May 8 - 2:45pm EDT   Panasonic on Thursday unveiled its latest home-theatre-in-a-box, which features a built-in Blu-ray player. Gearlog writes that the SC-BT100 also features an iPod dock that allows users to play both video and audio content through to the system, while displaying menus on the TV screen, and the included remote can be used to control the iPod. Panasonic will ship the SC-BT100 in the spring for $1000. [full story]

May 7 - 11:10am EDT   Pioneer USA on Wednesday announced the Elite BDP-05FD and Pioneer BDP-51FD BonusView Blu-ray Disc players have been added to its line-up. Both receivers are said to offer the next generation in Blu-ray playback quality, with HDMI 1.3 technology, four Wolfson Professional Audio 12-bit digital-to-analog converters, and 1080p / True 24fps output. The players are designed to complement Pioneer's other home theater products, including the KURO line of plasma HDTVs and Elite receivers, to bring users a movie-theater like entertainment experience. [full story]

May 6 - 4:45pm EDT   Musician Neil Young today said he would take the unusual step of releasing his entire music catalog on Blu-ray discs, making him one of the few artists to make the jump to the standard so far. The extra space on each disc will let the rock musician both boost the sound quality above CDs and downloads but will also give room for extra material such as videos and previously unpublished material. The discs will also be some of the first music-focused Blu-ray titles to use BD-Live and will let users download extra tracks and photos to PlayStation 3s and other players that support Internet access and storage for Blu-ray titles. [full story]

May 6 - 4:05pm EDT   Panasonic on Tuesday came closer to launching its anticipated DMP-BD50 Blu-ray player by setting its price and reaffirming its launch window. The BD50 will stand as Panasonic's flagship with a $700 price tag and is still on track to launch before the end of the spring as an eventual replacement for the current BD30. Panasonic hasn't yet revealed a phase-out plan for the older device. [full story]

May 5 - 4:55pm EDT   Microsoft today repeated its past denials that the company is developing a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. Following a report on Friday which said Microsoft had contacted ASUS for drives to be used as add-ons for the game system by the fall, Microsoft has echoed its past approach and says that it has "no plans" to launch a Blu-ray reader add-on in the near future. The company prefers to focus on the core gaming of the Xbox, according to a statement. [full story]

May 2 - 12:35pm EDT   Microsoft is turning to Pegatron Technology, a subsidiary of ASUS, to produce Xbox 360 consoles with integrated Blu-ray drives, according to reports. Exactly one month ago, Microsoft denied rumors of Lite-On producing a Blu-ray drive for its popular game console, but chose words carefully to avoid excluding other suppliers. The new account claims that Blu-ray Xboxes will ship in the third quarter, but at this stage it is not known exactly which markets will get the HD-capable consoles, nor at what price, or even if the launch is guaranteed. [full story]

May 1 - 4:35pm EDT   A new report shows the Blu-ray disc player sales are falling, despite Toshiba dropping its HD DVD format players back in February. The sales of Blu-ray disc players were expected to skyrocket but a NPD Group study found the opposite. US sales of standalone Blu-ray players fell 40 percent from January to February, still in the midst of the HD DVD fall, before increasing by just two percent in March. This leads many to believe the price of Blu-ray players and media still isn't low enough for mainstream adoption. [full story]

May 1 - 2:20pm EDT   Samsung on Thursday has revamped its Blu-ray home theaters with the advent of the HT-BD2S. A close equivalent of the BD2T, the 7.1-channel S includes the same Blu-ray player as its predecessor but replaces the tall, floor-standing speakers of the original with compact satellites that are better-suited to wall mounts or shelves. [full story]

April 23 - 12:45pm EDT   Samsung has exposed final details on the BD-P1500, a fourth-generation Blu-ray player first hinted at in January. The drive is 1080p-capable, and has an HDMI 1.3 output with CEC support, allowing control through home theater systems. Also present on the unit are an upconverter chip -- which scales to maximum resolutions -- and ports for USB and Ethernet cables, intended to simplify the installation of firmware upgrades. Compatible audio codecs include Dolby Digital, Digital Plus and TrueHD, but will exclude DTS-HD until "later" in 2008. [full story]

April 21 - 8:25am EDT   Acer started its week today by announcing a special version of its Aspire 5920 notebook for Intel's WiMAX technology. The modified 15.4-inch system will let the computer connect at broadband speeds within a few miles of an access point rather than the 300 feet or less of the best Wi-Fi hotspots. Other changes are unavailable, though the current model runs on a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo and includes a 320GB hard disk, a Blu-ray drive, and GeForce 8600M GS video. [full story]

April 18 - 4:10pm EDT   Nintendo's Wii console continues to be the strongest-selling of all systems a year and a half after its launch, according to March statistics from The NPD Group. The organization says that about 720,000 examples of the motion-driven Wii were sold last month, helped in part by both its lower $250 price and the launch of the first Super Smash Brothers game for the platform. The result is nearly three times the 262,000 Xbox 360s sold and a slightly larger increase again over the PlayStation 3, which was near-equal at 257,000 systems sold. [full story]

April 17 - 10:50am EDT   Universal Studios, at one time backing only the discontinued HD DVD high-definition movie format, will announce on Thursday it will start releasing all of its new movies on Blu-ray starting this summer. The studio was quick to switch camps once HD DVD's demise was final, but has not released any Blu-ray titles or made any announcements until today. The first Blu-ray title from Universal will be Doomsday, which will be released sometime this summer and, like all its movies, on the same day as the standard DVD of the movie. [full story]

April 11 - 8:35am EDT   Shuttle has taken the unusual step of launching a small form factor PC that caters to both current and obsolete HD videos. While the company already sells systems with Blu-ray alone, the XPC G5 6801M Vista incorporates a combo optical drive from LG that allows it to play both Blu-ray titles as well as the now defunct HD DVD format, letting early adopters keep their libraries active. Playback at 1080p is helped along by the use of a Radeon HD 3450 that offloads most of the work from the CPU and also outputs its video to either DVI or HDMI through a bundled adapter. [full story]

April 10 - 4:25pm EDT   Blockbuster Video has announced that it is finally moving to to expand its Blu-ray services. Although Blu-ray discs formally went on sale in the US in June of 2006, Blockbuster only began stocking the media in July of 2007, and then only in 1,700 of its outlets. The company now says that it will start selling and renting discs in some 5,000 stores, scattered throughout Canada and the United States. For people renting by mail, Blockbuster plans to offer Blu-ray as an optional default medium. HDTVs paired with PlayStation 3 consoles will serve as demonstration kiosks. [full story]

April 10 - 10:10am EDT   DTS today said one of the longstanding criticisms of the PlayStation 3 would be addressed with a firmware update next week that adds DTS-HD Master Audio for movies on the Sony game console. The addition allows Blu-ray movies and other HD titles to output 7.1-channel surround at a 96kHz, 24-bit quality at up to 24.5 megabits per second. At this rate, the stream virtually equals the sound created in the studio masters that give the DTS format its namesake, according to its creator. [full story]