The war of High Definition format between Blu-ray and HD DVD has come to the end. Toshiba just announced that they will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video. “We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company’s Tokyo offices. The move would make Blu-ray ? backed by Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, and five major Hollywood movie studios ? the winner in the battle over high-definition DVD formatting that began several years ago. Nishida said last month’s decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format made the move inevitable. Warner joined Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox in that move.

“That had tremendous impact,” he said. “If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win.”

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. But both formats play on high-definition TVs. HD DVD was touted as being cheaper because it was more similar to previous video technology, while Blu-ray boasted bigger recording capacity. Nishida said his company had confidence in HD DVD as a technology and tried to assure the estimated 1 million people, including some 600,000 people in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines by promising that Toshiba will continue to provide product support for the technology.
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Advanced Micro Devices has unveiled a new Radeon series graphics card, successor to HD 2600, the HD 2700. It’s built on 65nm fabrication technology, M76 chip with 120 stream processors, 128-bit bus and few AMD exclusive technologies such as ATI Avivo HD Video and Display Platform and ATI PowerPlay 7.0. ATI Avivo HD video processing and display technology delivers High Definition video playback and full HD DVD and Blu-ray disc support. Together with full DirectX 10 support, it delivers spectacular HD entertainment and gaming-on-the-go for performance notebook PCs. Enjoy outstanding display quality with high bitrates, dual stream Picture in Picture and hardware-based Universal Video Decoder support for a stunning mobile entertainment experience. The powerful new 65nm GPU with unified shader architecture delivers a new level of realism with complex facial and character animation for an immersive gaming experience.
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LG has introduced a new desktop PC that support HD (high definition) format disc compatible drives in Korea market, LG LX97WH. Dubbed “Black Picasso Super Multi Blue Edition“, this machine comes with dual-format disc drive, supporting both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. At just 8.9cm thick, it also features an Intel Bearlake platform, Intel Core 2 Duo processor, nVidia GeForce 8 Series graphics engine, 3D pattern case design, and a slide-type panel.
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Sony has introduced a new Home Entertainment Server, Sony HES-V1000. This server offers a full HD 1080p 200-disc Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD changer (196 12cm BD/DVD/CDs and four 8cm BD/DVDs) and 500GB hard disc drive that can store up to 137 hours of video, 40,000 songs or 20,000 digital photos. It provides the new x-Application which includes x-Pict Story HD and x-ScrapBook. x-Pict Story HD utilizes unique layouts with sophisticated face-recognition technology and syncs transitions with music selected from personal content libraries to create a unique photo slide presentation, while x-ScrapBook offers a compelling slide show that the device automatically arranges in a very fast timeframe to explore memories in a personalized digital scrapbook. Users can also export both types of slide shows to Blu-ray Discs or DVDs to share with family and friends. It has the ability to wirelessly stream music throughout the home with a router to other devices, including Sony?s CPF-IX001 wireless music player and other Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)-compatible wireless devices, such as PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) videogame console and select VAIO notebook computers. The system can register up to ten devices with four independent audio streams.
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Hitachi finally unveiled they first ever full High-Definition camera with HDD and Blu-Ray technology, the DZ-BD7H, including a 30GB HDD and a 8cm Blu-ray Disc recorder and the DZ-BD70 with Blu-ray Disc technology only. The two new camcorders is capable of recording one hour 1920×1080 Full High-Definition Video on a Blu-ray Disc (two hours of 1440×1080 high definition video). The DZ-BD7H with its 30 GB built-in hard disc can record approximately four hours of 1920×1080 full high-definition video, up to eight hours of 1440×1080 high-definition video. It can also copy the contents from HDD to 8cm BD within the camcorder so that users do not need to use any external devices.
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