If you’re thinking of jumping onboard the Blu-ray bandwagon but have yet to decide on a player maybe you should hold off until Samsung comes out with its two new additions to its Blu-ray line this fall. The BD-1400 (priced at $550) will be notable for having support for 24 frames-per-second output, removing any instances of stuttering motion in the video (an effect called “judder”) for high-end displays capable of this mode. It will also have internal decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD so you can crank up the noise if you’ve got a high-end stereo hook-up.

In addition to the 24 fps support, the BD-P2400 ($650) adds another microchip that delivers HQV (Hollywood Quality Video) processing to deliver the absolute best video presentation experience you can get on these players. If you’ve got a nice home theater system then going the extra $100 and …

In a major hit to HD DVD supporters, Blockbuster has decided to go with the rival Blu-ray high definition DVD format in 1,450 of its 1700 stores across the nation. This decision was made after a year of renting both the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats in their stores after which the video rental giant found that Blu-ray was preferred by its consumers over 70% of the time.

According to the announcement, the Blu-ray titles will still be offered for rent online but a vast majority of the physical stores will not be stocking them. Blockbuster found that it wasn’t the price that was driving the consumers decision as much as it was the content with big releases like Spiderman and Pirates of the Caribbean doing better than similar exclusive releases on HD DVD.

This decision by …

In late February Sony announced they were going to release the BDP-S300 Blu-ray player this summer at the low price of $599, which at the time was already around $400 less than a similar Blu-ray player from Sony. Now as Sony is gearing up to launch the player this week they’ve made a surprise announcement of a $100 price cut, bring the price for the BDP-S300 down to $499.

Sony says that the price cut is due to falling costs and increasing demand, although the rival HD-DVD players from Toshiba are selling at as little as $300. So far it seems that neither the Blu-ray or HD-DVD format has really caught on yet with consumers or studios, both waiting for one format or the other to take the lead.

Even though the …

Today Sony unveiled a new VAIO FZ series laptop which packs a Blu-Ray disc player along with a 15.4 inch widescreen display. This combination results in a lightweight multimedia notebook that can play movies in 1080 HD resolution as well as record and play back personal content on the Blu-Ray media.

Aside from the hi-def player, this new premium model of the VAIO FZ comes with a Centrino Duo processor, a built-in 802.11n wireless LAN and Windows Vista Home Premium. The laptop also has a built-in camera and microphone and support for an ExpressCard to help with those large file transfers.

The VAIO FZ premium model will retail for around $2000 while the FZ standard (without the Blu-ray player) will go for about $1400. You can find the VAIO FZ series at the Sony site and should be showing up at …

Digg This was the last post on the Digg Blog yesterday by founder Kevin Rose posting the one-key-to-rule-them-all encryption key that can be used to break the protection on secure HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs.

The issue of breaking the AACS encryption code of HD DVD’s came about very shortly after the DVD’s using the encryption was released - 8 days after it was released to be exact. An individual called Muslix64 posted information to compromise the HD DVD protection back in December, and the following month was able to use the same method to compromise the protection of Blu-Ray discs as well.

Since then another individual found that there was one “master” key that could be used to break the encryption of all the discs instead of having to find the individual key for …

When the CeBIT show arrives in Hannover, Germany later this week one of the must-see pieces of hardware will be Hitachi-LG Data Storage’s first dual Blu-ray/HD-DVD internal drive for PCs. This baby was just announced and bears the swank product name of GGW-H10N Super Multi Blue. It can read, record and re-write CDs, DVDs, play and record single and dual-layered Blu-ray discs (4x or 3.5x speeds) and play HD-DVDs (no record on those babys just yet.)

The Super Multi Blues will start arriving in stores sometime in May, and as is always the case for first gen new product, expect to pay a lot for the privilege of being the only person on your block…or your neighborhood…or your city…that has one. How much? How does around $1,200 sound to you?

Gizmowatch

Continuing the battle of DVD replacement formats, Sony is launching a less expensive player for Blu-ray discs bringing some additional pull to the Blu-ray format over HD DVD to replace standard DVD’s.

According to Randy Wayhick, senior vice president of home products for Sony Electronics, this summer the company will begin offering the BDP-S300 Blu-ray player, which has all the same capabilities as the BDP-S1 pictured here excluding the price tag. The BDP-S300 will retail for $400 less than the similar existing player, making its retail price at $599 USD. The new BDP-S300 will also be slightly smaller than the BDP-S1, will provide 1080p output and will be able to additionally play standard CD’s.

“Eighty percent of people who buy a PS3 also buy Blu-ray movies to go with it,” Waynick told reporters at a meeting according to Fox …

Sharp has introduced the BD-HP1, a new Blu-ray recorder which has been able to cut some costs due to some ingenuity along with the small requirement of a compatable Sharp television.

The new Blu-ray recorder from Sharp can connect to its Aquos LCD line of televisions through the iLink connector (iLink on other TV’s may not necessarily work) and utilizes the televisions tuner instead of its own built inside the Blu-ray recorder. What the BD-HP1 turns out to be is basically a Blu-ray player with recording capabilities, which requires an external input.

Since the DVD recorder is using the tuner from the television and doesn’t have its own, its not possible to watch a different channel that the one that is being recorded. Dual tuners is common with many DVR’s or TiVo type systems. However, the AQUOS televisions do not need to be …

The same person who had cracked the encryption for HD DVD with BackupHDDVD last month has recently released an alpha version of a utility to “back up” Blu-ray DVD’s, aptly named BackupBluray.

According to reports the tool has been successfully used and backed-up a Blu-ray DVD in more than one case, but at this point the it is not yet in a stable version. “File buffering and reading process was buggy… There is still some bugs that needs to be fixed. (Alpha version!)”, muslix64 stated Monday on the doom9 forum. BackupHDDVD was released to the public on SourceForge, and it would be likely that BackupBluray will show up there with source in the near future as well.

The first Blu-ray disc that muslix64 was able to decrypt was a film from Lion’s Gate called Lord of War. …

With the recent brouhaha over which format the adult film industry plans to adopt, one question is overlooked: who wants to see their porn in high definition? With high definition comes a high dose of reality. Porn actors and actresses are real people and real people have wrinkles, blemishes and razor burn, not so sexy features that some are wondering if viewers will really want to see close up and crystal clear.

The New York Times recently picked up the subject and talked to producers and actors and actresses in the industry. According to Stormy Daniels, actress, writer and director, “The biggest problem is razor burn.” She’s also quoted as saying “I’m not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD.”

With the new clarity of the …

SlipperyBrick originally brought you the story of the dual format DVD player that was the symbol of unity, happiness and sunny flower filled meadows in A/V land. Unfortunately, real life is not always so rosy.

It appears that the LB HB100 hybrid may be in trouble because it will not receive certification from the DVD Forum. That’s because the BH100 doesn’t really support HD DVD. Sure it will play the movie straight through if you put an HD DVD in the player, but you won’t be able to access the menu system.

The HD DVD menu system is called iHD. For those uber-geeks out there, iHD was developed by Microsoft and Toshiba for HD DVD. iHD is built on open standards like ECMAScript (JavaScript) and XML. …

In a repeat of the famous Betamax versus VHS, it appears that the adult film industry has chosen HD DVD over Blu-ray as their publishing medium of choice.

VHS eventually won over Betamax because the adult industry preferred it. In the late 70’s and early 80’s many video rental stores popped up around the country and they rented out mostly adult films in the VHS format. This sealed the fate of Betamax. It is thought that adult films is the main reason that the VCR gained ground in the first place.

Blu-ray was the adult industries preferred standard as of last year but recent trends have changed the minds of some studios. One factor is that there are many more HD DVD players in the form of Xbox 360’s already in …

LaCie announced the release of its new external Blu-ray capable DVD Burner. Named the “LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive,” it supports external connection via either USB or FireWire. LaCie made the announcement at CES 2007. The company is claiming that the d2 is one of the first of its kind.

The d2 is capable of writing 25GB of data to a normal Blu-ray disk and 50GB of data to a dual layer disk. There is also built in capabilities to burn DVD’s and CD’s. Burning speeds for Blu-ray are 2x, normal DVD at 8x, CD-R at 24x and CD-RW’s at 16x.

The unit is compatible with either Mac OS X or Windows XP. Support for Vista hasn’t been announced at this time.

The unit comes bundled with Easy Media Creator 8.2, Cineplayer 3.4 (HD playback) and Toast 7.1.1 …

Time Warner has announced plans to introduce a new DVD format that will encode content in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats. The format will be called Total HD.

Many experts believe that the confusion over formats has slowed the adoption of high definition DVD formats. Time Warner’s olive branch is another peace initiative by tech companies and content companies to bridge the gap between the two formats.

SlipperyBrick recently reported on the new LG player that can play both HD-DVD and Blu-ray. This development is similar to what happened in writable DVD formats for the PC. There were originally two competing formats with DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Thought the formats still exist many DVD writers can handle either format and also CD reading and writing.

Total HD will turn the tables and make sure …

Today LG Electronics announced that it is going to provide the worlds first DVD player to support playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Details are going to be announced next week at the 2007 CES in Las Vegas.

This offering is a much anticipated solution for both producers of DVD’s as well as consumers, and hopefully will end the confusion and decisions necessary on which high definition format to produce and which type of player to buy.

The Blu-ray format created by Sony is supported by Samsung, Hitachi, and JVC, while the HD DVD format that was created by Toshiba is supported by Microsoft, Intel adn NEC. Both formats provide increased data storage on the same disc dimensions to allow higher definition multimedia. Both formats are promising, and consumers and producers were left with the decision of which format to …