Memorex has become the first major electronics producer to sell a Blu-ray player at under $300 USD at launch, setting the new milestone with its MVBD-2510 priced at $270 USD.
The player does however lack Profile 2.0 (BD-Live) but for the average user who does not care about the ability to download extras from the Internet, the player is a great deal for the price and Profile 1.1 is fine. The player has HDMI out and support for Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and raw bitstream audio. It will also play 1080p24p natively without the need for pulldown that degrades quality.
The player is set to ship in November and should be on retail shelves by late November/early December.
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According to investigations by AppleInsider, Apple Canada may begin punishing Rogers for its decision to sell overpriced iPhone 3G data plans.
As a way to punish Rogers, Apple will not sell the iPhone at its own retail stores and will instead show them off only as demo units. By doing so, customers will have no choice but to visit a Rogers store to buy the mobile phone. Many would-be customers have already said they will not be buying from Rogers.
Apple only has a small Canadian retail presence but a ban would certainly hurt supply in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, and Vancouver where stores are popular.
The carrier has been drawing criticism from the press and from would-be customers, all of which cite the huge discrepancy in prices compared to iPhone 3G data plans in the UK and the US.
For $75 CAD, Rogers’ users get a third fewer minutes per month, only 750MB of data, and only 75 outbound messages compared to AT&T’s 200 and unlimited data. Both plans are priced about the same.
A virtual petition continues to gain momentum, now with over 43,000 signatures, with users that refuse to purchase an iPhone from Rogers.
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Sony and four other Japanese companies have announced that they will be teaming up to develop key technologies for large sized OLED panels to be used in mass produced TVs in the future.
OLED displays are being paraded as a promising next-generation flat display, but so far the only commercial release is Sony’s 11-inch XEL-1, which is too small and too expensive to be mass produced.
These new panels offer many advantages over plasma and LCD displays, including richer blacks, slimmer sizes, better energy efficiency, and higher static and dynamic contrast ratios.
The other firms involved in the new joint venture are Toshiba, Matsushita (maker of Panasonic), Idemitsu Kosan and Sumitomo Chemical. The entire project was initiated by the Japanese government.
More details of the project, which is aimed at establishing technologies for HD OLED displays with sizes of over 40-inches, will be announced soon, added the companies.
