Some of you may remember when we posted Sony being sued by a Granny a few months ago. Well, that dispute is now resolved. Professor Emeritus Gertrude Neumark Rothschild settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money (of course!!). The Columbia University professor alleged a violation to one of her patents earlier this year in February.

Dr Rothschild conducted “ground-breaking” research in the 1980s and 1990s into the electrical and optical properties of wide band-gap semiconductors. The research was pivotal in the development of short-wavelength emitting (blue/violet) diodes used in consumer electronics including Blu-ray. Rothschild was issued a US patent in 1993 that covers a method of producing wide band-gap semiconductors for LEDs and LDs in the blue/ultraviolet end of the spectrum.

Rothschild’s representative, Albert Jacobs from of Dreier LLP Intellectual Property, said that “Professor Rothschild is very pleased that both Sony and Sanyo, and other major electronics makers have recognized her major scientific contributions to LED and LD technology. Professor Rothschild made a seminal breakthrough, in understanding the doping requirements necessary for the production of the blue, green, violet and ultraviolet LEDs and LDs on a commercial and efficient scale that are essential to today’s consumer electronics, and highly deserves this recognition for her work.”

This was not the first settlement the the 80-year-old Professor received. She has received money from Philips Lumileds in 2006 and from Gosei Co. Ltd. and Toyoda Gosei North America Corporation earlier this year on very similar cases.

That is one smart lady

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It has been confirmed by Peter Jackson during a chat session about his new film production “The Hobbit”. His exact words were: “We are working on a Blu-ray version of the with Warner Bros at the moment, not sure when it is due for release. It certainly won’t be this year.” It certainly doesn’t leave room for assumptions or misinterpretations, He was very clear that the Middle Earth is turning “Blu”, he just doesn’t know when… Definitely one of the best movies ever, this is very exciting! The only disappointing part is the extremely long wait. Hopefully, Warner will listen to the fans demanding and release it earlier. I can’t wait to see all those great battle scenes in hi-def. The Hobbit is probably hitting the theaters around 2011, we just hope Warner won’t try to hold The Lord of the Rings Blu-ray release to the same year just to help promote the new movie. That would be ludicrous!

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You can find the full chat session from www.wetanz.com here!

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We all know that price has been one of the reasons for the slow adoption of the Blu-ray format. The first step is purchasing a player and once you already have a Blu-ray player you want to start building up your movie collection. However, movies are also more expensive then DVDs and to help you with that problem every once in a while Amazon runs some very good promotions. They have done a “Buy 2 get 3″ and now they are offering a “Summer 50% Blowout”. This limited time promo is making many Blu-ray discs cheaper or the same price as DVDs. They have a total of 117 titles with pretty good discounts, the discs are going from $14.45 to $23.95. If you are still unsure whether or not you should replace your DVD collection with new Blu-rays, this promo will assist you making up your mind on some titles… Keep in mind that this promo is available through June 9, so there is not much time to think!

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This is the complete list of the titles on sale in alphabetical order:

Read the full story

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Many people were disappointed when Paramount announced Blu-ray titles and Transformers was not on the list…

According to www.tvshowsondvd.com, this is a fact and the wait will end soon. An inside tip was received on the Blu-ray arrival and Transformers will be available on September 2nd! I find it odd that Paramount would announce all those titles in April but not Transformers and now, one month later, these news pop up on the net. I agree that sooner or later the movie will make its Blu debut since it is the only logic way. However, I am a bit skeptical on the release date until I see it coming from Paramount, which hopefully will be soon. The movie has already seen hi-def with the dead HD-DVD format and if the arrival to Blu-ray news is true the features and extras will be very similar. Bellow are the specs on the 2 Disc Special Edition HD-DVD:

Video Resolution/Codec

• 1080p/AVC MPEG-4

Aspect Ratio(s)

• 2.35:1

Audio Formats

• English Dolby Digital-Pus 5.1 Surround (1.5mbps)
• French Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 Surround (640kbps)
• Spanish Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 Surround (640kbps)

Subtitles

• English SDH
• French Subtitles
• Spanish Subtitles
• Portuguese-Brazilian Subtitles

Extras

• Audio Commentary
• Documentaries
• Featurette
• Still Gallery
• Theatrical Trailer
• Picture-in-Picture Commentary
• GPS Tracking
• Subtitle Fact Track
• Customizable Menus

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Today Panasonic introduced the MN2WS006, the first single chip signal processing LSI for Blu-ray Disc players. The new chip will allow mounting surface to be 50% smaller, it will use 25% less power and it is compatible with profile 2.0 standards, which include functions such as dual-screen simultaneous video playback, high-quality audio playback and network compatibility. The MN2WS006 will have the Panasonic’s updated UniPhier platform and will support all high definition video and audio formats. Before this chip, players required seven external memory chips and separate front and back end LSIs. This new technology will allow Panasonic to make players slimmer.

Panasonic will start having samples shipped out on June.

Here you can find the original press release!

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Yes, that is right! Amazon is wasting no time to bank on Iron Man’s movie success. They are already accepting pre-orders for the blockbuster on Blu-ray… Don’t believe me? See it with your own eyes here! This is actually a neat strategy because they are using the power of the theater influence to increase their sales. So Mr. Joe Doe leaves the movie theaters all pumped up and excited, looks it up on the web, finds Amazon already selling and doesn’t think twice! Bam! Orders a copy. Every one is happy!

According to the site, it is a Special Collector’s Edition but no further details are disclosed. No release date, no specs, no extras and nothing on what’s included on this Blu-ray disc. One thing they did disclose is the price: $27.95.

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Game developers will soon be able to use DivX video encoding when making Playstation3 (PS3) games. DivX, Inc announced that the console will be the first to be able to use the encoding technology to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality. The DivX codec uses lossy MPEG-4 Part 2 compression, also known as MPEG-4 ASP, where quality is balanced against file size for utility. In other words, PS3 will be able to have much bigger videos using the same amount of BD disc space.

“We are excited to work with Sony Computer Entertainment to offer DivX video encoding to PS3 game developers,” said Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX, Inc. “PS3 users can already use their PS3s to watch their own DivX videos, and now they’ll also be able to enjoy the quality of DivX in the games.”

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Hitachi has released a pretty cool new toy! The DZ-WR90 is a Blu-ray burner that can save all your HD movies on the go…directly from your HD camcorder via a eSATA port. No need for the old buddy PC! Not sure how many people will actualy carry this around but… There is always a looney for everything.

The drive also works with DVD-R discs, and can support double-sided media although you’ll have to flip them yourself. Hitachi is claiming a Blu-ray disc will fit around 3 hours of full 1920 × 1080 footage and burn in 1.5hrs; alternatively, you can fit on up to six hours in 1440 × 1080 resolution. The downside from this gadget seems to be that you won’t be able to edit or fool around much with the videos, it will stay pretty much as recorded on the camcorder.

The DZ-WR90 will be released in Japan in mid-July but no pricing has been disclosed yet.

And it seems that learning how to read Japanese is the way to go…Look at picture to see the video flow, going from the image on your HDTV to the BD media.

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Samsung and LG will no longer produce players that are capable of playing both HD-DVD and Blu-ray Discs as of this fall. This move will help both companies to cut costs.

Here is what they have to say about this piece of news:

“Surely, it is a very tough decision for us to halt the production of the combos, however, we will stop manufacturing the Super Blu series from the second half of this year,” said a spokesman from LG Electronics.

“Since February this year, we have no longer been producing combo players that support the playback of HD-DVD and Blu-ray high-definition discs,” a spokesperson from Samsung Electronics told The Korea Times, Monday.

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So basically if you have HD-DVD discs, you are now on your own if something happens to your current player. Once the players that are available on the market now are gone, you can kiss HD-DVD bye bye…You see? That’s what you get for choosing a format that has no future!

You can find combo players here as long as inventory lasts. After that - Try E-Bay!

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China is a very important market to any product trying to get established in the world because of its humongous size. However, will the largest potential consumer market give in to the Blu-ray technology? The Blu-ray Disc Association is investing a lot of time negociating with Chinese hardware manufactures to start producing cheaper Blu-ray player and content. China has been known for its government strong influence, many times preventing companies and services from doing business in the country.

Frank Simonis, head of the Blu-ray Disc Promotion Group for Europe, told CDRinfo.com that entering the growing Chinese market is regarded as key by the Blu-ray Disc Association. Offering the Blu-ray technology in China would be a prestigious move, while it would further help the establishment of the Blu-ray format.

Besides the government, the Blu-ray format faces a Chinese HD format known as CH-DVD (China High Definition DVD) based on the dead HD-DVD technology but with Chinese intellectual property (IP). Despite Toshiba’s war loss, the Chinese format is still being developed and supported in the country. The good news is: the Chinese government has expressed interest on Blu-ray and the Blu-ray Disc Association is currently evaluating Chinese codecs for the format. Riding on this wave is Sony, that apparently is taking the lead and allegedly started producing Blu-ray titles exclusively for the Chinese market.

China would be a great step towards a worldwide acceptance of the Blu-ray format but in my opinion the Standard Definition DVD is still the biggest Blu-ray opponent and unfortunately from what we’ve been seeing, it will be for a while until Blu-ray gets a more accessible price and more product availability.

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