July 2 - 7:50am EDT   MSI today rounded out the hardware specs for the last of the current wave of X-Slim ultraportables. The 14-inch X400 will be the more colorful model of the group with "personalized" color bezels around the lip of the frame and its trackpad. It's also billed as one of the thinnest, lightest systems at its screen size at under an inch thick and 3.3 pounds. [full story]

June 30 - 9:05am EDT   Dell today formalized the launch of the Vostro 1220, its smallest full-fledged notebook to bear the name. The 12-inch system isn't Dell's thinnest at up to 1.5 inches thick but is light, at under 3.4 pounds, and has room for high-end components. A fully-loaded 1220 can take up to a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 8GB of RAM and a Blu-ray combo drive; in a rarity for Dell, it also has the option of Clearwire- and Sprint-friendly internal WiMAX. [full story]

June 25 - 4:45pm EDT   Philips in Singapore on Thursday announced its expanded home theater lineup for 2009, with the HTS8160B Soundbar new among them. The compact home theater setup includes a Blu-ray disc player, which has DVD and CD playback support as well, and built-in speakers, along with a separate subwoofer. While specific numbers such as power ratings are unknown, the system has what Philips calls Ambisound HD speakers and support for Dolby True HD audio format and 7.1-channel surround sound. The high-end product also sports an iPod/iPhone dock as well as a touchscreen remote control. [full story]

June 25 - 8:30am EDT   Gateway has quickly followed up on its desktop news with the addition of a relatively high-style but more frugal notebook line intended for the back-to-school audience. The NV series has a minimalist, glossy design with a relatively sturdy barrel hinge and touch-sensitive shortcut keys. At the same time, the notebooks keep costs down with a 15.6-inch, 1366x768 (but LED-backlit) display and lower-end AMD or Intel mobile chips. [full story]

June 23 - 8:15am EDT   Lenovo on Tuesday launched an anticipated refinement of one of its most important notebooks in the ThinkPad T400s. The 14-inch notebook takes advantage of both an LED-backlit display as well as the same, small and light drive cage used in the X301 to shrink both the thickness and weight of the T400 without compromising its feature set. It measures just over 0.8 inches thick and is 20 percent lighter at just under 4 pounds, but can still fit a DVD or Blu-ray drive as well as regular Core 2 Duo notebook processors. [full story]

June 22 - 9:40am EDT   Acer on Monday added three 16:9 ratio notebooks to its media-centric Gemstone Blue designs that all focus on price over raw performance. The 15.6-inch, LED-backlit Aspire 5739G is the fastest of the trio with a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, an 8X Blu-ray drive and a GeForce GT 130M for video. It comes with a multi-touch trackpad and ships at the end of June for a particularly low $750, making it the least expensive new Blu-ray notebook today. [full story]

June 19 - 3:50pm EDT   Online retailer Meijer is offering the first sub-$100 Blu-ray disc player with its listing for the $99.99 Curtis Mathes CMMBX130. The device will play back Blu-ray movies at up to 1080p resolution and also upconvert DVDs to an unspecified HD resolution. There is an HDMI 1.3 output, optical digital audio output and an Ethernet port for servicing and performing firmware updates. [full story]

June 19 - 7:05am EDT   Sony Pictures along with Gracenote late yesterday announced movieIQ, a new Blu-ray disc feature that provides access to a real-time movie database. By playing a movieIQ disc and having a BD-Live equipped Blu-ray player connected to the Internet, users can view continuously updated information on details such as cast and crew. movieIQ also offers pieces of trivia including production facts, and music and soundtrack information tied to specific scenes within the movie. Sony says it plans to use movieIQ on upcoming Blu-ray movies starting September, as well as offering it on all major catalog titles and new releases. [full story]

June 18 - 9:25pm EDT   Sony at a Blu-ray focused event tonight launched the VAIO NW, a major overhaul of its entry-level notebook. The system has the distinction of being one of the least expensive systems with Blu-ray and has an unusual 15.5-inch, 1366x768 display that can show most HD movies at their native ratio. A textured lid and a translucent trackpad also lend it a designer look. [full story]

June 18 - 3:00pm EDT   Maingear recently introduced a high-end version of its Axess HD Gamer PC, which is meant to sit in users' living rooms as hinted at by its low-profile black aluminum case and front-mounted OLED display that shows song and artist or movie title information. It is the first PC to ship with the Phantom Lapboard wireless gaming keyboard. The highly-customizable PC ships with an Intel Core i7 CPU and up to 12GB of RAM, as well as dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT graphics cards in an SLI configuration. [full story]

June 12 - 12:50pm EDT   An updated version of the Blu-ray standard will allow for limited copying, the head of the group behind the format's copy protection has acknowledged. Michael Ayers, chairman of the AACS Licensing Authority, confirms that almost all discs released after the first quarter of 2010 should allow one full-resolution copy, known as a Managed Copy. Videos will be writable to Blu-ray or DVD discs, or a Windows Media DRM-compatible file; alternately, a file may be included on-disc. [full story]

June 9 - 1:55pm EDT   Just over a month after it was announced for the European market under a slightly different name, Harman Kardon's first Blu-ray disc player, the BDP-1, got an officially confirmation of its arrival in North America on Tuesday. The HD disc player will feature BD-Live compatibility via an Ethernet jack to access extra movie content and other features online. It supports a film-speed 24FPS without pulldown and upscales DVDs to 1080p. [full story]

June 4 - 7:40pm EDT   Imagine Products has partnered with Primera, integrating the Bravo-Series Disc Publisher into its new version of ShotPut Pro. The application is used to copy files from a video card to a burn folder where Primera's disc publisher can then be used to burn the file to a Blu-ray disc. The burned discs are printed with smudge-proof ink directly onto the disk and includes file information taken from the video card's metadata. The application is also used for custom disc label printing. [full story]

June 4 - 2:20pm EDT   Today's featured deal of the day from DealNN is on the Sharp Aquos Blu-ray player from OneCall.com. It is regularly priced at $249.95, but has been reduced to $219.95, and a fathers day promo code drops the price again by $20 to $199.95 making this the lowest total price we could find on this Blu-ray player by about $45. The Sharp Blu-ray player features 1080p HD-resolution and provides playback of Blu-ray discs as well as DVDs and CDs with full up-conversion. [full story]

June 4 - 1:30pm EDT   Pioneer this afternoon said it had started shipping the three Blu-ray movie players it first introduced at CES this year. The Elite BDP-23FD is its flagship with both expected BD Live support as well as a Precision Quartz Lock System the company says avoids jitter in audio playback; it also has "audiophile-grade" capacitors and better-than-average construction. The BDP-23FD carries 48-bit color, 7.1-channel audio and RS-232 support for its $599 price. [full story]