August 24th is the debut of the elite version of the Xbox 360 in Great Britain and even though no Microsoft official release mentions anything about the prices, three UK retailers - WHM, GAME and Play - are already gearing to take pre-orders on Xbox 360 Elite at £330. Voices say the three retailers have been tipped from other European regions where they have a live presence so that should be the price for the new Xbox 360 deluxe version in the UK. Add to it, that all the pre-ordering prices are the same in three sources, so I guess that’s confirmed.

Source

It’s news day from Samsung and here are two new blu-ray players that they’ve announced. Samsung BD-P2400 and BD-P1400 are both blu-ray players with native HD at 1080p / 1080i / 720p that can play at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. There’s something else I can note down here, bigger brother BD-P2400 uses the HQV standard from Samsung, “Hollywood Quality Video” that will make Harry Potter’s spells to be extremely real. Both the blu-ray players handle up-convert DVDs to 1080p via HDMI.

Audio : coaxial and optical digital outs serving 5.1 stereo, MP3 playback, Dolby Digital Plus with DTS HD and supports Dolby TrueHD
Video: HDMI, S-video and composite outs

Samsung BD-P2400 will cost $649, going live from October and BD-P1400 is $549 but has a release date in September. The price is still very high from what people say, and if you think the PS3 plays blu-ray discs you might give it a good thought before buying one.

[via Engadget]

It looks like the long waited price drop for Sony Playstation 3 is live. You can now get the 60GB model for $499 and if you need more space, wait for the August release of the 80GB model in US and Canada, priced at $599 that has a bonus: a “free copy” of MotorSport MotorStorm.

Though Sony announced they won’t cut down the prices, it looks like they did and we’re here to comment the news. Who’s going to need 20GB more from the new model? What do you install on it, because that’s their biggest problem (not the price) : all the good games are on Xbox 360. Unless they add to the $100 price drop some new games or it won’t count that much in the eyes of a new client.

Press release

Playing on Nintendo Wii with your friends is going to be much more fun than it was until now. Why? Because Elecom was smart enough to bring real tools for the Sports pack That includes the tennis racket, the baseball bat and the golf club. I’ve played Nintendo and I agree this new upgrade looks great.

However, if you play with another friend make sure you have enough space between the two of you because the risk of injury is quite high. My biggest concern now is if we will see more cases of people ruining their TV by losing the Wiimote from their hands, or if there will be medical issues.

Elecom.co.jp

Today Samsung Electronics has introduced the largest (70″) commercially available full high-definition LCD TV in Korea. The new model employs a light-emitting diode (LED) backlight instead of the conventional cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL). In addition, the local dimming technology delivers a dynamic contrast ratio of 500,000:1. Another advantage of this technology is the low power consumption (50% less than a normal TV).

“I am pleased to introduce the 70” Full-HD LCD TV with innovative Local Dimming Technology,” said JongWoo Park, President of the Digital Media Business, Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will continue to strengthen its LCD TV leadership, enhancing Full-HD and large screen LCD TV line-up.”

Samsung’s LED scanning eliminates ghosting problems appeared at moving images. The new 70” full-HD LCD TV inspires elegance and sophistication by incorporating high quality materials. It features dual hidden speakers and rear woofer that deliver rich sound quality.

Samsung announced to put the product on sale worldwide in the second half of this year. No price details were revealed.

Toshiba is ready to launch this month two digital video recorders (DVRs). The devices combine the HD DVD with the HD hard disk recording. The models in discussion are RD-A600 and RD-A300. The difference between those two is the capacity of their hard disks. The first one comes with 600GB memory, while the second has 300GB storage.

The new DVRs will be available for sale in Japan, at the end of the month. Toshiba has been selling the RD-A1 device which combines both HD DVD and hard-disk recording, but it is bigger and has less options than the new DVRs. Besides the functions I told you the new models can stream HDTV across an in-home network using the DTCP-IP content protection system. Other important feature is the ability to record two HD channels at once.

The prices were estimated by Toshiba. The A600 will cost around $1,645 and the A300 will cost about $1,232. To make an opinion you should know that the old RD-A1 model costs $3,600. There were no details about launching the product for another markets than Japan.

It looks like someone is after Sony’s Bravia name, logo and color schemes. It’s Toshiba that has a new product, Vardia RD-A600 that is a HD DVD player with a HDD recorder of 600GB and RD-A300 with 300GB of space. The two models have a pair of digital hi-vision HD tuners, Firewire and HDMI.

The new Toshiba Vardia is pretty smart and can write on HD DVD-R and DVD-RAM/R/RW media but the price is high, ¥200,000 about $1,650 (for the 600GB model). Release date is later this year.

[Impress JP - translation]

Pioneer has two new power gadgets for us that are in the middle range, that will work great with HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs and with smaller prices than their top notch models. Featuring Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio with 7.1 sounds these two new amplifiers from Pioneer are what you need for a serious home theater system where you can connect all your audio and video gadgets that will come out great.

It has S-video, optical digital audio, a couple of HDMI 1.3a inputs and is iPod friendly. How neat! For the price of $1153 the Pioneer VSA-AX1AH that will bring 180W x 7, can be bought in June and Pioneer VSA-1017AV that has 170W x 7 is $774. I personally don’t think the 10W x 7 are worth paying almost $400 more.

[press release via Gizmodo]

Remember how it happened when the iPod was launched? Everything else that ended up on the market was similar with it. It looks like it’s time for Apple TV to get look-alike products. Philips has one in this aluminum box that is a very good alternative for watching DivX movies for those that hate Mac or just wouldn’t spend £200.
It has a 40GB hard drive to keep media locally and can be expanded via USB if you connect other and it can also play audio and video from wireless networked drives. No specs and prices were release at Taipei Computex 2007 where this new box appeared.

[via Engadget]

What the hell is that?! Easy my friend, I will present you the future successor of HDTV. A Japanese company, called NHK, has demonstrate at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories, in Tokyo, that the Super Hi-Vision television is the future of today’s HDTV systems.

NHK’s engineers have presented a prototype image sensor that can offer a Super Hi-Vision resolution of 7680 by 4320. This progress on Super Hi-Vision will produce the replacement of today’s HDTV devices. Also, NHK has presented a Super Hi-Vision camera that can capture a live monochrome video image at 7680×4320 resolution. A prototype Super Hi-Vision encoder can encode a 24-gbps video signal to a 128-mbps MPEG4 AVC stream in real time using 16 encoders in parallel.

All in all, I would say the progress is outstanding. We’ve just entered the HDTV era and NHK has developed the next generation television. But, hey, the science don’t stop!

[Credits: PC World]