Hasta La Gadget!

George Lucas has confirmed that the whole Star Wars saga will be available on Blu-ray next year. Speaking at the Celebration V Star Wars convention, which took place last week in Orange County, Lucas revealed that the entire six-movie line-up will be available in high-definition for the fist time, doubtless in a high-priced box-set.

It’s not all good news, though. The original movies will be the Special Edition versions, with their extra “funny” SFX creature-shots and stupid stepping-on-Jabba’s-tail scene. Speaking to the New York Times, Lucas said that, due to time and cost concerns, only the special editions were transferred to digital media. It looks like the original movies will never make it to HD.

A big bonus for fans at the convention was the screening of a deleted scene from Return of the Jedi. Some may argue that all scenes should have been deleted from this teddy-bears’ adventure, but this one is worht seeing just because, well, just because it’s Star Wars. It’s the clip above, and shows Luke somewhat menacingly building his own Lightsaber while Vader tries to tempt him to the Dark Side. Shiver.

George Lucas Announces Star Wars on Blu-Ray at Celebration V [Star Wars]
‘Star Wars’ Films Coming to Blu-ray Next Year [NYT]

Samsung’s BD-C8000 is the world’s first portable 3-D Blu-ray player. It is also a pretty pointless and misleading waste of time. Despite the 3-D part of the same, the player doesn’t show any more than plain ol’ 2D on its own screen. For the extra dimension, you’ll need to hook it up to a 3D television.

If you have a 3-D TV, it’s pretty likely you already have a 3-D Blu-ray player. This leaves the new Samsung player in a rather queer position, especially as it costs $500, or the price of an iPad. (Or 3 Wal-mart fixies and a couple cases of beer. –Ed.)

Now, it’s not all bad. The BD-C8000 has a 10.3-inch screen and Wi-Fi, which combine with the power of widgets — or “Samsung Apps” — to bring you Blockbuster, YouTube and others. You won’t be storing any movies on there, though: The player has just 1GB memory. If you’re really into movies, might we suggest buying an iPad instead, and skipping the battery-sucking spinning disk part altogether (battery life is claimed to be three hours, which really means 1.5-hours).

If you absolutely do need the capability to maybe, someday hook up to a 3-D TV and never stray far from a PowerPoint, the BD-C8000 is available now, through Amazon. Or, you know, you could buy something else. (*cough* iPad *cough*).

Samsung BD-C8000 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player [Amazon via Oh Gizmo!]

See Also:

• Blu-ray Maker Re-Boxes $500 Player, Charges $3500
• Panasonic Announces Sexy, Pointless Portable Blu-ray Player …

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After being announced in early June, Anandtech recently put the Western Digital WD TV Live Plus through its paces and discovered the Netflix enhancement works as advertised. Like many Netflix-enabled devices though, the TV Live comes up short compared to the full PC experience since access is limited to only the Instant Queue. Its presence also sacrifices firmware hackability — a quality which previously made up for the WD TV Live’s lack of versatility as an HTPC. The ability to move, copy, and manage locally stored media files via the interface, on the other hand, was praised as a unique advantage over competing models — exciting, we know. Sadly, video quality was docked as being “significantly less than the HTPC counterparts they’ve seen so far.” However, it’s possible this could be improved in the future via firmware updates, since its Sigma Designs processor features noise reduction and deinterlacing algorithms that strangely aren’t currently enabled. File format-wise, DVD ISOs worked flawlessly, while Blu-ray ISO and some WMV video formats experienced issues that users may want to read up on before buying. Gripes aside though, Anandtech was still willing to place it “around the top of the list” for media player devices, thanks to its wide file compatibility and robust features. For more details, hit the review source link.

WD TV Live Plus gets reviewed, lauded for value originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s really no surprise that Redbox is going nationwide with its $1.50 Blu-ray rentals, at every step along the way of its Hollwood dealmaking, the company has pointed out its aim towards procuring a supply of high definition movies, and now the day is finally here. The high definition disc packing kiosks currently number 13,300, and the plan is to have Blu-ray in all 26,000 locations by the fall. While we spotted plenty of Blu-ray enabled locations with a San Francisco zip code, other areas in the Midwest and East Coast weren’t so lucky. The site points out a few of the movies on offer, including Green Zone, Book of Eli and Bounty Hunter, but there’s no way to check which movies are in stock at each box. Of course, at this price, we might be willing to take our chances until Redbox gets things straightened out, or starts offering an online competitor to Netflix.

Continue reading Redbox rolling out $1.50 Blu-ray rentals at 13,000-plus kiosks, nationwide by fall

Redbox rolling out $1.50 Blu-ray rentals at 13,000-plus kiosks, nationwide by fall originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Why, it seems like only yesterday that 50GB was an awful lot of capacity. Now, not so much. BDXL discs are here to rescue your data, and TDK is the latest to roll out triple-decker discs with 100GB of capacity. As with the others, these discs will only work in BDXL-compatible readers and writers, meaning yet another early round of devices is in the process of being obsoleted. (Remember Profile 2.0?) These discs are set to ship in Japan in September, and sometime later will come the quadruple-decker BDXL discs with 128GB. We wonder, though: can a retail offering really be considered a “pack” if it only contains one disc?

TDK inflates to BDXL, bringing 100GB writable Blu-ray discs in September originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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