The 8th Plague The DH-4B1S is

The 8th Plague

The DH-4B1S is the successor of the widely appreciated LH-2B1S, one of the first Blu-ray drives on the market. The DH-4B1S can write BD-R media at 4X, a 50% speed increase and time saving compared to its predecessor. One more Xbox 360 Blu-Ray rumour goes down. Last week DigiTimes reported that Pegatron Technology has secured an order from Microsoft to manufacture Xbox 360 consoles with Blu-ray support for release this fall. Microsoft today officially denied the report. As we have stated, we have no plans to introduce a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360, said a Microsoft official in an email to GamePro. Games are what drive consumers to purchase game consoles, and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster games available. Although Microsoft smashed all recent rumours that a Blu-Ray drive for Xbox 360 was in production, today DigiTimes issued a new statement claiming that a company under the name of Pegatron Technology is now going to be the OEM producer of feature Blu-Ray Xbox 360 consoles. Unfortunately, its unclear to me whether the original submitter meant that the Blu-Ray support will be added as an add-on device, or therell be a whole new version of the 360 console with internal Blu-Ray drive. Pegatron Technology, an OEM subsidiary of Asustek Computer, has secured orders from Microsoft to assemble Xbox 360 consoles equipped with a Blu-ray Disc BD-ROM drive, with shipments to begin in the third quarter of 2008, according to the Chinese-language Economic Daily News EDN newspaper. the site claims. We should see if thats true in a short time. Usually Microsoft issues a statement in two or three days after the publication to decline the rumours. Following the formats victory over HD DVD earlier this year, Blu-ray disks have seen their sales soar to 351% of those during the same period last year. When combined with standard DVD sales, the first quarter of this year offered the first year-on-year The 8th Plague increase since DVD sales peaked three years ago. Steek Beeks, President of Lionsgate, said: Blu-ray had its second-best week ever in the seven days ending March 23, and we anticipate Blu-ray sales of 800 million to 1billion-plus for all of 2008, up dramatically from approximately 300 million last year. Wednesday, April 2nd 2008 It was yesterday when I first saw the report from DigiTimes, and I decided to wait on purpose before posting it here. First it was the 1st of April, second it sounded too good to be true: Lite-On IT is developing built-in Blu-ray Disc-BD ROM drives for the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console that will start shipping in the second half of 200 Well I was right, the unspecified DigiTimes sources have misled a lot of hardware news sites. Microsoft responded today to the rumour with the following statement: No. Lite-On is not manufacturing Blu-ray drives for Xbox 3 As we have stated, games are what are driving consumers to purchase game consoles and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster game For our customers who want a premium movie experience we offer the largest library of on-demand HD content available and the ability to play back DVDs in high definition. This is the second time when a rumour is spreading around the web that Xbox 360 will get Blu-Ray support, but unfortunately thats also the second time when Microsoft crushes all hopes with a single sentence. Now after HD DVD is out and the format war is over, a research in the US shows Blu-ray disc sales have topped nine million since inception, with some The 8th Plague million of those discs flying off the shelves in 200 The figures, published by Home Media Research, show average weekly sales of BD titles ranging from between 200, 000 and 300, 0 Big-sellers, such as the recent No Country For Old Men release, helped weekly sales reach 319, 000, with the disc itself selling 68, 000 copies in the week ending March 16th. The second place is for the Hitman title, who sold twice as low or 38, 000 copies. Today, Dell announced that movie buffs can pick up the Inspiron 1525 with optional Blu-ray disc playback for under a 1, 000 or 879 to be more precise. The award-winning Inspiron 1525 laptop features a 4-inch high definition wide aspect display with 720p resolution, various options of Intel Core 2 processors, up to 4GB of DDR2 667MHz memory, up to 250GB of disk space, Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics, and more. It also includes an HDMI port for easy connectivity to high resolution displays and HDTVs.