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Home Entertainment
ABI Research released a new report this week, stating that the Blu-ray market won't reach its full potential for another 12 to 18 months. According to their report, the delay is due to the high price of Blu-ray players and the lack of support for features like BD Live and Bonus View.
It will be 12 to 18 months before this market kicks into gear. Consumer electronics manufacturers need to introduce full-featured players and then get prices down to the $200 level. Until then, non-HDTV owners will certainly favor standard definition DVD players. A depressed economy in the United States could also lead HDTV and prospective HDTV owners to opt for upconverting standard players as they delay buying higher-ticket CE items. In addition, Blu-ray packaged media comes at a heavy premium over standard DVDs, although studios have brought prices down to the low $20-range for some titles.

Optical disc drive manufacturers have lowered their prices for computer BD-ROM drives in an effort to kick-start adoption in the PC market. But BD drives, priced three to four times higher than red laser drives and requiring an advanced graphics IC, will struggle for support in entry-level products.
ABI Research has hit the nail on the head with this report. If Blu-ray is to succeed, manufacturers need to stop messing with the specifications and bring player prices down to affordable levels. More information about ABI's new report can be found here. Add a comment

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Duplicators
Virtual Console sent out a press release this morning, announcing its new 60-port USB duplicator. With a maximum writing speed of 7MB/sec, Virtual Console claims that the duplicator can copy sixty 1GB USB flash drives in a little more than 2 minutes.

Virtual Console, LLC, a global provider of products for communications and media companies, unveils the latest addition to its flash memory duplicator product line by introducing the 60-port USB duplicator. The USB duplicator, which is the fastest product currently available on the market, offers 7MB/sec write speed on each of its 60 ports, simultaneously resulting in a 420MB per second total duplication throughput.

The USB duplicator, with its capacity to copy from 1 to 60 cards at once, compliments the already existing line of Compact Flash and SD/SDHC flash card duplicators. All products feature IP Multicast duplication, which allows connecting several units via IP Multicast protocol for large-volume duplication. Also, the “Smart Duplication” technology permits copying only actual files instead of creating a full binary copy of the flash drive.
Virtual Console's 60-port USB duplicator is available now for $7999. Full details can be found here. Add a comment

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Home Entertainment
Samsung Electronics recently launched its fourth-generation Blu-ray Disc player, the BD-P1500, in the Korean market. At the press event, Jun Dong-soo, the chief of Samsung’s AV business, stated that the global Blu-ray player market will grow at least 80% each year through 2012. Dong-soo also forecast that his company's Blu-ray product sales will exceed $1 billion by 2010.
Jun Dong-soo, chief of Samsung's digital audio-video business, said Monday that he expects the global market to grow at least 80 percent each year through 2012, with worldwide annual sales of 51 million players by that time.

Jun added that 5 million Blu-ray products were likely to sold this year, or three times more than last year, though he also characterized such an estimate as conservative.

"Our own Blu-ray product sales should increase to 400 billion won ($402 million) this year and surpass 1 trillion won ($1 billion) by 2010," he said in a press release, referring to Samsung's lineup.
If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment

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Home Entertainment
Toshiba announced today that its profit fell by 95% during the first quarter of 2008. While a drop in flash memory chip prices accounted for some of the lost profits, the majority of it was due to Toshiba shutting down its HD DVD business.
Japanese electronics maker Toshiba said Friday its net profit plummeted a staggering 95 percent in the January-March quarter due to losses related to its exit from the next-generation video HD DVD business.

Toshiba Corp.'s profit stood at 1.25 billion yen ($12 million), sharply down from 26.17 billion yen a year earlier.

"Our net profit sharply fell due to the end of HD DVD business," Toshiba spokeswoman Hiroko Mochida said, adding the one-time for pulling the plug on its HD DVD business cost about 48 billion yen ($461 million).
If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment

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Other
CDRLabs has taken a long overdue look at Samsung's LightScribe capable 20x DVD writer, the SH-S203N. While affordably priced, the drive features some of the fastest reading and writing speeds available. The SH-S203N is capable of 20x DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW and 12x DVD-RAM writing speeds and has a maximum DVD read speed of 16x. On top of that, it's one of the few drives to offer both 16x DVD+R DL and 12x DVD-R DL writing speeds.

In this review we'll take a look at some of the features found on the SH-S203N and see how it compares to some of the 20x DVD±RW drives from the competition. Does the SH-S203N have what it takes? You'll have to read the review to find out.

Samsung SH-S203N 20x DVD±RW/RAM
If you have any comments or questions about this review or the Samsung SH-S203N, please post them in the forum. Add a comment

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Software
CyberLink announced this week that Toshiba has chosen to bundle PowerCinema with their new consumer notebook PCs. Here's part of their press release:
CyberLink Corp. (5203.TW), innovative solutions provider for the connected digital lifestyle, announced today that its complete home entertainment solution, PowerCinema, was chosen by Toshiba Corporation to be included in its consumer notebook PCs in the United States. The combination offers the perfect digital media solution, allowing users to play videos and music on their new Toshiba notebooks through CyberLink's software.

CyberLink PowerCinema combines advanced video and music playback features with an intuitive, responsive 3D user interface. Power Cinema's support for a wide range of video formats—including ASF, WMV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2,DVR-MS,AVI,high-definition, MPEG-2-HD and WMV-HD—delivers uncompromised video playback performance. PowerCinema also supports MP3, WMA, and WAV audio file formats, turning notebook PCs into digital music players.
If you'd like to read more, CyberLink's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment

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Home Entertainment
Earlier this week, Sony Europe unveiled its new line of hard drive equipped DVD recorders. The flagship models RDR-HX1080 and RDR-HXD1090 feature a 500GB hard drive, integrated analog and DVB-T tuners and a HDD camcorder connection for direct digital dubbing. The players also feature X-Pict Story which allows the creation of enhanced slideshows with music.

New for 2008, HDD camcorder connection with all models allows direct digital dubbing from any Standard Definition Handycam Hard Disk Drive camcorder by Sony. There’s no quality loss during digital transfers via USB. Whole dubbing mode transfers everything that’s stored on the camcorder’s hard drive. Alternatively, incremental dubbing transfers only new footage that hasn’t already been recorded onto the Hard Disk Drive DVD recorder.

Also new this year, X-Pict Story is a powerful yet easy-to-use feature for creating your own personal slideshows. Using your remote, slide shows can be built up in moments from images stored on the recorder’s hard drive. A choice of transition effects adds extra sparkle to slide shows, along with your own selection of musical soundtrack from stored music files. The results can be viewed directly on your TV or burned to DVD for sharing or storing.
No word yet on pricing or availability. As we find out more, we'll let you know. In the mean time, Sony's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment

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