Smallville is a title from Warner Brothers that has only been released on HD DVD so far. That title and other HD DVD only holdouts will be making their way to Blu-ray in 2007. That’s from the 12/8/06 “My Two Cents” posting at The Digital Bits.

And the 12/11/06 column talks about the fact that both Fox and Disney aren’t going to be releasing HD DVD anytime soon. They are both firmly committed to the BD format. Disney will announce some major title news at CES in 2007.

Warner to catch up with BD titles in 07

Several computer manufacturers have voiced support for the Blu-ray format, and Dell is one of them. To prove it, they’re releasing a laptop with an included BD drive. The XPS M1710 is a Media Center laptop with a 1920 x 1200 resolution.

It doesn’t come without a cost, however. The 2GB RAM laptop with 100GB HDD costs $4,249.

The big thing, though, is that there’s no HDMI output. That’s a shame - how are you supposed to hook up the laptop to a high-def display?

First Look: Dell XPS M1710 with Blu-ray

So China has tried to steal the lime lite of HD DVD and Blu-Ray by reintroducing the previously failed EVD specification. So what do we know from the press release and rumors?

- Some 20 manufacturers will be making 54 players by 2008
- Uses a red laser (like HD DVD)
- Uses a new codec that is supposedly as or more efficient than MPEG4 (haven’t heard a comparison to VC-1)

What we don’t know.

- How many U.S. will sign on (so far zero)
- How much capacity (assuming if similar to HD DVD ~25-30Gig)?
- What audio codecs will it support?
- Will these devices use HDMI/HDCP?
- Will EVD support new audio formats (DTS-HD, DD+)? I don’t think so.

This is a scam. These players are for China only. There is no US content on board. No codec support. This is a chinese player to play chinese content. This may work well in China and maybe around asia. That may not be a bad thing with 3 billion of the worlds 5 billion people concentrated right in the asian area.

So what does this mean to you and me?

Nothing. Now go watch a Blu-ray movie.

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Sony finally made their BD player available for sale here in North America (for $999), and now here’s word that they’re starting to sell a Blu-ray recorder in Japan. Their BDZ-V9 BD recorder sells for the equivalent of about $2600. It can record on single-layer BD-R/RE discs only, which is a disappointment. If the recorder made full use of the BD format, it could record 50GB of data per disc, not just 25GB. The machine does include a 500GB hard disc for PVR use, however, so all is not lost.

The recorder can simultaneously record two programs, which is a must in my view for any PVR.

The player also has a lot of other features including iLink support. But I can’t get past the pricetag. Who would want to pay $2600 for a machine like this? I know I definitely wouldn’t. Start talking at the $1000 price point, and then maybe I’ll listen. (I also think most BD players are overpriced.)

Sony Blu-ray Recorder Hit Shops in Japan

HD Guru has what I think is the first ever review of Sony’s new BDP-S1 Blu-ray Disc (BD) player.

Note that Sony’s brand-new BD player cannot play CD’s, DVD-Audio discs, or SACD titles, among others. So this player doesn’t have the be-all and end-all of format choices.

Plus, this is a slow player. From the off state, it took 1m23sec to turn it on, put in a disc, and get the movie playing. And after hitting a button on the remote, it took 2 to 3 seconds for the player to respond.

But after all these problems, at least the image quality is excellent. HD Guru could find nothing bad to say about that.

After all this, I have to wonder if a PS3 at half the price would be a better deal…

EXCLUSIVE: First Review Of The Sony BDP-S1 Blu-Ray Player

Sony is finally shipping their BD player! I apologize that I’m reporting on this a couple days late. But better nate than lever, they always say.

Sony is shipping their BDP-S1 BD player to retailers across the US. The BD player is available for an MSRP of $999. This is inline with what the Samsung originally sold for, and what the Philips player sells for.

Of course the BD player puts out 1080p over an HDMI output, but many questions remain. We know it does 1080p/24, unlike the PS3. But what about the audio formats? What does it support there? Dolby TrueHD? DTS HD Master? And does it still not support CD, or have they added that?

Sony Ships Blu-ray Player

TWICE is reporting that the Blu-ray consortium has announced the beginning of the holiday season advertising campaign.

Print, online, and TV ads are all part of the effort led by ad agency SicolaMartin.

The HD TV commericals will feature a lot of movie clips from a broad array of movie studios, to show off the wide industry support for Blu-ray. Of the major studios, only Universal hasn’t announced support for Blu-ray.

I haven’t seen any Blu-ray commerials myself. Actually, I’ve hardly seen any HD commercials at all. Though I admit that might be because I only watch about 4 hours of TV HD programming a week.

Blu-ray Ad Campaign Begins

After reading that the Sony BDP-S1 will be available December 4th, and that a few lucky people have actually found them placed early in their local Best Buy stores, I headed out in search of one myself. This year, between Black Friday and Christmas, it is a veritable scavenger hunt every time I head to one of the electronics or big retail chain stores. Will I somehow find a Playstation 3? A Wii? Perhaps a Tickle-Me-Elmo TMX for my daughter? Now, I was in search of an even more difficult to find item — the type that gets placed accidentally before it is supposed to be. I have gotten lucky with a few DVDs in the past, but never a highly anticipated piece of gear like the BDP-S1. Alas, there would be no good fortune for the Sony Blu-Ray player, nor any of the other hard-to-find items mentioned above. The search continues!

Tonight I’m finally going to go see the latest bond film, Casino Royale. (Really!) Everyone tells me that it’s really good. So of course my expectations are way too high and I won’t enjoy it nearly as much as I otherwise would have. Sheesh. When watching a film, expectations are the thing. Like Aeon Flux. I actually liked that movie because my expectations were so low. At any rate, I’m going to see the movie anyway and I think I’ll like it.

While I’m watching, I’ll also be looking for Sony’s BD player, which is in the movie and is actually used by Bond. James Bond.

Speaking of which, Sony’s Blu-ray player is rumoured to actually be shipping.

Sony’s Blu-ray player bows in Bond

So if you were to buy a BD player today, three of your options would be the $1300 Panasonic, the $1000 Samsung (though it can be had for much cheaper), and the $500 PS3. Sound & Vision magazine took a look at these three BD players, though I wonder why they didn’t include the Philips player, which is also currently available.

Maybe I should be writing this article over at PS3Blog.net. Why? Because the reviewer’s favourite BD player was the cheapest of them all - the PS3. Why?

This machine’s picture and sound quality were nothing short of stunning, and its HDMI 1.3 connection and built-in Dolby TrueHD decoding give it a layer of future-proofing that the other players currently lack. I also appreciated its multichannel Super Audio CD playback and 60-GB hard disk for storing compressed music files. And even though I don’t have much use for the PS3’s gaming capabilities, I definitely got a kick out of Resistance: Fall of Man. The PS3’s $600 price — several hundred less than the others — also goes a long way toward making it the Blu-ray Disc player of choice.

Yup, that’s what I have - a PS3! I use it as a BD player when I have a BD movie to watch (which is still not that often). But I can contest that it makes a really good BD player.

Also of note in the review is this:

A more interesting outcome was the mild “jaggies” that I noted when watching M:I III on HD DVD — a video artifact caused by the Sony projector’s deinterlacing of the Toshiba HD DVD player’s 1080i-format output. Not all TVs will have this problem, but it confirmed for me the advantage of using a true 1080p source like Blu-ray (Toshiba’s second-generation HD DVD player will feature 1080p output over HDMI, which should bring it up to speed with the players tested here).

Shootout: 3 Blu-ray Disc Players

Ultimate AV’s Thomas J. Norton took a sneak peek at the Panasonic DMP-BD10 BD disc player. This is Panasonic’s BD player, and it’ll retail for $1300. It does of course have an HDMI output.

The Panasonic and the Philips are the two BD players to follow up on the first player on the market, the Samsung. Mr. Norton says that it’s the first BD player that deserves a rave review. (He also notes that the problem with BD (the format) previously was not the codec - MPEG2, MPEG4, and VC1 all perform admirably.)

The Panasonic player does a good job upconverting standard DVD’s. It’s operation is also “notably less clunky” than other HD players Mr. Norton has tested. It puts out 1080i or 1080p/60, but not 1080p/24.

Panasonic promises a firmware update for a big weakness the player has - its inability to decode Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master soundtracks. They would be decoded to digital PCM, and put out on the HDMI 1.1 connection. Your receiver would have to be able to handle that, of course.

This player also plays back CD’s and DVD-Audio’s. For more on the player, read the sneak peek below, but you’ll also have to wait for the full review.

Panasonic DMP-BD10 Blu-ray Disc Player