Filed under: Desktops
While there aren't too many PCs that come with standard Blu-ray drives as of yet, there is surely also only a small selection that come with standard liquid-cooling. Well, a prototype of the new NEC Valuestar X VX780/GD with both is currently on display at the Ceatec expo in Chiba, outside Tokyo. According to IDG News Service, the Valuestar runs super-quiet at 31 decibels, or slightly above a whisper. Beyond the slick cooling system and the swanky optical drive, the computer comes with a digital TV tuner, a 3.4GHz Pentium D processor, 1GB of RAM, dual 250GB hard drives, a remote control, and a 20-inch LCD. But all those bells and whistles will set you back a hefty ¥543,000 (over $4,600), so start fishing out those stray yen coins out of your couch now. Hundreds of thousands of them.

[Thanks, Dave] 
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentar...

Filed under: Announcements, Laptops
We know you've all been waiting patiently to find out the winners of the Engadget commercial contest, and to whom the spoils (that Sony Vaio VGN-AR190G Blu-ray laptop, MSRP $3,400) went. We received nearly 100 commercials, which totally blew our mind, but today is all about the winner of the contest, as well as eight runners up we selected after a few grueling sessions. All these commercials were so good that we had to give a new iPod shuffle to the other eight who didn't take home the laptop. To everyone else who entered, thanks so much for your submissions! We'll be airing more commercials very soon, but for now click on for the top nine!

The winner!
Short version:


Full version:
The Long Arm of Steve Jobs, by:Producer: Bryant Hodson
Director: Brad Hodson
Editor: James Spencer
Actors: Taylor Kesler, Zach McCue
Music: Anthony Spencer


Runners up (alphabeti...

Filed under: Storage
If you've got money just burning a hole in your pocket, or on the off chance you're starting an independent film company dealing solely in Blu-ray, Microboards Technology has a couple new duplicator towers aimed directly at you. While Primera's Bravo XR-Blu Disc Publisher can clone 50 discs in one sitting, you'll probably need to take a few weeks of vacation to let the single BDR-101A burner churn through all of those on its own. The CopyWriter Blu-Ray lineup features four and ten-bay flavors, handles both BD-R / BD-RE (Blu-ray's way of saying "rewriteable") and DVD±R / RW / DL, "one-touch" pirating duplication, PC passthrough via USB 2.0, automated "gold master" detection, and a two-line LCD for progress / error reporting. The ten-bay edition also rocks a built-in hard drive for 25GB of image archiving, and both units support "future upgrades" (dual-layer BD-R?) that will reportedly be installed via one of the many Blu-ray drives available. Currently, h...

•Creative Xmod Promises to Make Your Crappy MP3s Sound Better With X-Fi Technology
•SensorfreshQ Tells You Whether You'll Die From That Beef
•Sony BDZ-V9 and BDZ-V7 Hard Drive-Equipped Blu-ray Recorders
•Dyson Airblade: 400mph, No Hot Air
•Logitech diNovo Edge LED Backlit Keyboard Looks Like High Art
Comment of the Day: Taxing Downloads
"NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION...If you buy something online from another state, there should be no tax. PERIOD.
You cannot expect everyone from every state to pay for your state's schools, highways, politicians, local government, etc."--aec007

Filed under: Digital Cameras
When camcorders with mini-DVD recorders inside of them first hit the scene, geeks moaned as loud as the technologically clueless cheered: the convenience of not having to deal with tape was great, but the whole MPEG-2 compression thing coupled with the half hour recording time definitely ruined the party. Fortunately for both groups, Hiroto Yamauchi, a marketing guy for Hitachi -- a company which currently makes a line of interestingly-named Wooo DVD camcorders -- has revealed that the company is hoping to bring out a camcorder based off a mini Blu-Ray format within one to two years. The idea is sound in theory, but the current non-existence of both an 8cm Blu-Ray player/recorder drive and the actual physical discs makes this little more than a distant dream. A distant dream that could easily be shattered if the Blu-Ray medium as a whole fails, which is probably why this announcement takes the form of a long term promise, and not a short term commitment...

Now Sony is marketing PC workstations toward video aficionados, with its Vaio Type R Master series, available in varying degrees of competence. The flagship bundles a 24-inch 1920x1200 monitor, and crams up to four 500GB SATA drives and a Blu-ray burner inside.
The rest is pretty standard stuff, with all of them are packing the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors. How jaded we have become. But wait. A highly unusual feature is the separate desktop and deskside units, giving you that close-at-hand convenience to plug in Blu-ray, USB and 1394 stuff, while keeping the physical plant down below, up to six feet under. Top price is around $4700.
Not much special about its video editing capabilities, though, although it does have dual tuners for TV watching and recording, along with a claimed "full HD 1080" capability. This is just a new way to market a PC, albeit one with a Blu-ray burner inside. As long as you have 1394 ports in a recent Mac or PC, though, you're going to be...

Microboards has done the stupid and actually manufactured a Blu-Ray duplicator tower. This tower is packed with up to 10 Blu-Ray burner drives. It can duplicate all of them at once—either working standalone or hooked to a PC. There is a 10-drive system that runs for $20,000 and a four-drive system that only goes for $9,000. No offense Microboard, but shouldn't you have waited until there was a clear winner in the next-gen media war? Unless Blu-Ray wins, this thing will probably be useless. – Travis Hudson
The New Microboards Blu-Ray Duplicator [Gearlog]

Sony's pushing Blu-ray down consumers throats whether they like it or not and this is all the more apparent with these Blu-ray recorders with built-in hard drives. There's two models, the BDZ-V9 (pictured here) and the BDZ-V7, sport a 500GB and 250GB hard drive, respectively, for storing content for later burning onto a Blu-ray disc. The recorders aren't compatible with 50GB Blu-ray discs, so get used to using the boring 25GB discs. They can, however, record up to two different programs simultaneously.
Both models fully support 1080p high definition recording and can be controlled with a DoCoMo cellphone. The higher end BDZ-V9 hits Japan on December 8 for around $2,550 while the BDZ-V7 hits at the same time for around $2,120. – Nicholas Deleon
Press Release (in Japanese) [Sony via Newlaunches]

Filed under: Desktops, Media PCs

The CEATEC show generated some more Sony next-gen optical news this AM with the announcement of the VAIO L, now with Blu-ray player and burner. While they were tinkering, Sony went ahead and slapped in a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo T7400 processor and gave the graphics a needed bump with an nVidia GeForce Go 7600. These additions to Sony's all-in-one PC with integrated TV-tuner will drive the cost up to ¥359,800 or about $3,058 when it hits the shelves in Japan starting November 6th. What, you do want Blu-ray don't you?

[Via Impress] 
Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

The longtime manufacturer of disc duplicators ships the first Blu-Ray towers. In Gear Factor.