Tag: Disc

Architect Laurinda Spear created the design for this analog watch that uses a series of turning discs instead of traditional hands. The timepiece’s three independently revolving rings are used to display hours, minutes and seconds. A gap in each ring indicates the current time.

By now, we’ve all heard plenty about Blu-Ray, HD DVD and the so-called HD “format wars”. Now a little upstart disc format known as HD VMD has started to ship their very first players for less than half (correction: now just a little bit less than) the price of the cheapest standalone Blu-Ray and HD DVD machines.

In my travels, I’ve seen a few clocks made from old hard drives. They’re typically made by stripping out the guts of an old hard drive, slapping a cheap $2 clock mechanism through the platters, then call it a day.

Artist Daniel Rozin has been creating mind-blowing interactive artworks, combining computers, video cameras and mixed media since 1999. One of his more recent works was this hybrid digital/analog mirror which reflects images from passers-by using a huge grid of rotating circles. Daniel’s Circles Mirror is an amazing combination of mechanical and digital technologies.

Electronics manufacturer Sharp has revealed their first Blu-ray high definition video disc player. The BD-HP20S is expected to hit stores towards the end of this year and looks like a pretty nice player overall. The BD-HP20S will feature full 1080p resolution with 24 frame-per-second playback, which is ideal since most movies are shot at 24fps.

While digital players have put a major dent in the CD business, there’s something about having your tunes stored on something a little more tangible. To shake the old CD up a bit, the designers of Poland’s Baba Akcja have taken the boring round disc and turned it into something far more visually interesting. The discs were designed to symbolize various computer viruses, but I’m just drawn to the bright colors and shapes.

Much of the industry is already saying that Blu-ray is winning the high-def format wars, so it’s actually surprising to hear that the Blu-ray Disc Association is hedging their bets even more by giving away free discs with the purchase of their players. That’s right.

This modern update to the classic flying disc adds colorful LED illumination to light its way through its flight path. The Black Jax Odyssey Ultimate Flying Disc is loaded with four extra bright LEDs, powered by a rechargeable Lithium battery. Amazingly, even with the circuitry, the disc weighs in at an impressively light 185 grams, ensuring a smooth flight through the air.

Pioneer today revealed their latest Blu-ray disc player, the Elite BDP-94HD. The BDP-94HD is a true second-generation Blu-ray player, featuring such niceties as CEC to control other devices control over HDMI cable. The player also has full support for Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus 7.1

According to a recent post over on AVS Forum, Wal-Mart is reportedly working with Taiwanese manufacturer Fuh Yuan to crank out HD DVD players for a wholesale cost of just $50 per unit, based on an initial commitment of 2 million players.

I was on the Microsoft Xbox website when I stumbled across this interesting form… Apparently, Microsoft is now offering a disc replacement program for certain Xbox 360 titles. According to the site, they will replace certain discs that have been damaged for any reason for $20 bucks each.

With all the recent buzz about how Blu-ray is leading HD DVD in the high definition “format war,” there’s a new wildcard that could shake things up. While Sony certainly has a leg up on the race with millions of PlayStation 3 consoles out there, one big road block to broad adoption of either high definition disc format is the high cost of standalone players.

If you’ve got a big library of CDs, DVDs or other 5-inch discs, this shmancy storage system can help keep your library organized and looking cool too. The $489 BlueDot Divita Storage Tower holds up to 100 CDs or DVDs and lets you easily access them by disc name using the built-in 1.8″

This minimal CD player design looks really beautiful on the surface, with a case made from solid walnut and matching speakers to go with it. The design actually exposes half of the CD during playback, which seems highly impractical and downright dangerous. While it certainly looks cool to have the CD stick out of the player, I wouldn’t want to accidentally bump into a disc rotating at 500+ revolutions per minute.

According to a recent report from ABI Research, the HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray format war will be won not by either format, but by dual-format players, such as the recently released LG BH100 combo player. According to the Steve Wilson, ABI’s principal consumer electronics analyst: “We believe that universal players will come to dominate the high-definition DVD player market.” In addition to the LG player that hit shelves this week, Samsung and other vendors are expected to release combination HD DVD / Blu-Ray players in the coming months.

The folks over at Home Theater Blog got their grubby little mitts on a Toshiba’s second generation HD DVD player, the HD-XA2 and we’re pleased to hear that the horrifically slow load times of the first generation HD-A1 and HD-XA1 appear to be a thing of the past. The new $499 model is reported to load discs in under 20 seconds in most cases, which is a significant improvement over the minute-plus load times of the earlier models.