Posted August 16, 2006 
Comments(0) Sony Electronics has begun U.S. shipments of 50GB dual layer Blu-ray Disc™ recordable (write-once) media with AccuCORE™ technology. The company also confirmed that it plans to start shipping 50GB dual layer rewritable BD media later this year.
Posted August 16, 2006 Comments(0) Slysoft has released a minor update to their DVD-to-DVD-R “one click” backup solution. CloneDVD is one of the fastest DVD video transcoders on the market, and delivers decent quality results if the compression ratio is not too high. The update comes with a few bug fixes and updated translations.
Posted August 15, 2006 Comments(0) Memorex today announced it is shipping its highly anticipated HD DVD recordable media. Memorex HD DVD-R write-once discs support high-definition (HD) television and video recording with crystal-clear broadcast quality. Also ideal for consumers seeking to capture, save and share photos, music and data, the recordable Memorex HD DVD discs deliver up to three times the capacity of standard recordable DVD media and faster digital transfer speeds.
Posted August 14, 2006 Comments(0) BitBurners.com is proud to announce that the open source video encoder QuEnc has found a new home here at BitBurners. Find the homepage and latest version in the menu on the left hand side, or directly at http://quenc.bitburners.com. We are supporting the development of QuEnc by providing them with server space and bandwidth for public distribution as well as for project’s internal purposes.
Posted August 14, 2006 Comments(0) Microsoft has announced that it is opening up the XNA framework to aspiring Windows and Xbox 360 developers everywhere. The software giant has also partnered with 10 universities, such as University of Southern California, SMU Guildhall, Georgia Tech University and others, who will include the new XNA Game Studio Express into their curriculum starting as early as this fall. It will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 ‘Creators Club’. XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows XP-based PC.
Posted August 10, 2006 Comments(0) Associated Content has published an interesting article about the content authoring on Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats. According to the article, the Blu-ray would have an clear advantage over the rival HD-DVD. Both of these formats have a basic and a more advanced modes for content development. In Blu-ray the basic mode (High Definition Movie Mode, HDMV) offers more features than HD-DVD’s standard authoring. But the real cherry is supposed to be the BD-J, which is a coding intensive Java-based platform. It should provide Blu-ray developers plenty of possibilities to create neat applications.
Posted August 10, 2006 Comments(0) CMC Magnetics, the largest producer of optical discs in Taiwan, began marketing its CD-R and DVD+R/-R discs in the China market under its own brand, Mr. Data, according to DigiTimes. Ritek, Taiwan’s second largest maker, has been selling CD-R and DVD+R/-R discs, under Ritek brand, in the China market, for a while.
Posted August 9, 2006 Comments(0) Microsoft demoed the HD DVD drive it prepares for its next-gen gaming console Xbox 360. Microsoft’s move comes natural, as rival Sony has already announced a Blu-Ray drive for its PS3 console. The estimated price according to speculations for the HD DVD drive is about $200. This would make it the cheapest HD DVD player on the market.
Posted August 7, 2006 Comments(0) ImgBurn comes out with a great summer update! The new version 2.0.0.0 supports mastering of .ISO images, which means that you can now use ImgBurn to burn any files on your hard drive, rather than just pre-mastered image files (.iso, .img, etc.). This is excellent news, as there are not many free DVD recording and mastering software out there. In case you did not know, ImgBurn is an updated version of DVD Decrypter, with the decryption features removed due to legal issues. A highly recommended software download.
Posted August 7, 2006 Comments(0) High-Def Digest has published a very interesting comparison of the movie Training Day, which has been released on Blu-ray and HD-DVD. The review reveals some interesting differences in between the two releases, and in this case it seems that the HD-DVD has an edge in quality and even usability.
Of course both of these next generation formats are still rather immature, and only available playback devices are the Samsung BD-P1000 and the Toshiba HD-XA1. This means that some of the differences could be due to the different playback devices, both of them being rather immature products, or possibly the mastering process from the studio originals to the new formats. Still the findings in this comparison are quite interesting, so check it out.
