Blu-ray gets a mini side kick in its battle for hi-def world domination. Suddenly HD-DVDs look like bloaters

Mini Cheddars, Mini cars, mini skirts and now mini Blu-ray. The pint-sized disc comes from TDK and is designed to go in the next generation of HD camcorders, mini-DVD style.The digi-cams themselves are still at the concept stage with one or two mock-ups doing the rounds at Far East trade shows. The discs that will slot inside them measure little more than a coffee mug in diameter and pack in a mighty 16.5GB. Dual-sided versions could boost that to 33GB for several hours of luscious 1080p footage.EssentialsTDK Mini BD-RPrice: £TBAOn sale: TBAContact: TDK…

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We've seen a couple of these “Blu-ray factory-in-a-box” setups already, but thought we'd run another set by you just in case you missed the first wave. The ReflexBlu2 and ReflexBlu4 go for $3000 and $5000, respectively, and can burn Blu-ray, DVD-R and CD-R discs. ReflexBlu2 does up two Blu-ray discs per hour, while the Blu4 manages double that. Both systems hook up to your computer via USB, and sport 250GB HDDs for holding on to nine Blu-ray disc images at once. Sure, the price might sound steep, but your extended family will be thanking you later for those 1080p editions of “Family highlights…

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Stuff your hi-def format war. Samsung's bringing us a second-generation BD-UP5000 Blu-ray player – that'll also do HD DVD

After pitching its shiny black lacquer tent firmly in the Blu-ray camp, it seems Samsung's now ready to start straddling the hi-def format war fence.It's confirmed rumours of a dual HD machine in its second generation line-up, that'll accept both flavours of hi-def disc.We haven't seen any pics of the BD-UP5000 yet but word is it'll have a similar look to the existing Blu-ray-only, BD-P1200 (pictured).It won't, of course, be the first dual player – that accolade goes to LG's BH100 – but it will be the first to have both BD-J and HDi support to unlock the special features on both fo…

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While the HD DVD camp is busy with its 51GB disc, the Blu-ray side has a new creature of its own to talk about. Co-developed by Pioneer and Mitsubishi, the LTH (Low to High) BD-R reportedly utilizes an “organic dye recording layer,” and is said to be a recognized format within the Blu-ray Disc Recordable Format v1.2 standard. Additionally, the two companies boast that this disc won't require “large-scale plant investments” to manufacture, which is music to the ears of anyone who enjoys lower costs. Regrettably, it sounds like existing Blu-ray drives won't play nice with the LTH BD-Rs as-is, bu…

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Blu-Ray, the next-generation movie disc format that rivals High-Definition DVD, has another powerful new backer. But does the world need a DVD replacement?

The war over the format for next-generation DVDs has taken another interesting turn, with Warner Brothers defecting from the HD-DVD camp. Well, not quite defecting. More a case of hedging its bets by announcing it'll support both Sony's Blu-Ray format and its previous disc of choice, Toshiba's HD-DVD. Warner's decision follows a similar move by Paramount last month.You see, there's currently a big spat over the future of video discs. Why? Because you can't fit a full movie's worth of high-definition video onto a normal DVD – and the increasing popularity of high-def TVs means that a new disc…

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One of the chief copy protection mechanisms employed by Blu-ray discs that is unemployed by HD DVD is called ROM-Mark, which basically uses unique identifiers that can only be hard coded on discs by authorized duplicators — in other words, it's that per-disc physical watermarking that makes copying (although not necessarily ripping) Blu-ray movies just that much harder, Which is partly why we're a little dubious about this new app, BRDGen, which claims to be able to make and edit (and export for recording) PlayStation 3 compliant disc images. Anyone with a Blu-ray recorder, PS3, and a healthy…

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HD DVD's trouncing Blu-ray in the Euro hi-def formats war, but Sony's about to reveal its secret weapon

With the latest rumours being that Sony's imminent Blu-ray player debut in the UK, the BDP S1E, will cost a eye watering £1000, you might think that HD DVD would be clearing up over here.And you'd be right. With HD DVD offerings from the likes of Toshiba already nudging towards the magic £300 mark  – the HD-E1 (pictured) was last seen the right side of £336 at Dixons – the Microsoft-backed format has been winning the price and sales wars.Latest figures for January show that European HD DVD film titles out-sold their Blu-ray rivals by five to one. Tosh's bargain …

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Even though the fastest Blu-ray burner you can buy today maxes out at just a 2x write speed, media manufacturer TDK is already looking towards a wonderful future filled with 4x and faster drives writing 200+GB of data to 8-layer discs. Now that they're gotten the capacity part down, the company is hard at work on discs that won't take five hours to burn, and the first fruit of this labor — a 25GB platter rated at 6x — was recently unveiled at Japan's Eighth Data Storage Expo — although don't expect it to hit stores until next year. They were also showing off that 100GB quad-layer BD-R we he…

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It's made by Sony, plays Blu-ray discs, is out in the US and not available here yet. No, not the PS3, but the dedicated BDP-S1 movie spinner

Take one PS3, remove all the gaming abilities and what have you got? That’s right, a Blu-ray player. So is there anything to commend Sony's first stand alone machine?Well first impressions in the States are that the picture quality is superb. It's also one of the first players to support the enhanced Blu-ray Disc Java extras (BD-J to its friends) found on titles such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - but then so do our PS3s.So will it be worth shelling out for instead of the equally elusive gamer? We'll put them side by side as soon as we get our hands on one.EssentialsSony BDP-…

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If you're one of
those few people who rushed out and bought an analog HD display (like the 1993 model pictured above), you may actually
be able to find some use for it. Sony Pictures has announced that it won't downsample Blu-ray output for analog sets,
which don't support HDMI. That means you'll be able to watch full-res output if you hook up your Blu-ray player to your
old display, rather than the 960×540 that could be outputted using the Image Constraint Token. While we're a little
surprised that Sony would actually come out and do something so consumer-friendly, we're not that shocked.
Aft…

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