Sony is the main company behind the Blu-ray drive, as seen here on the VAIO VGN-AR18.
It's game on in the next-generation DVD battle. Hot on the heels of Toshiba's release of Australia's first HD DVD equipped notebook, Sony has announced that it will be bringing in Blu-ray in the form of theVAIO VGN-AR18 laptop from next month.
But it seems that consumers shouldn't hold their breath for dedicated home entertainment Blu-ray players to arrive in Australia. Sony Australia Deputy Managing Director Carl Rose said the company had no immediate plans to release home Blu-ray players locally. Rose said Sony was, however, planning to have products locally before the end of April 2007.
The AU$5499 VAIO VGN-AR18 will be the first device in Australia to feature a Blu-ray drive. Blu-ray and HD DVD are two competing next generation DVD formats, with main HD DVD backer Toshiba scoring first to market bragging rights with last week's release of the Qosmio G30.
While both the Qosmio and the VAIO offer high definition playback and expanded storage capabilities thanks to their next-generation DVD drives, both are hamstrung by a lack of media content. There are currently no HD DVD or Blu-ray movies locally available, although Sony's Rose said he was confident Blu-ray titles would be available in Australia before the end of the year.
Blu-ray movies bought from overseas (such as the US), however, will work on the VAIO VGN-AR18. The US already has both Blu-ray and HD DVD home players available. Despite the slow start in Australia, Rose forecasted that next generation DVD players would reach the mass adoption stage locally by 2010.
The VAIO VGN-AR18 can both read and write to Blu-ray discs, and can also play/write CDs and DVDs. The notebook features a 17" screen, 160GB hard disk, Intel Core Duo T2600 2.16GHz and 256MB of video memory.
Altech Computer had planed to release a Blu-ray equipped Media Centre locally by this month. An Altech spokesman said the company was still waiting on Blu-ray drive shipments, and no fixed date had been set for the release of the Altech Maestro Pro 2 (Blu-ray Edition).
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