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If you'd like to read more, Verbatim's entire press release can be found here. Add a commentVerbatim, the storage media specialist, introduces recordable and rewritable Mini Blu-ray media (BD-R/BD-RE) to the European market. The 8 cm Blu-ray media will be available in specialist stores from November and will cost between €12,99 and €17,99 (RRP).
Measuring 8 cm in diameter, the new 7.5 GB discs provide approximately one hour of continuous video capture time on a single side when high definition (1920×1080) is used, and approximately two hours of video capture time with images recorded at 1440×1080. The new Mini BD media have been launched in Japan simultaneously with the new Hitachi BD-compatible camcorder in August. In Europe, the Verbatim Mini Blu-ray media will be available at the beginning of November. The recordable Mini BD-R costs €12.99, the rewritable Mini BD-R costs €17.99 (recommended retail prices).
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The BWU-200S will be available directly from Sony at sonystyle.com next month for about $600. Full details can be found here. Add a comment
Sony Electronics today announced its second generation internal Blu-ray Disc (BD) writer drive for the computer aftermarket, which boasts 4X BD-R and 16X DVD+R recording speeds.
The new BWU-200S model cuts BD-R burning time by half compared to the first generation model, allowing for a full 50GB BD-R disc to be recorded in about 45 minutes. It also features improved DVD burning speeds, making it a multi-format combo burner that eliminates the need for more than one drive in a system.
The drive comes with CyberLink BD Solution software that provides a comprehensive application for capturing, authoring, editing, burning and viewing high-definition personal content captured in the native HDV 1080i format from an HDV camcorder. In addition, the software supports recording on DVDs and CDs, as well as playback of DVDs recorded in the AVCHD format.
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In light of better than expected sales of Halo 3, Microsoft has decided to strongly promote sales of Xbox 360 consoles during the traditional peak period prior to Christmas and therefore has placed additional OEM orders, the sources explained.If you'd like to read more, head on over to DigiTimes. Add a comment
To meet Microsoft's urgent demand, Lite-On IT has allocated production capacity solely for turning out one million Xbox 360 DVD-ROM drives a month, the sources pointed out. But the capacity is still not enough, and thus Lite-On IT has dedicated additional capacity, the sources indicated. However, the situation has conflicted with Lite-On IT's production of PC-use ODDs, the sources noted.
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Fastmac today announced the first & only 2X Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade for Apple's PowerBook, iBook & MacBook Pro computers. The new slimline, slot loading drive uses the fastest & most compatible Blu-ray mechanism available to provide up to 50 GB of storage on 1 disk, without sacrificing compatibility with standard DVD & CD recordable media...While Fastmac's 2x Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade won't ship for another month or so, you can pre-order it from www.fastmac.com for a special introductory price of $999.95. More information can be found here. Add a comment
...Fastmac's slimline Blu-ray slot loading optical drive supports reading, writing and re-writing to single and dual layer Blu-ray media at up to 2x speeds. The drive is also compatible with standard DVD and CD media and can write to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 8x speed in single layer and up to 2.4x speed in dual/ double layer mode. It can rewrite to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 4x speeds. The drive also supports DVD-RAM reading and writing at up to 5x speeds and standard CD-R and CD-RW burning at 8x speeds.
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Hitachi is also working on an 8 layer disc that can hold 200GB of data. However, they've had problems with reflections decreasing the signal strength across the eight layers. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here. Add a comment
Hitachi has developed a prototype four layer Blu-Ray disc capable of holding 100GB of data.
While companies such as TDK and Panasonic have previously mooted 100GB discs, they have always needed a specially developed optical head in the player to read the disc.
Hitachi, however, claims to have used a standard Blu-Ray drive optical head that's only slightly modified to allow it to read and write data across the four 25GB layers. It's believed this will only require a firmware update to make existing drives compatible.
