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Toshiba America ConsumerProducts, L.L.C. ("Toshiba") announced today that its newest HD DVD player,the HD-A20, is now shipping to U.S. retailers. Priced at $499.99 (MSRP),the HD-A20 adds to Toshiba's second generation of HD DVD players and makes1080p resolution available at an attractive price point.Amazon already has the HD-A20 in stock and currently has it on sale for $419.99 with free shipping. If you'd like to read more, Toshiba's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment
The Player: With 1080p output capability, Toshiba's HD-A20 joins theexisting Toshiba HD DVD line-up which includes the entry level HD-A2 andthe top of the line, HD-XA2. This expanded line of products offers enhancedfunctionalities of the HD DVD format and is proof of Toshiba's commitmentto the smooth transition to the next stage in high definitionentertainment. Through an HDMI(TM) interface, DVD content can beupconverted to near HD picture quality. The HD-A2, HD-A20 and HD-XA2 areall backward compatible, so users can continue to enjoy their libraries ofcurrent DVD and CD software.
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Can anyone figure out what's going on here? I played a Blu-ray disc game that didn't work so well. It was the old Dragon's Lair title, remade for Blu-ray. You have to press the right button on the Blu-ray remote to make sure that your hero makes the right choice in this old cinematic game.While the Blu-ray Disc Association has said that first-gen players won't become obsolete, its obvious that not all titles will play on them, at least without a BD-Java update. If you'd like to read more, Dean's entire post can be found here. Add a comment
I put it into a Philips Blu-ray player and it didn't work at all. I put it into the Sony PlayStation 3 and it worked fine, but without any sound. Somebody smart tells me its a Java problem. Anyone know?
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Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ: SNIC), the leader in digital media software, today launched Scenarist BD Edition 4.3, an important upgrade to its revolutionary high-definition authoring system that makes the creation of Blu-ray Disc (BD) titles with advanced interactive content significantly more accessible and straightforward. Bringing speed and efficiency to all aspects of the BD title authoring workflow, Scenarist BD Edition includes new networked multiplexing capabilities, streamlined asset management capabilities, and the industry's best-of-breed still-image encoder for the highest-possible quality menus and HD slide shows. Scenarist BD Edition is also the world's first application to allow professional authors to enable BD-Java functions used to create advanced interactive programming with drag-and-drop simplicity and produce BD-Objects and JAR files through a wizard-based workflow. The simplified workflow is integrated into a full-featured Java editor to provide the ideal balance between ease and control and make Scenarist BD Edition the world's only comprehensive authoring system for creating Hollywood-class Blu-ray disc titles.Scenarist BD Edition 4.3 is available now, and is being demonstrated at NAB. More information is available on Sonic's website. Add a comment
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Designing menus for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles is very different from DVD-Video. Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is unique in that it returns the control of menu component creation to the professional graphic designer who can create menus for high-definition titles using the industry-standard Adobe Photoshop. By basing the menu-design process on familiar concepts such as using layer sets to group button elements, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 lets designers stay focused on the visual aspects of their work without worrying about the details of conversion for various output formats. Once a menu's background and button-state graphics are defined, the export from Photoshop of a compatible menu for one or more target formats is handled automatically via the Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 plug-in, saving hours of authoring work for each project. Offering flexible control and customization of dithering options for HDMV's RGBA palettes, Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 ensures that menu graphics are of the highest-image quality.Scenarist Designer PS 2.0 is available now for both the Mac and Windows platforms. More information can be found on Sonic's website. Add a comment
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Well, it looks like you can stop worrying about Corel locking up your next gen DVD player. The clever bods at the Doom9 and XBoxhacker forums have managed to patch the Xbox 360 HD DVD to to play any disk without authentication.People have already taken this hack a step further and have found a way to expose Volume ID's using an unpatched drive. While the AACS LA could, in theory, revoke the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive, Microsoft probably won't let that happen. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
HD DVD and BlueRay require that a disk authenticate itself with a Volume ID. A player can then be patched so it will not play any revoked disks.
What this hack does is bypass the check for a Volume ID you can stick any disk in the player and you're good to go, rendering useless any future revocations. It's still possible to lock out the actual hardware, but how long will it take the hackers to get around that?
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Toshiba Corporation announced today that on April 6, 2007, Toshiba and Toshiba America Consumer Products, L.L.C. filed a formal complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) against 17 manufacturers and importers of DVD players, DVD recorders and other DVD-related products, as a means to halt infringement of Toshiba's DVD patents. Toshiba's filing requests that the ITC prohibit the importation into the United States of DVD players, DVD recorders and other DVD-related products by the companies named in the complaint. In a related move, Toshiba also filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on the same day, seeking damages resulting from infringement of Toshiba's DVD patents by the same 17 companies.If you'd like to read more, Toshiba's entire press release can be found here. Add a comment
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While Fastmac's Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade won't ship for another 10 days, you can pre-order it from www.fastmac.com for a special introductory price of $799.95. More information can be found here. Add a comment
Fastmac today announced the first & only Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade for Apple's PowerBook, iBook & MacBook Pro computers. The new slimline, slot loading drive uses one of the fastest & most compatible Blu-ray mechanisms to provide up to 50 Gb of storage on 1 disk, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD & CD recordable media...
...Fastmac's slimline Blu-ray slot loading optical drive supports reading, writing and re-writing to single and dual layer Blu-ray media at 1x speeds. The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 8x speed in single layer and 2x speed in dual/ double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 4x speeds. The drive also supports DVD-RAM reading and writing at up to 5x speeds and standard CD-R and CD-RW burning at 8x speeds.
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Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ: SNIC), the leader in digital media software, today released a key set of comprehensive high-definition white papers that provide professional content creators and authoring facilities with the knowledge and expertise required to effectively and efficiently create rich HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles. Sonic's white papers cover all aspects of high-definition title production from format technical specifications and capabilities to extensive information on project planning, preparation, and execution. Essential tools for authoring houses initiating high-definition services, the white papers also serve to help firms with high-definition experience establish best practices and streamline their production efforts. The white papers are available direct from Sonic as a free download (www.sonic.com/HD/whitepapers).If you'd like to check them out, Sonic's white papers can be downloaded here. Otherwise, more information is available on their website. Add a comment
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But while abstract ratios and percentages like these have been bandied about for several months now, the Sony report goes one step further, providing the first public release of hard sales figures for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs from Nielsen VideoScan, the home entertainment industry's leading source for competitive sales data.Take note that these numbers do not include include discs sold at Wal-Mart or some online stores. Nevertheless, it does paint an interesting picture, especially when you see that some releases have sold less than 200 copies. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
Among the numbers revealed: as of March 18, VideoScan put the cumulative number of Blu-ray titles sold since the format's inception at 844,000 units, versus HD DVD at 708,600.
