MCE bringing 6x Blu-ray burners to Macs
MCE Technologies has announced it is bringing a 6x Blu-ray burner to Macs that can playback DVDs at 16x as well as read both Blu-ray and HD DVD.
The drive also has LightScribe compatibility and will allow professionals to author Blu-ray movies using Adobe Premier Pro CS3’s Encore software. Non-professionals can use Roxio’s Toast 9 Titanium (with the Toast HD/BD plug-in) to author more simple BD movies.
The bare drive is meant for Mac Pro or Power Mac G4/G5 running Mac OS X 10.4 or higher and can only use the HD DVD and Blu-ray playback if using Windows XP/Vista through a Boot Camp partition.
The drive will retail for $500 USD with an external model selling for $750 USD.
According to the specs, the new “Blu-ray drive works with all DVD and CD media, and writes to both 25 GB and 50 GB BD-R and BD-RE (rewritable) Blu-ray disks. Speed specs for the new drive are 6X for 25 GB BD-R, 4X to 50 GB BD-R and 16X to DVD±R. It also burns at 4X speeds to DVD±R DL, 5X to DVD-RAM and 40X to CD-R media, among others.”
For an extra $100 USD, MCE will bundle the drive with an installation package, software for Windows Boot Camp playback of both Blu-ray and HD-DVD and Toast 9 with the plugin. For $1300 MCE will ship the drive with the Boot Camp package, Toast, and Adobe Premier Pro CS3 with Encore.
Samsung invests over $500 million to boost OLED production
Samsung SDI said today that it will be spending over $500 million USD to boost production of next-generation OLED displays to six times its current level by mid-2009.
This latest move comes as panel makers try to get bigger shares of the growing market for OLED displays, which offer better contrast ratio, slimmer designs and better energy efficiency than current LCD or plasma displays.
Currently, however, production costs are still high, too high to make OLED TVs available to the masses.
Samsung currently produces small-sized AM-OLED screens used in watches and other handheld devices and there was no word on whether this large new investment will be to increase production of small OLED screens or for all OLED production including TVs.
Using 2-inch screens as a basis, the new investment should raise capacity from 1.5 million units a month to over 9 million by mid-2009.
Buffalo introduces pair of 8x Blu-ray burners
Buffalo Technology announced yesterday a pair of new Blu-ray burners, one external and one internal which both offer the fastest speeds available currently, 8x.
The MediaStation 8x External Blu-ray Drive connects via a USB 2.0 port or through a faster eSATA interface while the MediaStation 8x Internal Blu-ray Writer connects via standard SATA. There are no added drivers necessary for your system to read the drives and both can read and write CDs, DVDs, and BD-R/RE.
Both drives ship with CyberLink suite software which allows for HD playback, Blu-ray capture, editing and authoring.
Both drives will be available within the next week and are priced $350 USD for the internal and $400 USD for the external, respectively.
National Lampoon gets VOD deal
National Lampoon has announced that will offer up to 12 of its films via VOD (video-on-demand) through ReelTime Rentals over the next year.
The initial titles will be National Lampoon Presents Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo and National Lampoon Presents One, Two, Many but the contract calls for up to 12 per year.
“Having ReelTime Network as VOD partner gives Lampoon fans another convenient platform on which to watch our movies and ensures our titles will be seen throughout America,” added Tom Daniels, president of worldwide distribution for National Lampoon.
ReelTime offers 750 movies currently including some big titles such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl , National Treasure, Glory and Groundhogs Day.
This is the largest deal the company has secured since it made a deal with Disney in June to provide VOD version of movies from Disney-Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films.
CBS and Disney added to Netflix streaming service
Netflix has made agreements with both Disney and CBS to have content from both studios streamed on its Instant Watch service.
A few of the notable shows from the deals are NCIS, Numb3rs , Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, The Suite Life on Deck and the entire CSI franchise.
Netflix currently has 12,000 titles in their streaming inventory and says the new agreements will add “meaningfully” to that number.
“We are thrilled to enter into these relationships with CBS and Disney Channel and build upon their innovative distribution strategies,” added Robert Kyncl, VP of content acquisition for Netflix in a statement.
Netflix says there will be access to 500 Disney episodes and 350 CBS episodes to start.
Sony and Discovery team up for Blu-ray promotion
Sony and Discovery Communications have announced a new Blu-ray-based promotion in which all buyers of Sony standalone Blu-ray players will receive a free, exclusive Blu-ray title from Discovery.
The promotion will begin on October 5th and is for “a limited time only.” Over 11,000 retailers are paricipating in the promotion including Sears, Circuit City and Sony Style, and when purchasing a Sony standalone you will be given a coupon redeemable for the Discovery BD. The disc will have episodes of Fearless Planet and Sunrise Earth which are nomally seen on Discovery’s HD Theater network.
To promote the partnership, in-store trailers for Discovery on Blu-ray Disc will be played on Sony Bravia LCD TVs at retailer locations.
“Discovery has emerged as the gold standard among high-definition television programmers,” said Patrick Gates, president and general manager of Discovery commerce. “We could think of no better partner than Sony Electronics to help showcase our spectacular adventure and nature programming to Blu-ray customers.”
Chris Fawcett, VP of marketing for Sony, added, “The Blu-ray Disc format unlocks the true potential of today’s high-definition TVs with stunning full HD experience. Discovery’s high-quality programs are a tailor-made showcase for Blu-ray Disc and a great first experience for a consumer new to the format.”
Sony launches third-generation internal 8x Blu-ray writer
Sony has announced the launch of its BWU-300S internal desktop Blu-ray drive which will begin Sony’s third generation of internal Blu-ray drives.
The company says the drive will burn single and dual layer BD-R or BD-RE at fast 8x speeds, allowing users to fill up each layer (25GB) in 15 minutes. As an added bonus, the drive will ship with a free BD copy of Men In Black.
DVDs can be burnt at the standard 16x speed and CDs can be burnt at 48x speeds.
The drive has a SATA interface and will be the standard 5.25-inch form. For the drive to work you will need a system running Windows XP or Vista.
Also included with the drive is CyberLink suite which will allow users to author BD as well as capture, edit and view the content.
Sony says the drive will begin shipping in October and will have a MSRP of $400.
Firefox Mobile coming soon?
Mozilla has announced that they will be bringing Firefox Mobile to handsets worldwide by 2010 but the alpha testing may come as soon as the end of this year.
There was not much mentioned in terms of details, but Firefox Mobile may have a hard time fighting established mobile browsers such as Opera Mini and Mobile Safari.
In his blog, Mitchell Baker of Mozilla Europe added the following: “I saw one press article wondering if including “have an effective product in the mobile space” in our 2010 goals means that we won’t ship something interesting until 2010. That is not the case at all. We will ship well before then. The intent of this goal was to say: in 2010 when we look at where we are, it should be screamingly obvious that we’ve done this. That means releasing a good product much sooner, seeing good results and acceptance, and seeing those results grow over time.
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I have discussed Firefox Mobile (codenamed Fennec) in the past saying that we should see an Alpha pre-version hopefully before the end of the year if it’s ready.“
PS3 firmware update 2.40 coming tomorrow
Sony has announced the upcoming PlayStation 3 firmware update, version 2.40 which will hit tomorrow and will give gamers a few of their most requested features, in-game XMB (XrossMediaBar) and “trophies” for online gaming.
The in-game XMB will allow users to access the PS3 menu during gameplay by hitting the PS button on the controller. Gamers can then check if any of their friends are online, as well as change settings or send messages without having to quit playback. Less notably, the Friends list will double to allow 100 friends which should be welcomed by those who are avid PSN users.
The new update will also bring “trophies to recognize players’ achievements in the online arena.” Many games will eventually have gold, silver and bronze trophies, or platinum if you can get all three.
Sony says the first games to have trophy support are BUZZ! Quiz TV, LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm™ Pacific Rift, NBA 09, PAIN, PixelJunk Eden, Resistance 2, SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation and Warhawk.
Nokia and Warner sign music deal
Nokia has announced they have signed a deal with Warner Music Group to make Warner music available through the phone maker’s “Comes With Music” service as well as the Nokia music store.
“Comes With Music” is different from most other phone maker content services in that it allows users to keep all the music they have downloaded. It as unlimited subscription based model that costs $20 USD per month.
“(Comes With Music) is the first global initiative to fundamentally align the interests of music companies with telecommunications companies,” said Edgar Bronfman, Warner Music Group Chief Executive.
Nokia has already struck similar deals with Universal and Sony BMG meaning the three large labels will have their catalogs available on the service when it launches in the Q3 this year.
Nokia, the world’s largest phone maker, says it sold 146 million music-enabled phones last year. The current market for digital music downloads is $2.9 billion USD.
