EU looking at Bluray

Apparently both the groups backing Bluray and HD-DVD are being put under the European Commission spot light.

The EU seems to have a problem with terms the groups are demanding from licensees.

Will the EU decide to force one of the players out of the game?

engadget

Blu-ray Disc Patents Updated to Include Hybrid Disc and DVB-GEM

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.

Blu-ray's hybrid disc could hold both high and standard definition versions of a movie on a single disc.

Hybrid discs could give the chance to Hollywood to release HD content in more "future-proof" and "familiar" environment.

CDR Info

Sky HD - no archiving on Blu Ray

Sky have stated that the Sky HD box willNOT allow for external HD archiving on Blu Ray or HD-DVD recorders. Bummer.

More over at HD-DVD News..

Ricoh announce dual format player and burner

Following on from the news that Ricoh had a component that would allow a player to read Blu Ray and HD-DVD, they have announced the first product to use it. Don't hold your breath though - it's not due until the end of 2007, followed soon after by a multi-format burner.

Akihabara News has pictures of the announcement.

Next gen optical to hit $28 billion in sales in 2010

Santa Clara Consulting Group is predicting that the size of the market of both the next gen formats, Blu Ray and HD DVD will balloon to over $28billion in 2010.

The break down they give for 2010 is:

blue laser technology players: $4 billion of sales
blue laser technology movies: $3 billion of sales
blue laser technology game consoles: $6 billion of sales
blue laser technology games: with $10 billion of sales
blue laser technology PC drives: $4 billion
blue laser technology blank media: $400 million of sales

Incredibly, the games and computer sectors completely overpower the movies side of things in their opinion..

And with great content such as this, and this on offer, who are we to disbelieve them?

Sony ramps up BluRay Disc production

Sony are starting to ramp up production of BD discs, and claim that they will be making 10 million discs a month by the end of the year! That would break down to 5 milliona month in the USA, and 2.5 million each in Europe and Japan.

More from The Inquirer.

First Blu Ray software products

If you have an early Blu Ray drive for your PC, then you might not be able to play any movies, but you can now look at a huge load of comic covers: 150,000 to be precise, taking a not insignificant 26GB.

ComicBase will cost $399 when it ships later this week, but that does include a year of downloadable price and title updates, as well as four Blu-ray-based updates to the picture library, delivered quarterly.

So if you are a Blu Ray owner big into comics, then this might be a useful purchase.

No Blu Ray for Europe until 2007

The Inquirer is reporting that many Blu Ray manufacturers, including the normally quick to market Pioneer, won't be ready to launch Blu Ray products in Europe until next year.

Blu Ray for Europe won't be heavily promoted until next January's CES in Las Vegas.

The IFA trade fair in Berlin this September was expected to be the launch pad for next gen optical, but it looks like only Toshiba, with a rival HD-DVD product will be ready to launch.

Of course, come November, the PS3 should be with us (in small numbers at least), which could be a quick way into Blu Ray.

PS3 delaying Blu Ray burners

The Chinese-language Commercial Times is reporting that there are likely to be delays to the release of Blu Ray burners from the likes of LiteOn and BenQ, according to DigiTimes.

The reason? Sony are keeping back a "major" proportion of the low-yield Blu-ray laser diodes in readiness for the PS3 launch. Since the PS3 doesn't launch until September, this is unlikely to improve any time in the near month or two.

Does that give HD DVD burners enough time to make headway into the next-gen burner market? Probably not, but it will ensure that Blu Ray burner costs remain high for the foreseeable future, in order to reduce demand.

Blu Ray ripping already possible?

With most of the delay to next gen optical systems being down to security of the digital stream, a small oversight is already making it possible to make a direct copy of the content. The German computer magazine c't discovered that it is possible to use screenshot functions of the player software to record the movie when it's played full screen. Ok, it's all very manual at the moment, but wouldn't take too much effort to capture each frame and save it ready to be rejoined with the rest later on. Rip the audio and lay it over, and there you go.

This process would work on both the new Sony and Toshiba laptops, with Blu Ray and HD-DVD players, respectively.

CDR Freaks has the details

Ricoh Blu Ray AND HD-DVD?

Forbes are relaying a story that Ricoh Co has developed a device that can read both the Blu-ray and HD DVD next-generation DVD formats. They claim the Nihon Keizai Shimbun as their source.

Ricoh's new device overcomes these differences by optical means, the Nikkei said.

LG's Taiwanese speedy burner

So before the first gen Blu Ray burners hit the streets in any great numbers, we're starting to see the first of the increased speed burners. LG Taiwan will be launching the GBW-H10N internal drive in china within the next few days (who'll be buying those up then...?), at a price of $923, which is lower than the other burners about to hit the US.

But the good news. This drive will also burn BD-R at 4x speed, so not so much waiting for your finished discs. It won't do dual layer BD-R however, so you'll be limited to 25Gb. It will also burn pretty much everything else as well: BD-R, BD-RE, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-R DL, DVD+/-RW, DVD-RAM, CD-R and CD-RW.

More: HDBeat

BenQ BluRay burner for Europe

BenQ have unveiled their BluRay burner that will launch in Europe in August for 799 Euros (£555 currently).

BenQ is quick off the blocks, beating some of the much bigger companies involved with Blu Ray, and at a better price-point than those other manufacturers have discussed.

No news on whether this is just a PC data-writing solution, or whether it will also ship with Blu Ray movie playback software, or the level of support for CD and DVD burning.

Source: Yahoo! News

Later: In fact Engadget has more details and photos here and here: Internal drive, 2 x BD-R 4x - 12x DVD writing, 32x CD writing, full 1920x1080 Blu Ray content playback