Apparently Sony has heard the cries of those who invested (heavily) in their new BWU-100A PC Blu-Ray recorder drive. They will be releasing a free software update for the included Cyberlink PowerDVD software that will enable the playback of commercial Blu-Ray discs. Now that $750 price point is looking pretty sweet for those of us Home Theater PC enthusiasts! Of course, we still need to go out and buy an HDCP capable video card if you want a true digital output. The next piece of the puzzle to perfect will be how to get the best audio from these discs out to your A/V receiver. If you have a good sound card with 7.1 channel analog outputs, you probably have what you need, but if you want to keep it digital via HDMI, I am not sure there is a solution for you…yet. If you know of one, please do not hesitate to leave it in a comment!

Sony to provide playback solution for BWU-100A PC drive

I was browsing at my local Best Buy this evening, and lo and behold, what did I find? One Sony BWU-100A Blu-Ray Internal 8x burner! And for the low low price of $749. Actually, while I say that in jest, I find it to be not a terrible price considering: A) The Samsung BDP-1000 player in the next section over costs $1000 and can only play Blu-Ray discs, and B) That as a computer storage device capable of 50GB backups, that price compares quite favorably with tape drives that can cost thousands of dollars. I was very tempted to pick one up, but I remember picking up my first DVD burner for $349. A year later they cost $80, so I feel like I should learn my lesson. Still, it was tempting, and also very nice to see on the shelf.

Wanna watch some BD movies on the go on a 1920 x 1200 screen? How about a nice Sony laptop with a BD player built in? You can even connect it to your home theater with the laptop’s HDMI output. The VAIO AR20 series has a 17″ screen, Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 processor at 2GHz, and 2GB of RAM.

Somehow, I get this inkling little feeling in the back of my mind, that this laptop will be expensive. Hmm, I guess I don’t have to be a fortune-teller to predict that!

Sony launches HD laptop with Blu-ray

Will Pioneer release the Holy Grail of next generation optical formats? According to our friends at both HDBeat and Engadget, Pioneer has stated at a conference in Berlin that they are working on the BDR-103 combo drive. Very few details are available, but even if this thing were to retail at $1000 and assuming you can play prerecorded movies with it, the drive will be a bargain for HTPC users everwhere. Slap this baby in an HTPC with one of those new HDMI video cards and you just might have the most incredible HD rig of all time. You would conceivably be able to back up all of your HDTV recordings without reencoding them, not to mention store all of your photos or other media files on a lot less discs. Hopefully more info will be out there soon!

Engadget Link

HDBeat Link

UPDATE: It seems as if this oh-so-tantalizing rumor was just that. HDBeat has updated their blog to say that Pioneer is NOT working on a hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Drive. Oh the humanity of it all.

Mr. Putman took a look at DVDO’s VP30 video scaler, Optoma’s HD3000 video scaler, and OPPO’s DV-970H scaling DVD player.

I personally haven’t seen any of these things in action. Though I see the benefit of a scaler if it does a better or faster job than your TV can. It would have been nice to see the Anthem AVM50 or Statement D2 included in this comparison as well. Those are pre/pros that also do scaling.

Anyway, what about these three? What did Mr. Putman think? He liked the Optoma HD3000 and DVDO VP30, to state it simply. He says that either one “will do a fine job as part of a 720p-resolution home theater system, while the HD3000 is a better choice for a 1080p system”.

HDTVexpert — Product Review: Video Scalers

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

Sometimes I think it would be really nice if I lived in a world where all the HD programming I want could be grabbed over the air (OTA). Unfortunately, I live in an area, in a country actually, where OTA HDTV is not all that common.

Why? Well then solutions like home-made PVR’s would become available to me as an option. And I could use OTA tuner cards like this one from ATI:

The TV Wonder 650 is based on the Theater 650 chip, including a “motion-adaptive 3D comb filter” as well as noise reduction, and touts the ability to work in Vista systems, even though it’s still questionable whether the rest of your system will. Aside from recording over the air HDTV signals in MPEG-2, DivX, H.264, MPEG-4, and WMV9, the card also sports “Avivo image quality enhancements” for those less stunning SD broadcasts. ATI gives you the ability to record / watch two shows simultaneously via the MulTView functionality (if you own two cards, of course), and touts the nifty ThruView technology that displays content in a translucent box as to keep from interfering with all your (presumably) important background tasks.

I’m sure a lot of people in big cities will be taking a look at this solution. Too bad I don’t have this opportunity.

ATI releases TV Wonder 650 OTA HDTV tuner card