That’s 25GB per layer. The technique used by Pioneer should be backwards compatible with all of the existing Blu-ray gear since the specs and lenses needed for pickup are identical, but it’s not clear if players would need some kind of modified optical pick-up to see the data. The prototype they used is read-only but they just need time. Pioneer will give more details on July 13th.

Pioneer has several new Blu-ray players hitting Europe. The 2.0-compliant BDP-LX91, Designer BDP-LX08 and BDP-LX71 and the BDP-51FD. All feature 1080p24 support, HDMI 12-Bit Deep Color support, KURO LINK, DTS-HD Master Audio / Dolby True HD compatibility and professional-quality Wolfson Digital Audio Converters.

No word on pricing for any of them yet however. The BDP-LX71 is rumored to be coming in September, the BDP-51FD & BDP-LX08 in October and the BDP-LX91 in the cold of Winter.

LG Electronics earlier this week unveiled several new Blu-ray drives for use by computer owners. These models are the BE06, GBC-H20L and GBW-H20L and they price at around $380, $200 and $280 respectively.

All three of these Blu-ray drives, said LG, offer “SecurDisc capabilities, which provide data protection and content access control on all current optical formats, and LightScribe technology, which enables consumers to easily create direct-to-disc labels right from their drive.” They are designed primarily for back up purposes and boast 6x speed at which they write and read information as well as compatibility with DVD, CDR and CDRW.

LaCie earlier this week did some updates to its d2 Blu-ray drive product, including upping the burn speed. The new LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive prices at around $650.

The LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive now sports a burn speed of 4x and ecords, rewrites and reads 25 gigabytes (GB) or 50GB BD-R (recordable) and BD-RE (rewritable), as well as DVD±RW DL and CD±RW. Also updated is the aluminum alloy case and software suite, which features Roxio software such as Easy Media Creator for Windows and Toast Titanium for Mac.

Hitachi has announced a new Blu-ray burner that can create discs from the latest camcorders with eSATA ports. The DZ-WR90 plugs straight into the camcorder and automatically creates discs from the footage that you select. So, you don’t need a computer. It even finalises the discs automatically, making it an easy complete one-step process.

The drive will also work with DVD-R discs, and even supports double-sided media as long as you’re willing to flip them yourself. They’re claiming that a Blu-ray disc will fit around three hours of full 1920 × 1080 footage and burn in 1.5hrs; or up to six hours in 1440 × 1080 resolution. A DVD can store up to one hour of 720 × 480 footage. This should make it easy for anyone who wants a simple way to share their video.

LG Electronics in the Middle East has released the Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc Rewriter, the BE06. The fastest rewriter that reads and writes Blu-ray at 6x. It’s aimed at laptop users or those with multiple PCs connecting USB 2.0 and a DC power connector.

It also has Optical Pickup Technology supporting Blu-ray disc write/playback, HD-DVD playback, and DVD/CD write playback. You can get one for $549, but as far as availability in the U.S., there’s no word just yet.

The Magnavox and Sylvania branded Funai NB500 Blu-ray players have been spotted at Walmart. A number of Walmarts apparently. The NB500 is a Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player and is priced at a fairly reasonable $298. It’s got HDMI version 1.3, HD audio codec’s, and DVD upscaling.

Yes, these are low end players, and already somehow outdated, but the price being what it is, it’s going to get it’s share of buyers. We’re not really sure what you can expect performance-wise, but if any of you brave souls should buy one, do let us know in comments.

Pioneer revealed their latest two Blu-ray players, the Elite BDP-05FD and BDP-51FD. Both support BonusView extra disc content and 1080p True 24fps output, they have HDMI 1.3a ports, four Wolfson Professional Audio 12-bit digital-to-analog converters and the proprietary PureCinema Deinterlacer for upscaling standard definition DVDs. The Elite BDP-05FD has fancy gold-plated connections and capacitative controls.

If you combine either of these with any of Pioneer’s KURO HDTV sets, both players have the ability to set-up automatically to a screen-specific factory preset. Other presets include projector settings as well as other displays. 7.1 surround sound, with Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS HD and DTS HD Master decoding are all supported. The 51FD has a 108MHz 12-bit video encoder, while the 05FD has a 297MHz version. These will be priced at $599 for the BDP-51FD and $799 for the BDP-05FD. They have also improved the speed of the players due to customer demand.

It’s never as much fun to write an article to report on things that aren’t going to happen, but in this case we think this is something that should happen and we still expect it to, despite Microsoft’s denials.

What we do know is that Microsoft had an HD DVD player for the Xbox 360 which they put a stop to producing. We also know that rumors keep cropping up that Microsoft is going to work something out with Sony to bring a Blu-ray player to the 360, and Microsoft continues to squash them.

For those of you who like Super hero statues sawed off at the waist or higher, this deal in Japan may be for you. If you’re in Japan. And a geek. On July 23, Japanese folks will get their chance to own Batman Begins on Blu-ray.

That’s about two weeks after release in the U.S. Our gift set edition comes with story boards, script pages and a $7.50 movie credit towards Dark Knight, but in Japan they will get a 25 cm tall bust. Which begs the question, why are we always getting left out on all the cool stuff? What’s the deal with that? The standard Blu-Ray will be around $47, the gift set edition is about $180.

Sony is launching it’s BDZ series of Blu-ray recorders, with the A70 and high-end T90 that are capable of picking up unprotected HDTV feeds, relying on AVC (H.264) encoding in order to record shows for future viewing on their 320GB and 500GB hard drives. If you like, you can record videos straight to Blu-ray, and it can also convert videos directly to portable formats, which is really handy.

Some other features include both analog and digital TV tuners, Sony’s Room Link, HDMI output, S-Video, and RCA. Both models will ship on April 30th in Japan. The prices start from $1,664 upwards. No info yet on whether we will see these in the US.

Mitsubishi just launched two new Blu-ray recorders set for Japan with the DVR-BZ200 and the DVR-BZ100. The two recorders each house an internal HDD with 500GB and 250GB capacities, respectively.

The part that really makes these Blu-ray records most notable is that they can record HD content onto a regular DVD disc with Blu-ray’s AVCREC specs. You can fit around a couple of hours of Full HD MPEG video onto a standard 4.7GB DVD, and set it to record using the super-cool, included touch screen remote control.

Now that the high-def format war has come to an end Sony is rolling out a couple of new Blu-ray players equipped with the latest and greatest features. The BDP-S550 and BDP-S350 look virtually identical but differ only in some of the internal extras.

Both players come with picture-in-picture which Sony is calling “BonusView”, and have BD-Live through an Ethernet port allowing the players to get firmware updates and interactive content through the intertubes. The BDP-S350 is BD-Live “ready” while the BDP-S550 ships with the feature already capable. One of the other few differences between the two is that the BDP-S550 comes with 1GB of internal storage while the other doesn’t, but both have a USB connection for additional external storage.

Paramount was the last of the big Hollywood studios to officially make the move to Blu-ray, announcing on Wednesday that they are pleased with the industry finally picking a single format with the consumer in mind. Paramount did not elaborate much on the announcement but by doing so removed all doubt that HD DVD has met its demise.

The announcement came a day after Toshiba’s Tuesday announcement of the end of HD DVD and the end of manufacturing by the end of March. All six studios working with a single format reduces consumer confusion and will likely bring more sales of media and players than retailers would see by trying to push two different formats.

Recent decisions by the likes BlockBuster earlier last year, Warner Brothers last month and Netflix just this morning are only further cementing the future of the next single high definition video format. Widening the gap today is retail giant Best Buy which has announced that they too will be supporting Blu-ray over HD DVD as the preferred format for the future.

Best Buy says they will continue to carry HD DVD products in their store as well, but will be showcasing the Blu-ray products as the emerging single format for high-definition video going forward. This move could help many consumers who are undecided about the future of video formats to make a decision and possibly make purchases that they’ve been holding out on. We also imagine that this will make life a whole lot easier for Best Buy employees working on the floor answering customer questions about which format to choose.