Hasta La Gadget!

Here’s a little tidbit to start your morning: According to the New York Times, one year ago today, Toshiba, creator of HD DVD, conceded to Sony’s rival Blu-ray format. Take a look at Gearlog’s deals for Thursday, February 19 (especially the first one!):

1. Save some big bucks on a three-pack of Blu-ray discs from Amazon.com today. Choose from the Action Bundle, which includes Casino Royale, Black Hawk Down, and Hellboy; the Love and Marriage Bundle, with Made of Honor, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Across the Universe; or the Comedy Bundle, with Superbad, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and Talladega Nights. Normally all three Blu-ray discs would come out to about to be as much as $117, but with this offer, you’ll save 65 percent. The deal ends today, so get on it.

2. MacMall is knee-deep in its Apple Blowout Deals with up to 83 percent off of select Macs, iPods, software, accessories, and more. Save up to $84 on MacBooks, $1,044 on MacBook Pros, and $1,194 on MacBook Airs. Also, orders of over $49 get free shipping with this mail-in rebate. The sale ends on February 24. [Via Dealnews.com]

3. If you’re the type of person who gets lost all the time while driving, but is too proud to ask for directions, you’re in luck. Best Buy is having a sale of 10 to 33 percent off of select GPS receivers. Get the Garmin Nuvi 255 GPS in Piano Black for $179.99 (normally $229.99).

While the future seems bright for DisplayPort, it’s still tough to find a GPU out there with a DisplayPort socket — and the search becomes increasingly difficult when hunting one down that’s affordable. Enter S3, who is expanding its Chrome 500 series with the Chrome 540 GTX. Hailed as the “world’s most connected high-def card,” this PCI Express card boasts 256MB of GDDR3 memory, compatibility with DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0, support for Blu-ray playback and a trifecta of interfaces: DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. The best part? It comes bundled with WinDVD 8 for BD playback and can be procured today for the low, low price of $69.95.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

S3 crams DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI onto $70 Chrome 540 GTX originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d heard of a FastMac USB external slimline Blu-ray reader poking around Macworld last month, but we never got anything official until today, when the company pinged us to let us know that the $99 APP-6907 DVD±RW / BD drive, the $299 APP-6963 1x BD-R drive and the $399 APP-6964 4x BD-R drive are now all available. All three drives support both Macs and PCs, although you’ll need Windows to play BD movies. Not bad deals all around, but we’re still not convinced we need a Blu-ray drive for our computers when we barely use the one in the living room.

Read – APP-6907
Read – APP-6963
Read – APP-6964

Filed under: Storage

FastMac slips out three slimline USB Blu-ray drives, including a $99 reader originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It was May of last year when LaCie last updated its external d2 Blu-ray burner, so it’s about time we saw that 4x burn rate double to an entirely more palatable 8x. Available now for consumers in the US, the latest d2 Blu-ray Drive ($449.99) can toast both single- and dual-layer BD-Rs at 8x, and it can connect to one’s machine via FireWire or USB 2.0. In related news, the outfit has also introduced a LaCinema Black MAX over in Europe, which acts to serve up all sorts of digital media (photos, video clips, music, etc.) on one’s HDTV. You can order it with 500GB / 1TB of inbuilt storage, and the integrated Ethernet jack / WiFi module enables it to pull media (up to 1080p) from other locations on your network. We’ve nary a clue on pricing / availability for this one, but we’ll leave it to those in Europe to hunt it down and brag to us Yanks.

Read – 8x d2 Blu-ray Drive
Read – LaCinema Black MAX [PDF; thanks Predator]

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Storage

LaCie intros 8x d2 Blu-ray burner, LaCinema Black MAX media streamer originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s Monday, which apparently means time for yet another Blu-ray fighting Chinese high definition disc format, this time NVD. With China Blue HD barely out the door and EVD conspicuous only in its absence, HD NVD players apparently went on sale today in Wuhan, featuring 12GB of storage on a red laser disc format that — unlike the Toshiba technology backed CBHD / HD DVD variant — is not only Made in China, but Created in China, with the hope that owning their own IP can net 4-5 times the profit for its manufacturers. 80% of the world’s DVDs and players are reportedly produced in China, so now production lines can switch to NVD HD cheaply — stop us if you’ve heard this before. It’s clear that these companies are chafing under the royalties of foreign tech, but until we hear something about content support in any major way, it’s hard to believe this format war is even worth fighting. Us? We’re still holding out for VCDHD.

Read – NVD: independent innovation to safeguard national economic security
Read – China’s proprietary red-ray NVD makes its debut

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

HD NVD is China’s home grown answer to Blu-ray, but does it have a chance? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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