Filed under: Desktops, Home Entertainment
CNET Australia reports that PCs now have a solution to that pesky problem of, you know, not having any software that can actually play Blu-ray discs on Sony's newest drive. Sony has just released a downloadable update to its bundled PowerDVD app so that its BWU-100A Blu-ray drives will work, allowing for out-of-the-box playback of commercial discs -- of course, that assumes you have an HDCP-compliant graphics card as well. In related news, CyberLink, the maker of PowerDVD, released a similar update for LG's Blu-ray drives as well.

[Via EngadgetHD] 
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•HP's top lawyer falls on her sword [The Inquirer]
•Comcast video download store to be in WMV HD [HD Beat]
•Intel ships 40 million 65 nm processors [TG Daily}
•New York City may ban 'hazardous' trans fats [New Scientist]
•Retailers stocking limited amounts of HD DVD and Blu-ray titles [HD Beat]

An anonymous source heard from someone high-up in the company—we can't say who—that Panasonic/Matsushita is going to produce a dual HD DVD/Blu-ray player next year. This will be a hardware hybrid, and not a disc hybrid, as we posted about yesterday.
These sources say that Panasonic is doing this to protect itself, as the next-gen DVD wars aren't close to being resolved, and they don't want all their next-generation eggs in one next-generation basket, no matter how Blu that basket may be.
Also, it's rumored that Sony will be making one of these as well, but this is even more rumory than the Panasonic rumor. We'll believe it when we see it, since Sony's not one to throw in the towel and a hybrid drive would be somewhat of a concession. We're more likely to see a mea culpa from OJ Simpson than Sony.
Right: A famous hybrid. – Jason Chen
Thanks anonymous dude!

Filed under: Laptops, Media PCs

Like Acer,and fellow "exclusive" Blu-ray supporter LG, Samsung is showing the hi-def crowd how to mix it up by opening their Blu-ray love affair to the HD DVD camp. Here we have their M55 -- formerly billed as the "world's thinnest and lightest 17-inch widescreen" at 30.5 ~ 34.4-mm thick and 2.99-kg -- only now packing some swank HD DVD action along with an apparent pixel increase to 1920x1200. Just to run down the rest of the specs on this: you get a glossy 17-inch display, 256MB GeForce 7600 Go graphics, up to 120GB of SATA disk, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, a wide range of in and outs including HDMI and S/PDIF, and suite of SRS audio features all powered by an Intel T2500 Core Duo proc. No drop date but they should pull about €3,000/$3,810 -- yeah, we know. And yes, gentle readers, there is a woman in that photo, now please try to comment on the laptop, mkay? We don't want to get rough, see. 
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A patent from London's New Medium Enterprises promises to alleviate headaches caused by trying to decide which next-generation DVD format to support. Their multi-layer hybrid DVDs have Blu-ray on one layer and HD DVD on another, and have lowered the cost of production to just 1.5x the price of regular DVDs.
NME also says they won't step on Warner Bros.'s toes, since they own the patent for the technology and Warner owns the patent for the application. Either way, hopefully this brings us one big step towards ending this dumb war.
Left: A famous hybrid. – Jason Chen
New technology could nip DVD format war in the bud [Computer World]

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
The end of the HD DVD / Blu-ray format war has been declared again, but from a most

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Looks like Daewoo was dropping more than nav systems at IFA earlier this month. Lit in a lovely pancreas green was this Daewoo DBD-8000 HD Video Recorder. What it records to we have no idea since there's nothing listed in the specs or printed on that bland chassis. But that ShowView EPG icon bottom-left means it definitely records to someth

Warner's engineers took it upon themselves to design a disc that can be encoded with a combination of DVD, HD DVD or Blu-ray. These discs, something that Blu-ray and HD DVD developers have said was difficult, if not impossible to make, will take the pressure off consumers on having to decide which format they have to buy.
The hybrids work by having HD DVD players read through the 0.1mm Blu-ray layer to the 0.6mm HD DVD layer. As far as the player knows, the disc is just a plain old HD DVD. Blu-rays will just read the 0.1mm layer and ignore the other. Plus, a regular DVD can be pressed on the reverse side, allowing users to flip over the disc in case they want to play it in an older machine. – Jason Chen
Warner patents Blu-ray/HD D

While Sony talked about shipping a Blu-ray recorder with no release date announced, Panasonic actually shows us the first Blu-ray hybrid recorders, its DMR-BW200 and DMR-BR100. They're called hybrid because they combine hard drive recording with Blu-ray single- and dual-layer disc recording capabilities (DVD recording, too, if that matters any more). The higher-end BW200 packs a 500GB hard drive, two digital tuners and one analog tuner. The lower-end BR100 has a 200GB hard drive and a single digital/analog tuner.
The 1080p recorders can also do some neat tricks, such as high-speed dubbing of a hard disk recording onto Blu-ray disc, and the fancier BW200 has a FireWire port for hooking up a di

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We peeped a mock-up Sony Blu-ray Disc and Hard Disk recorder just the other day which may or may not see the light of the rising sun. Now Panny brings it for realz with their new DIGA DMR-BW200 (pictured up top) and BR100 Blu-ray Disc and fatty hard drive recorders. Both drives support DL BD-R/BD-RE (50GB) at 4x speeds and healthy dose of the ol' in and outs including 1080p-capable HDMI. The BW200