With royalty fees just around the bend for Blu-ray recorders in Japan, it seems as if locals are snapping up units left and right before the taxation is enacted. For the first time in a single month, shipments of recorders and players based on Blu-ray Disc broke the six-figure mark in June 2008 with 122,000 units. That's coming from data reported by the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA), which shows a notable increase from the 82,000 units shipped in May. Analysts are expecting the numbers to rise further in the coming months, as the Beijing Olympics draw near and many Japanese citizens spend their mid-year bonus on high-def wares. Still, it's not like folks in Japan are getting any stellar deals; the cheapest BD deck there is Sharp's BD-AV1, which still demands around ¥44,800 ($420). Just imagine those sales figures if there were a few reasonably priced players to choose from.

[Image courtesy of DayLife]

We'd give you two guesses on how we feel about this trend, but you only need one. BenQ has just followed Pioneer's lead and dropped the price of its BR1000 Blu-ray optical drive a full 33% in Taiwan. Post-discount, the BD-ROM unit now sits at around NT$3,650 (or $120 to you Americans). SonyNEC Optiarc projected that we'd see these internal drives selling for under $100 before 2009, and it looks like its prophecy will indeed come true. Now, as soon as the standalone players start heading in the same direction, we'll be all smiles.

Wow, Toys 'R Us was only a day off. Sure enough, Sony's BDP-S350 -- which was first introduced / spotted in February -- has gone on sale at Sony Style retail outlets, the Sony Style website and other fine retailers near you. If you're looking for a quick refresher, this Profile 2.0-compliant deck supports BonusView (picture-in-picture), but curiously enough, Sony mentions that "a firmware update enabling BD-Live is planned [for] later this year." You'll also find full 1080p output, 7.1-channel Dolby TrueHD / DTS-HD Master Audio support and a promise to suck down 21% less power in playback compared to the BDP-S300. All yours for $400 (give or take a few pennies).

Well, would you look at that. Just months after we heard whispers that the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) would be granting a handful or two of China-based manufacturers with Blu-ray licenses comes a slew of brochure shots proving that said scenario has apparently gone down. Or either Desay, Hotwell, Hualu and VTREK have taken it upon themselves to conjure up BD decks and show 'em off at the SinoCES show floor without permission (but we're banking on the former). As expected, none of these look particularly awe-inspiring, but for those hoping to see vanilla players dip under the $200 (or lower) price point, this could be very, very good news. Hit the read link for more details on each.

Oh yeah, Onkyo's definitely going to dish out a Blu-ray player of its own later this year, but it can't just sit idly until that one has spent adequate time in the oven, now can it? Say hello to the DV-SP406, a 1080p upscaling DVD player that delivers upconverted content over HDMI. You won't find SACD / DVD-Audio compatibility here, but you will find coaxial / optical digital audio ports, a USB socket for loading up multimedia files and a 180MHz / 14-bit video DAC. Not too much else to gloat about beyond that, but considering the $125 street price (available now in black or silver), we suppose that's just alright.

[Via RandomlyAccessed, thanks littlefarny]

With its latest EMMA3P Blu-ray SoC just launched, NEC is already looking to the future with its next generation EMMA3PF chip, that takes all the features of its most recent hardware, and adds the hardware to control the Blu-ray drive itself into a single processor (as pictured above). These chips will start sample shipments in September, and are expected to continue to drive Blu-ray player prices down. Staying a step ahead of the competition like Panasonic, Broadcom and Sigma is key since the company hopes to double its sales of Blu-ray hardware in the next two years, owning 40% of the market by March 2009, and half in March 2011. Cheaper players with full functionality? Sign us up.

Read - Impress
Read - Reuters

The latest PlayStation 3 2.4x firmware update added more than just the long-awaited in-game XMB access. Upscaling from Blu-ray discs is now supported, allowing the system to deinterlace 1080i to 1080p on its own, if you have a homemade BDAV formatted disc recorded in less-than-full HD. Retail Blu-ray flicks are BDMV formatted, so for certain discs not in 1080p (mostly concerts), they'll still be played only in their native resolution. Also included is upscaling, frame noise reduction and block noise reduction for video played off the PS3 HDD or external storage media, and DTS-ES and DTS 96/24 compatibility on Blu-ray discs. AVSForum posters are also reporting some DTS-HD 7.1 discs now map to their speakers properly, but as we've seen, your experience may vary.

Read - PS3 2.41 System Update
Read - PS3 Firmware 2.4x- Master Thread

While we fortunate Americans have been renting Blu-ray Discs from Blockbuster for a good while now, citizens of Taiwan haven't had the same privilege. Thankfully, all that's getting set to change, as the rental chain has committed to offering up 50 BD titles in each Taiwanese location before the end of this month. A new partnership between it and Samsung will also place Sammy's BD players (the BD-P1500, in particular) in-store for patrons to experience the 1080p difference, and it's said that Samsung manager Li Je-rong believes that "with strong channel assistance from Blockbuster and Tsann Kuen, consumers will become more familiar with Blu-ray." As for pricing, expect to pay NT$150 ($4.93) for each Blu-ray movie versus NT$100 ($3.29) for traditional DVDs.

We're still rather bummed that Epson failed to add in a third option for its Ensemble HD Home Cinema System that included a Blu-ray player, but nevertheless, those interested in picking up a complete -- and we mean complete -- home theater system at once can finally do so. Said package is available with your choice of a PowerLite 1080p or 720p projector, a 100-inch motorized screen, upconverting DVD player, Atlantic Technology 5.1 speaker system, universal remote, every single cable you'll need to hook things up, a wire management track system and all necessary mounting brackets. Ready for the sting? You're looking at $6,999 for the 1080p system and $4,999 for the 720p edition.

Buried under predictions that 2012 will bring dominance for Blu-ray over DVD and breaking news that the PS3 just may have had a hand in winning the format war the Entertainment Merchant's Association 2008 Annual Report on the Home Entertainment Industry holds survey results showing 87% of PS3 owners reported they watch Blu-ray movies on their console. That's a stark contrast to last year's NPD survey indicating 60% of owners didn't even know it played them. We don't know what's behind the jump, be it better marketing/consumer education, or something wrong with how one the surveys were conducted. You can mull that one over during the fast money round while also peeping results that say 22% of HDTV owners think they're watching HD programming, but in fact are not -- not like we haven't heard that before.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Our good friends at FormatWarCentral has kicked off a new Blu-ray player undressing series with the recently-updated Panasonic DMP-BD30K. Not a lot of big surprises behind the sheet metal kimono -- there's a lot of air inside the chassis. Click on through for photos of the sparsely populated circuit boards, which are a pretty good indication that the engineering and design of these Profile 1.1 players are pretty mature. All that empty space also bodes well for some price-cutting possibilities, we hope. Of course, the real excitement will come as more players go through the FormatWarCentral lab -- rebadgers/rebranders, beware!

[Image courtesy FormatWarCentral]

We keep hoping that Toshiba will come to its senses and just let this whole thing die, but no. Apparently insistent on keeping the last-generation format alive for as long as it possibly can, it seems the outfit is getting ever-closer to a super-resolution DVD player that would reportedly upscale DVD content like nothing we've ever seen. The latest tidbit in this woefully depressing saga is a newly approved DVD Download DL logo, which was given the final thumbs-up by the DVD Forum Steering Committee last month. In reality, no one outside of Tosh's headquarters has any idea if this development is indeed intrinsically related, but at this point, we wouldn't be shocked one bit to find that it was. Then again, the June 11th meeting also saw specifications for CH-DVD approved, so here's to hoping Toshiba isn't jumping on that bandwagon fiery wreck.

[Via TG Daily]

Read - DVD Forum approval
Read - Discussion / rumors

When Sony introduced its classically-styled BDP-S350 Blu-ray player in late February, all we knew was that the $400 machine would land sometime this summer. Now, we're seeing a pre-order page (on Toys R Us, admittedly) that pegs the ship date at July 15th. Yeah, a fortnight from now. The price remains unchanged at $399.99, but at least you'll find Profile 2.0 compatibility as well as bitstream support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, right? Okay, now that it's a date, who's buying (and more importantly, who's not?)

[Thanks, Rahul]

In case you needed something stamped from Onkyo itself in order to believe that a Blu-ray player was on the way, here's your sign. Said outfit has just announced that a currently unnamed BD player (its first, in fact) will hit the "international" market in late 2008. Unfortunately, details beyond that are scant, as all we're told is that it'll play nice with Onkyo's AV receivers, pack an HDMI port and decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats. Additionally, we aren't notified of whether Onkyo has any plans of bringing the elusive deck stateside, and we haven't a clue about pricing. But hey, you can go ahead and circle all of Q4 to be on the lookout.

[Via Electronic House]

The downturn in the housing market is producing some interesting cross-marketing promotions. Well-heeled jet-setters moving into NYC's SoHo Renwick luxury condos when it opens in 2009 will be greeted by Bang & Olufsen gear, including a BeoVision 8 32-inch LCD TV, BeoSound 4 audio player and a BeoLab 4000 speaker. For sure, luxury space comes at a premium price in SoHo, so we can understand the desire of residents to own a compact system. And with the Renwick's all-glass exterior, the super-bright output of an LCD display also makes sense. Top it all off with B&O's famous design, and you've got a system that's a good fit for the target demographic. Sure, it's not the most bang-for-your-buck setup, but we don't really expect that Renwick residents will be counting pennies anyways -- prices for the units start at $975,000 for a one-bedroom unit. For that price, couldn't they toss in a larger 1080p set?