While Sony may have pushed back its standalone Blu-ray players until August, they expect to release a laptop next week, the Sony Vaio AR Premium with a Blu-ray writer capable of playing movies and recording high definition video content. However, it will not come cheap with a retail price tag of $3,500, a huge difference over the $1,800 for the same laptop shipped with a DVD burner instead. The laptop also features 1GB of RAM, a 17" screen and includes the movie "House of Flying Daggers" on Blu-ray.
By the end of this month, Sony will also launch a multimedia desktop PC, the RC300 which includes a Blu-ray writer. While the BDP-S1 standalone Blu-ray player has been postponed until August 15th, Sony will begin taking pre-orders for this.
While the Vaio AR Premium laptop will be capable of recording high definition content, this is expected to be limited to from camcorders, as Sony along with other Blu-ray manufacturers intend preventing their equipment from being used for piracy.
|
The launch of the Blu-ray-enabled notebook will mark Sony's commercial push into the high-definition disc wars. By the end of June, the company will also release the RC300 desktop, a multimedia PC that will come with a Blu-ray drive. |
With this costing $1,700 more than the model with a DVD writer, this gives a clear indication that the Blu-ray drive accounts for around half the price of the laptop! At that price, it would make them far more susceptible to theft, particularly if there is any clear indication that would make others aware that this is no ordinary laptop. On the other hand, their price will be well outside the range for the average consumer.
Source: ZD Net news
Next: Sony launches their first Blu-ray disc media in the Asia Pacific
Previous: Samsung launches 18X rewritable DVD drive with 12X DVD-RAM recording 
1. Spending so much money for a laptop.
2. Supporting BluRay DRM crap
more crap in the way 