Thursday, September 28, 2006

HD DVD coming to Xbox 360

The drive will be available in mid November and should cost £130. With the new drive Xbox 360 owners will be able to watch high-definition HD DVD movies on their television through the console. The Xbox 360 was released just under a year ago with a standard DVD drive, adding the HD DVD option Microsoft hopes to be more competitive with Sony’s PlayStation 3, which will feature the rival Blu-ray Disc format.

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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Blu-ray or HD DVD

Blu-ray

Backed by Sony, Samsung, Disney and 20th Century Fox, Blu-ray is one of 2 new High Definition DVD formats coming to the UK soon. Blu-ray systems use a blue-violet laser, similar to the one used for HD DVD, to read and write data, conventional DVDs and CDs use red and infrared lasers. Blu-ray discs can store about 9 hours of high definition video on a single layer 50 GB disc, this is considerably more than DVD's 4.7 GB. The major contributing factor to the possible success of Blu-ray will be the inclusion of a Blu-ray drive in the forthcoming Playstation 3 from Sony, thanks to Playstation large gamer following.

HD DVD

Backed by Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo, HD DVD also uses a blue-violet laser, but only holds 15 GB on a single layer disc although still plenty for high definition video. HD DVD is also being backed by Microsoft and Intel, with Microsoft releasing a seperate HD DVD drive for the XBox 360 in the future.

Format War

Who will win the format war? Until we start seeing the hardware and media appearing in the UK it's difficult to make a judgment. Although Blu-ray does seem to have the most backing and with the Playstation 3 due out next year, I think Blu-ray might just have it.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Gran Turismo Goes HD

The next incarnation of Gran Turismo (GTHD) for the Playstation 3 will be in High Definition. According to GameSpy GTHD won't be GT 5 but a kind of fully featured HD preview of the PS3's capabilities with GT 5 coming later. GTHD will come in 2 flavours Classic and Premium, the Premium edition
"will initially come with 30 cars and 2 tracks on the disc and have 30 more
cars and one more track downloadable. More downloads will be available over
time."
and the Classic edition
"is more of a 'rebuilding' of past GT assets in full HD along with added online
features. Eventually 770 cars, 51 tracks and 4,500 items will be downloadable
for GTHD Classic."

GTHD is scheduled for release in Mid 2007.

Gran Turismo HD

High Definition DVD Is Coming To The UK

Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray DVD Player The first High Definition DVD Player to come to the UK is set to hit the shelves next month, the Samsung BD-P1000 will be priced at around £999. This Blu-ray format player will be closely followed in November by the HD-DVD Toshiba HD-E1, at a more affordable £450 this is Toshiba's entry level offering which will be followed a month later by the HD-XE1 at around £650. The main difference between the two Toshiba players is the HD-E1 only outputs 1080i and the HD-XE1 outputs 1080p. If your thinking of making the move to HD soon it maybe worth waiting until December for the HD-EX1, at over £300 cheaper than the Samsung offering, it looks like an interesting proposition. It seems the run-up to Christmas and beyond is going to be exciting for the HD market, so keep an eye here for the latest news.

Toshiba HD-E1 HD DVD Player

London Fashion Week in HD

Head over to shop.sky.com/hd now and click "Explore" then in the pop-up window click "More to Explore" and then "HD Video Clips". Be warned though as the download is 57Mb for a minutes worth of video.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Introduction

Welcome to my new blog, hopefully on these pages I will be able to bring you the latest news and views on the High Definition TV & Video scene. Please come back soon as I will be updating regularly. In the mean time if you have any news or info please let me know in the comments.