Plextor has announced a BD (Blu-ray Disc) drive for the PC. It’s the model PX-B900A and it’ll be available in October. It’ll have an MSRP of $999.99 and come bundled with a BD-RE disc, Ulead VideoStudio 10, and InterVideo WinDVD BD. (Hm, wasn’t InterVideo just bought by Corel? I only remember that because Corel is a former employer.)

Supposedly distributors, retailers, and consumers have been “clamoring” for a Plextor brand Blu-ray drive. It does more than just BD, however. “The PX-B900A drive delivers fast recording speeds of 2X BD-R/RE (9 MBytes/sec transfer rate) on single layer and double-layer media. For DVD, the driver delivers 8X DVDR on single-layer media, 4X DVD+/-R on Double-Layer and Dual-Layer (DL) media, and 5X DVD-RAM. The drive also supports 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 6X max DVD-ROM, 24X CD-R, 16X CD-RW, and 32X CD-ROM. The PX-B900A drive features an 8MB data buffer.”

Plextor Announces Blu-ray Disc Drive for North American Market

Ultimate AV has a review of Toshiba’s TheaterWide 62HM196 HDTV. It’s a rear-projection 1080p DLP design. This set retails for $2,999,99. Or about $48 for each of its 62 diagonal inches. The DMD actually has 960 x 1080 pixels, and it produces the full 1920 x 1080 resolution by offsettingthose pixels. This is a technique HP coined “wobulation”.

I know the question you’re all thinking. This set will not accept 1080p on its HDMI inputs. But this should only be a concern for you if you want to get into 1080p gaming on a PS3, or somesuch. If you will only use this set for mmovies, then you needn’t worry. HD DVD and BD movies are all currently 1080p/24, converted to 1080i, then to 1080p in the television. So for 1080p/24 content, this set will produce a picture just as good as one that does accept 1080p. But what else can this set do?

For that, you’ll have to wait a bit more! Mr. Norton was quite happy with the performance of this set. For the full review, check out the Ultimate AV site, link below.

Toshiba TheaterWide 62HM196 1080p Rear Projection DLP HDTV

HDTV is expensive. It’s true. Because of HDTV, the average selling price of televisions has gone up. HDTV’s have a lot more technology in them than normal SD televisions. That whole high-resolution thing and all.

At the same time, it’s true that the prices of HDTV televisions has come down over time. And they will continue to do so.

TVPredictions.com has a list of five televisions, each of which sells for less than $1000. That’s still not close to the price of many SD televisions, but it is something. For those of you on a budget, you can look for HD televisions from the likes of Philips, Samsung, Toshiba, and Westinghouse.

Five HDTVs For Under $1,000!

I mentioned dual-layer BD discs just the other day. Now Sony has something to say about it.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release at least two Blu-ray Disc titles on higher-capacity 50GB discs this year, worldwide president Ben Feingold said last week.

Declining to specify titles or the kinds of extra features the 50GB will carry, Feingold said, “All of the fun stuff is going to come, but we need to get everyone comfortable [with the format]. A lot of it will be spectacular.”

Ah well. Not so much news then. Just a bit. But it’s something to wait for.

Sony plans 50GB Blu-ray releases

One of, if not the, major knocks against BD so far has been the fact that the movies have been MPEG2 encoded and that 25GB of space doesn’t seem to be enough to hold an MPEG2 movie encoded at a good quality. People seem to be of the opinion that the MPEG4 or VC-1 codecs should be used, because the movies would take up a lot less space on the disc, allowing the quality to be cranked. That variable will be taken out of the equation, if this post from Home Theater Spot is to be believed.

In it, the author says that he talked to Warner, and that Warner confirmed that, of their second wave of BD titles, only Full Metal Jacket will use MPEG2 encoding. Lethal Weapon, Blazing Saddles, and Firewall will all be encoded using VC-1. If true, this is very interesting. I’d be really curious to see what Firewall looks like on an HD DVD player versus a corrected Samsung player.

Hmmmm….

Warner confirms VC1 for Blu-ray

Some folks over at the Blu-ray Forum have done some investigating, and have found what will probably be the first known instance of a dual-layer pre-recorded BD movie disc to go on sale. We’ve been waiting for this for a while, to help realize the format’s full potential.

So what is this dual-layer BD? A box set of the anime show AIR. Only available in Japan. In November.

So yeah, I know. It’s not like it’s a major blockbuster, and it’s not like it’s going to go on sale in North America, and it’s not like it’s coming out anytime soon. But still, it’s something.

I think.

Dual layer BR movies in JP

Apple has released a bunch of HD movie trailers. The movie I’m looking forward to the most is The Protector, a martial arts film. But there are more. Hilary Swank plays a former Christian missionary in The Reaping while Sarah Michelle Gellar plays in the supernatural thriller The Return. Haven looks like a totally forgettable ensemble film, and Lucky You looks like a forgettable poker film.

That’s not all! There’s also the latest DiCaprio flick, The Departed, a film about organized crime. And last but not least there another sequel, Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.

Sim2, one of the high quality video projector manufacturers, has started shipping their HT3000 projector, a 1080p single chip DLP projector. The HT3000 features Sim2’s DarkChip technology, as well as user-customizable aspect ratios. The best part? The HT3000 works with the new Sim2 anamorphic Home Cinema Scope lenses for full resolution 2.35:1 aspect ratios. At nearly $17,000 this projector is not for those on a tight budget.

via eCoustics

Sim2’s Website

The IFA Convention is coming to Berlin in a week or so, and rumours are spreading like wildfire about what may be announced. HDBeat and HD Digest both think that Fox will be announcing BD titles. As the last major studio not to have announced a slate of BD titles, this would be welcome news.

HD Digest also goes on to suggest that Sony will reveal significant plans for the launch of the PS3. Let me be the first to say that there’s no way Sony will do anything of the sort. If Sony’s going to release anything of significance about the PS3 anytime soon, it’ll be at the Tokyo Game Show running September 22 - 24. The European game show in Leipzig Germany is the biggest European game show, and it’s being held now. And Sony hasn’t announced anything there, so why would they give PS3 news at the IFA Convention?

The BDA is supposed to be making some announcements. My guess is that Pioneer will announce a ship date and price for their BD player.

Stay tuned for more as the news develops.

Fox to Announce First Blu-ray Releases?

I know I’ve quickly mentioned this projector already in the QuickNews section, but it really deserves more than that. So what does the Mitsubishi HC5000 have? Let’s see.

• 3LCD design
• 1080p resolution
• 1080p input
• dynamic iris
• 750 lumens (Low Mode) 1000 lumens (High Mode)
• MSRP: $4495
• available in October

Brian points out in his post (link below) that this projector will compete directly against Sony’s forthcoming VPL-VW50 (Pearl) SXRD projector, rumoured to sell at $4999.

The 720p 3LCD projectors from Panasonic, Sanyo, and Sony have been doing very well in the marketplace, offering a lot of bang for the buck. Now we’re seeing 1080p designs, which is very encouraging. Lots of people say you don’t really need 1080p, but at the screen sizes that front projectors are used with, you’ll definitely see the benefit.

Mitsubishi HC5000, 1080p Front Projector
Mitsubishi HC5000 Product Page

Digital Projection International’s TITAN 1080p-250 marks the company’s first native 1920 x 1080 resolution 3-chip DLP display exclusively created for home cinemas. This thing puts out 2000 ANSI lumens and has a 5000:1 contrast ratio.

The 1080p-250 also features enhanced seven-point color correction, producing the widest color space of any projection system available to the Home Cinema market. User-selectable Xenon Color Mode, and super-accurate user control over the projector’s colorimetry, assures accurate white point definition with extensive control over gamma, color and grayscale tracking. All TITAN projectors also benefit from DPI’s next generation signal processing electronics, which deliver best-in-class de-interlacing and motion adaptive interpolation for all video and HD sources.

It looks like DPI has put a lot of emphasis on picture quality. In a world where great emphasis is placed on the wow factor, it’s good to see that some manufacturers work on getting the picture right.

Digital Projection International Introduces First 3-Chip Native 1080p Home Cinema Projector