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Asus Jumps into the HD-DVD Laptop Market

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, PC / Laptop, Portable Audio / Video,

Description Recently, Asus has been pushing very hard in the mobile computing market. Earlier this year they released a new Lamborghini line of laptops and now Asus has decided to jump on the HD-DVD bandwagon with its new W2P laptop. The 7.25lb monster sports a new Mobility Radeon X1700 with 256MB of dedicated GDDR3, an ever so important HD-DVD drive and and HDMI port for simple connection to your HDTV. To complete the multi-media package, the unit also comes with an analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC) tuner built in along with a Dolby certified sound system. The system also comes with the normal bells and whistles of todays high end laptops including Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi, Ethernet and a Modem. The system will likely come with Windows XP Media Center Edition standard, but with its specs, and new Radeon chip, this system would make for a great HD gaming system, and would be very well suited for XP Home or Professional. Pricing and availability have yet to be announced.

XBOX 360 to Support 1080p

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Microsoft, Movies, Video Games,

Some info from the Tokyo Game Show 2006 has stated that the XBOX 360 will receive 1080p support (1920x1080) through a dashboard update coming this year. Current games and even DVD’s will be up-converted to this extended resolution, but no native 1080p content has been announced yet. I would imagine that the update is namely due to the upcoming release of the HD-DVD add-on which supports 1080p media. It is also a good tactic to take away some of the hype from the PS3 being released in November, which will support 1080p. Now if they would only add an HDMI port to the thing, it’d be a true HD machine!

RFID Tagged Disks May Put a Halt to Piracy

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Movies, Rumors,

Anti-Piracy Movie makers are planning to begin to use RFID tags embedded within media to prevent playing of pirated disks. The technology will be applicable to DVD’s, HD-DVD’s and Blu-Ray disks. Essentially, the system will read the ID tag to ensure the disk is authentic, which will require the unit 1) To be able to read RFID tags and 2) To be able to connect to some database to retrieve valid ID tags. All of this is going to be, of course, at the consumer’s expense.

I have a few issues with this upcoming system. First of all, there will undoubtedly be ways to rip and re-burn the video into some generic form that will not require the player to scan the RFID. Otherwise, it will make recording home movies and such impossible, so it doesn’t totally rid the potential of pirated media. Additionally, when these new security measures come into affect, people with older systems that do not have the RFID capability will be forced to upgrade in order to view the new releases. At $500 a pop for the low-end Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players today, I find it obscene to expect consumers to purchase a new device to incorporate new anti-piracy technology that likely will not be totally effective. Unless U-Tech, IPICO or the movie makers decide to upgrade consumers current equipment for free, I don’t think many people will find this a great idea.

Toshiba Reveals HD-A2 and HD-XA2 HD DVD Players

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Movies,

Toshiba has announced the release of their HD-A2 and HD-XA2 HD DVD players. Both output HD DVD content through the HDMI interface in 720p or 1080i. The HD-A2 incorporates a 297MHz / 12 bit Video DAC with high-quality, 4x oversampling, while the HD-XA2 also features 1.3. HDMI for 36-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depth.
Both models come with picture setting functions that allow you to optimize picture quality with settings for color, contrast, brightness, edge enhancement, and noise blocker. Set to be released in October, the HD-A2 carries a MSRP of $499.99. For last minute Santas, the release of the high end HD-XA2 will follow in December at a MSRP of $999.99.

LG Announces New Blu-Ray Devices

Posted by Brian Viele Categories: HDTV, Movies, PC / Laptop, Peripherals,

LG has launched three cute new models of Blu-Ray devices including a Player, fully functional Blu-Ray PC and a PC recording drive.

The Full HD Blu-Ray player will perfectly compliment their recently released line of LCD panel displays that support full 1080p at sizes up 55 inches.

The LG XPION X600 desktop PC will include a Super Multi Blue Blu-Ray writer (GBW-H10N) and boasts a Pentium D945 3.4GHz processor, a 320GB hard disk, 1GB of DDR2 memory and an NVidia GeForce 7900GT for smooth full HD playback. The writer, which will also be sold separately, will burn up to 25GB and be the first drive to support 4x Blu-Ray recording to Blu-Ray recordable disks and 2x to rewritable media.

No price or release has been disclosed, but I expect an expensive price point, and as for a release date, I predict by the end of the year.

HD DVD 2.0 Firmware Ready For Release

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Movies, Software,

HD DVD firmware is scheduled to be moving to version 2.0 sometime today. If you have your HD DVD player connected to the Internet, be prepared for the automatic download that will bring you support f or 24-bit/96kHz discrete audio with TrueHD 5.1 sound, something that Blu-Ray players still lack. We must say, we are impressed with the speed at which features are being added to the HD DVD players, as the 2.0 firmware upgrade is the fourth one to be pushed out in just as many months. Of course, there is also something to be said for launching a product that is feature-complete to begin with, but we won’t go there.

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