Topic: News

Beginning this week, Blockbuster will start offering Blu-ray movies, for rent and sale in all of its corporate stores in the U.S., as well as in Canada.

Japanese audiences will be the first in the world to see regularly scheduled TV shows in 3-D. Korean company Hyundai's E465 3-D TV, which requires special glasses to see the effect, went on sale for $4,980 in Tokyo on Saturday.

No-name brands could release their own Blu-ray players to take on the major brands by September, increasing competition and potentially driving prices down further.

The BBC's head of digital media technology has commented on plans to make the iPlayer available on the PS3 saying it is on their "roadmap"

In its latest attempt to be useful and make money, MySpace announced that it signed a content distribution agreement with ShineReveille. The global partnership allows ShineReveille to distribute MySpace TV series’ over TV and on DVD to an international audience.

A new $500m telecoms satellite has been launched to distribute live TV channels to mobile devices across the States, once operational it will be able to deal with between ten and fifteen simultaneous streams. It’s also powerful enough to require no dish in order to broadcast.

Avid Technology announced the next generation of its Pinnacle PCTV HD Stick, and Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick.

Carphone Warehouse has called the government's bluff by stating that it will not cooperate with the record industry to clamp down on copyright infringement over peer-to-peer networks.

CyberLink have launched the latest version of PowerDVD - version 8 - which is fine-tuned to "provide maximum playback performance in supporting the latest high-definition video and audio formats. PowerDVD 8 introduces new ways for consumers to enjoy movies beyond just watching."

Microsoft has officially denied that it’s working with a Taiwanese manufacturer to develop a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360.

If, as previously reported, Microsoft adopts built-in Blu-ray Disc (BD)-ROM drives for a new version of its Xbox 360, sales prices are likely to be lower than the corresponding production costs since current OEM quotes for BD-ROM drives are as high as US$95-100, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

Philips has said that it wants to create clarity for companies that manufacture Blu-ray Disc products and has therefore decided to introduce licenses for the use of the Dutch company's patents relevant for Blu-ray Disc.

Following the introduction of its 500GB PC-to-TV consumer multimedia player into the market earlier this year, Plextor is extending the range to add a 750GB version.

Many small and midsized disc duplicators invested their time in HD DVD for all the obvious reasons. To make HD DVDs duplicators only had to make a few adjustments to their existing DVD duplication lines, but Sony's Blu-ray Discs require new equipment. But what should they do? Invest in a new line, or wait and see?

According to a new study from Solutions Research Group, women are more likely to stream TV shows from network websites than men, and they are more likely to time-shift their TV viewing with a personal video recorder.

Lite-On IT is developing built-in Blu-ray Disc-(BD) ROM drives for the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console, according to industry sources. Lite-On declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.

Following last month's announcement of an official "three strikes and you're off the Internet" policy, it seems that Virgin Media could be the first UK ISP to implement the scheme.

While Samsung launched its Super-WriteMaster SH-S223 22x DVD burner in early March 2008 and LG Electronics will follow suit to launch its latest Super Multi series GH22, in the second quarter of 2008, 18x and 20x are still the mainstream burning speed levels, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

Mitsubishi has announced two models from its new "REAL Blu-ray" Blu-ray Disc recorder series. The two models are the "DVR-BZ200" with a 500-Gbyte HDD and the "DVR-BZ100" with a 250-Gbyte HDD. These are Mitsubishi's first Blu-ray recorders.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have launched a website streaming every South Park episode ever made, all for free.