News for Saturday, 27 August 2005

In the war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, timing will be of importance. The first of the two standards to significantly hit the market will take a serious lead. And Blu-ray looks poised to take a step back.
Ben-Q, one of the major devices manufacturer will have to delay the introduction of its BD-R burners for as much as two to four quarters!
The reason lies in the strict DRM scheme that comes with Blu-ray, which seems quite tricky to implement in devices. For the same reasons, the major disc manufacturers will delay their production of BD-R.
HD-DVD is not hampered by these DRM problems, so it should hit the streets first.
[moose: yes, but... if you read around, HD-DVD is dying BECAUSE of the lack of said strict DRM that BD-R have. Indeed, most of the major movie studios support BD-R now, and that means LOTS of people behind that standard. Add to this that BD-R stores way more than HD-DVD and chances are we'll see Blu-ray emerge as the winner in the medium run]

Rio, the famous and historical maker of MP3 players has announced that they will stop manufacturing any MP3-related devices.
As of September 30, 2005 sales of all Rio players will stop, but support will still continue for an undisclosed period.
The first victim of the global iPod domination?