[Via Slashdot]

Even though we’ve all gone out and bought HD-DVD players already (not really), Sony is trying to woo consumers over to the Blu-ray camp with a snazzy new line of BRAVIA-brand flat-panel LCD TVs, five of which sport the coveted XBR designation, and five of which offer 1080p resolution for maximum enjoyment of the BDP-S1 that Sony is hoping you’ll pick up this summer. All of the XBR sets — the 46-inch KDL-46XBR3 and KDL-46XBR2, 40-inch KDL-40XBR3 and KDL-40XBR2, and 32-inch KDL-V32XBR2 — feature a built-in ATSC tuner plus one VGA, two HD component, and three HDMI inputs, along with the usual flurry of patented picture enhancement technologies, with the XBR3s sporting that shiny piano black bezel which is so popular nowadays that it’s showing up at some of the finest bars along the Jersey shore. Rounding out the bunch are the 46-inch KDL-46V2500 and 40-inch KDL-40V2500, which also give you 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, but no digital tuner, one less HDMI input, and no option for interchangeable, multi-colored bezels as with their XBR2 counterparts. Prices for these models — which will all be available in September — range from $2,500 for the 32-incher up to $5,300 for the stylin’ 46-inch XBR3 (pictured), and of course, whatever you end up paying for that Blu-ray player.

Well, it’s officially late May, meaning it’s not at all surprising that the Samsung BD-P1000, which was delayed until late June, is starting to show up online for pre-order. We obviously don’t yet have any hard ship dates from Sammy themselves, but if you were ready and rearin’ to plunk down your $999.99 out of spite for your friends who’ve already had their Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player (which goes for $500 or less online), get out your wallet, son, it’s time to do this.

[Via I4U]

It’s received some good reviews, can record 25GB onto a single-layer Blu-ray disc in 45 minutes, and now it’s available for purchase — if you’ve got a grand to spare. We’re talking, of course, about Pioneer’s BDR-101A Blu-ray burner, one of the first products of its kind to hit store shelves. The 2X E-IDE internal burner for PCs is now available from Tiger Direct for $999.99, and the etailer claims it will ship units in “7-21 days.” Start clicking if you just can’t bear to wait. And don’t forget to budget an extra $25 a pop for those blank BD-Rs.

[Thanks, Alex]

In what seems like a preemptive excuses session, Sony recently mentioned that they don’t think they’ll be able to meet demand for Blu-ray players in the US. They blamed it on an electronic component shortage due to the high demand for cellphones of all things. We weren’t aware that RAZR of ours housed a blue laser and 1080p processing power, but we’re going to give it a once over just to make sure. Because of this shortage, Sony stated that their Blu-ray players are “going to be expensive,” since “it will take time to get component prices down.” We really could’ve believed a more credible excuse for player shortages and high prices, but we’re not sure if we buy this whole “blame the phones” thing. The good news is that the possibility of a hybrid HD DVD and Blu-ray player was mentioned, which could save a bit of blood loss in the format war that is upon us.

[Via HD Beat]

Who’d you think you were fooling, Sony? You go throw some big huge party celebrating the 10 year birthday of the Vaio and the launch of the Vaio UX Micro PC and your new flagship Blu-ray playing AR series 17-inch powerhouse laptop, replete with demo of early Blu-ray title House of Flying Daggers. And then you get done caught red-handed by a meddling reporter who discovered the Blu-ray playback is actually coming straight off a typical, normal old DVD+R. It’s a sham, Sony, the whole thing’s a sham! How are you gonna make a case for your laptop — let alone Blu-ray as a format — now that you tried to pawn off a DVD as a Blu-ray tech demo to a room full of industry professionals? We hope at least it was playing back a high def trailer, or something; now go to your room, you’re gonna have some serious alone time, little mister.

We already saw an official Sony preview of the VAIO R series desktops last month. Now in addition to announcing their AR laptop and UX micro, Sony completes the hat trick by coming clean with full specs on their Type R desktops. At the top of the heep is the RC72 Blu-ray spinnin’ model which maxes out with Intel’s top of the line 3.6GHz Pentium D960 processor, up to 3GB of DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT graphics with 256MB of VRAM, either a 20-inch DVI-D (HDCP) 1680 x 1050 display or 23-inch 1920 x 1200 DVI-D sans HDCP display, and 2 freakin’ TB (4 x 500 giggers) of SATA disk to record television from the included terrestrial analog or digital hi-vision tuners. At the moment, these are announced in Japan only but we’re sure a US press release of the similarly spec’d VAIO RC300 series with NTSC/ATSC tuners is just around the corner. Don’t worry, we have time since these won’t be dropping for Nippon until about mid-June.

[Via Akihabara News]

Watch out Canadia, looks like Sony’s about to drop their 17-inch AR series Blu-ray equipped powerhouse laptop on y’all without any signs of remorse or goodwill for your credit card debt. The AR190 will feature a Core Duo T2500 2GHz CPU, 17.8-inch 1920 x 1200 XBRITE display, dual 100GB RAID 0 drives, 1GB RAM, 256MB GeForce Go 7600GT, VGA, S-Video, and HDMI out (presumably with HDCP), (external?) NTSC tuner, 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth, webcam, Memory Stick, ExpressCard54, and PC card slots, and, of course, that Blu-ray, DVD, and CD reader / writer this thing’s here to deliver. You won’t often hear us say this about a Sony laptop, but the $4,000 Canadian ($3,600 US) they’re asking actually seems like a pretty decent deal, considering.

[Via Notebook Review]

When Sony gave out the specs on the PS3 earlier tonight, the company mentioned that there would be two configurations: a $500 version with a 20GB hard drive and a $600 edition with a 60GB drive. Turns out that was only half the story. Yes, that pricing and storage info is accurate. But it turns out that there are a lot of other things missing from the lower-end (we can’t bring ourselves to call a $500 console “cheap”) version, besides an extra 40GB of storage. According to the specs released by Sony, the 20GB version will lack WiFi, a memory card reader and, most significantly, HDMI output. While you could probably get along without WiFi in a home-based console that already has Ethernet, and you can always presumably hook up a memory card reader via one of the unit’s four USB ports, the lack of HDMI output makes this pretty much a non-starter for anyone hoping to actually use the PS3′s Blu-ray drive for anything more than playing games. Sure, we can understand Sony not wanting to undercut sales of its own dedicated Blu-ray players by offering the $500 PS3 as a cheaper alternative. But if the company was hoping to use the gaming platform as a way to build a base of fans for HD discs, chances are the strategy is going to backfire the first time someone tries playing a Blu-ray flick in their 20GB version and discovers that the unit’s lack of HDMI limits them to analog 1080i output (or worse, depending on a disc’s use of HDCP).

[Via HD Beat]