Archive for July, 2006

“MPEG LA, LLC expanded its call for patents essential to the implementation of the Blu-ray Disc standard to include the Hybrid Blu-ray Disc format and portions of the DVB-GEM specifications.” source: ‘CDRinfo’ 2006-07-28
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“Hitachi-LG Data Storage has developed the half-height Blu-ray disc drive GBW-H10N for built-in use in PCs that achieves 4x high-speed recording for the first time in the industry. Production is slated to begin in late July 2006.” source: ‘CDRinfo’ 2006-07-25
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“LG Electronics, the one-time DVD peace-maker, has scuttled plans for a combination Blu-ray/HD-DVD player that was planned for launch this fall. According to Bob Perry, VP of sales and channel marketing who outlined product plans at the company’s 2006 Summer Line Show this week in New York, LG remains part of the Blu-ray camp and will make a product announcement later in the year. source: ‘DittoIt’
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“Sony will begin selling an after-market�Blu-ray Disc drive next month that can be added to existing desktop computers The BWU-100A drive supports burning to single and dual-layer BD-R (single use) or BD-RE (rewriteable) discs. A single-layer disc can store up to 25GB of data or about 2 hours of high-definition video and the dual-layer disc can accommodate double these amounts.

Sony will ship the drive with CyberLink’s CyberLink BD Solution burning software. The drive can write at 2X Blu-ray Disc speed, so burning a full 25GB disc takes about 50 minutes, Sony said.

Additionally the drive can burn single layer 4.7GB DVD+/-R/+/-RW/RAM discs, 8.5GB DVD+R Double/Dual Layer Discs, and CDs.

The drive has an ATAPI interface and fits into the standard half-height drive bay that exists in most desktop PCs. Sony recommends minimum computing power of a Pentium III 800MHz or faster processor for data burning. For real-time video authoring and editing, a Pentium IV 1.6GHz or faster is recommended.

Sony cautions that additional software and hardware is required for playback of commercial movies on Blu-ray Disc (BD-ROM) but the company didn’t specify exactly what is required.

The drive will cost $750 in North America. Sony has not announced pricing or availability for other markets.” source: ‘Infoworld’ 2006-07-19
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“BD-RE/BD-AV Direct to Disc certification guarantees video recording of self-encoded stream formats (SESF) to Blu-ray discs with full resolution.” source: ‘CDRinfo’ 2006-07-18
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