest Batman film that was the last performance of actor Heath Ledger. I saw the movie at the theater and it was fantastic.

Netflix streaming has made it’s way into everything and people like it. As usual, Blockbuster is behind. But here’s some good news for the company.

According to Chairman Jim Keyes, Blockbuster’s download-to-rent service in a Blu-ray player will be here by Q1 of next year. Basically, if you’re an HD film fan then you’ll be able to rent HD quality films from Blockbuster directly through your Blu-ray Disc machine. No word if this will be in the form of a firmware update for existing hardware or part of a new player, but it’ll need to standout a bit and lower the price in order to compete with Netflix.

Other World Computing (OWC) has rolled out this world’s first external Blu-ray drive that features a Quad Interface. The drive connects to your PC or laptop through four different interfaces: FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0 and eSATA. This external drive comes in two variations: The Mercury Pro SW-5583 that reads/writes Blu-ray, DVD, DVD-RAM and CD-R/RW and the Mercury Pro SW-5583T that comes bundled with a full retail version of Roxio Toast 9 Titanium (Mac OS X). The Mercury Pro SW-5583 retails for $499.99, while the Mercury Pro SW-5583T is priced at $579.99.

Check out this special version of The Dark Knight on Blu-Ray. The images just leaked out from TheHDRoom. It will cost you $65, while the standard version is currently on pre-order for $25. Hardcore geeks will love the Exclusive Bat-Pod Display Case, but it amounts to buying a $40 toy that manages to look cheap. Cheapskates will want to stick with the standard edition and live with one less Collector’s item in their home.

It has been several months now since the Blu-ray camp made HD DVD tap out in the ultimate HD fighting championships. Now that Blu-ray is the HD standard, we are starting to see more Blu-ray players hit the market with new and interesting features to set it apart from the Blu-ray masses.

LG has announced the first Blu-ray player to offer the ability to stream movies instantly from Netflix. The player is called the LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player. Netflix subscribers can use the player to instantly stream any of the 12,000 TV shows and movies from Netflix to their HDTV.

Sony, which announced some upcoming Blu-ray players back in February, said one of them is now available. The Sony BDP-S350 prices at around $400.

The Sony BDP-S350, according to Sony, “supports BonusView (picture-in-picture), which is featured on select new Blu-ray Disc home video releases, and is also BD-Live ready, with an Ethernet port for easy firmware updates and access to Internet-based interactive content features. A firmware update enabling BD-Live is planned later this year.”