Hitachi’s new DZ-BD7H will record 1920×1080 video to either Blu-ray discs or a built-in 30GB hard drive. That’s about four hours of 1920×1080 video, or eight hours of 1440×1080 footage onto the drive. The dubbing feature will let’s you do internal copying of HD video from the hard drive to a Blu-ray disc at 2X speed. It also doubles as a regular photo camera with a resolution of 4.32-megapixels, and SD card slot for storage. Hitachi

The Blu-ray Disc Association says peeps in the U.S. who buy a Blu-ray player (even PS3) from July 1st to September 30th will get 5 movies free, 22 titles to choose from, by these labels: Sony (duh), Disney, Fox/MGM, Lionsgate, Paramount and Warner Brothers.

You already get 5 free Blu-ray movies with purchase of a Panasonic DMP-BD10A Blu-ray player, so that would make 10 for you. Right now a few HD DVD player manufacturers are giving away free titles when you buy a new HD DVD player. Does it have to be a ‘new’ Blu-ray Player…?

bluraysavings.com (not live to July 1st)

According to DailyTech, “The recent explosion of Blu-ray Disc sales can be attributed to a couple of reasons. The most obvious would be the launch of the PlayStation 3, which rapidly injected the Blu-ray Disc movie market with at least 687,300 players. In contrast, HD DVD backers announced at CES 2007 that some 175,000 HD DVD players were sold in the U.S. since the format’s introduction. The sales numbers of PlayStation 3 alone put Blu-ray players way ahead of HD DVD machines, which is likely a part of Sony’s strategy for its format.”

As Gizmo Blog says “Back in the 1980s, when VHS and Betamax dueled it out over movie lovers’ wallets, the former won out when Beta turned its nose up at porn.” This is comparable to the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray format war of late. But now, since Blu-ray apparently will do porn, it’s becoming even harder to tell which format will prevail. Maybe both? And Sony yesterday said it’s not trying to stop adult studios from releasing their titles on Blu-ray.

Here’s what Sony had to say: “There’s no prohibition against adult content,” Lisa Gephardt, a spokeswoman for Sony Corp. of America, said. “We don’t tell people how they can use the licenses they get from the Blu-ray Disc Association.” Sony still has a long-standing policy not to manufacture DVDs with adult content. “Sony disc manufacturing will not manufacture adult titles,” Gephardt said. “We have never done it, and we have no plans to.”

Yesterday, it was officially announced Vivid Entertainment will be bringing “Debbie Does Dallas…Again” to Blu-ray. Set for release March 28 for about $39.95.

Panasonic has developed a 4-layer, 100GB Blu-ray disc that it claims will last for 100 years by using a tellurium suboxide palladium-doped phase-change recording film, called Te-O-Pd. The film has a high transmittance and crystallization rate which allows them to layer it on without losing data quality.

Each of the four layers in the disc has a 25GB storage capacity totaling up to 100GB and are capable of a 2x writing speed. Te-O-Pd is inorganic and not-very-soluble, so when the discs finally do get tossed in a century or so, they won’t toxify the Earth too much.

Two top Warner engineers, Alan Bell and Lewis Ostrover, have been working on a triple standard disc that includes Blu-ray, HD-DVD and DVD. Blu-ray uses a 405-nanometre wavelength laser to read data from tracks 0.1-millimetres-deep on the top surface of a disc. HD-DVD, on the other hand, uses the same wavelength to read recordings at a depth of 0.6 mm.

Warner’s plan is to create a disc with a Blu-ray top layer that works like a two-way mirror. This should reflect just enough blue light for a Blu-ray player to read it okay. But it should also let enough light through for HD-DVD players to ignore the Blu-ray recording and find a second HD-DVD layer beneath. DVD would be on the other side of the disc. Read the Patent

Amex Digital has announced the world’s first Blu-ray disc recorder has been shipped to thhe Euro market for availability on August 28th. and will demo at the IFA Berlin Show. The Amex Digital M505-BDR Blu-ray disc recorder has been eagerly awaited by consumers anticipating the opportunity to view High Definition discs on their existing HDTVs.

Blu-ray is the next generation disc format which offers close to five times the resolution of conventional DVDs making it the highest picture quality available on the market. Blu-ray is the premier next generation optical disc format and is supported by more than 170 of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers. While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser which better utilizes the space on the disc allowing more than five times the amount of information. More info on Blu-ray.
The Amex Digital plays Blu-ray software titles at the highest resolution available via a native 1080p HDMI output for films digitally mastered in 1920 x 1080p. The M505-BDR also up-converts conventional DVDs to 1080p through the HDMI digital interface so the picture quality of any traditional DVD will look significantly better when used with the disc player. The M505-BDR is backwards compatible and plays both standard DVDs and CDs in addition to supporting all DVD formats including, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+RW, and DVD+R.

Additionally, Amex Digital has included a dual Hybrid digital TV turner with PIP (Picture in Picture) Function and wireless WiFi b/g, 100/1000Mb network, Firewire, S/P DIF in/out interface that supports all the major formats source from internet and HD-DV Cam, the native high definition resolution contained in 2-megapixel and larger digital still pictures can be fully rendered on a high definition television via slide show functionality built into the M505-BDR.

Connectivity includes supported audio formats: Dolby, DTS, MP3 and 192KHz LPCM. The M505-BDR will be available at $2,000 come with free Blu-ray movie title.

The launch of the Amex Digital M505-BDR coincides with a major influx of Blu-ray content. Seven of the eight major movie studios have already announced titles for Blu-ray, with the initial line-up of recent hits as well as classics, expected to grow to more than 200 titles by the end of this year.
Samsung launched the first Blu-ray disc player in June 2006.