Amazon Cuts Blu-ray Movie Pricing– Online retailer Amazon.com is now offering select Blu-ray movie titles for as low as $7.99. Halloween movies and TV shows will have an up to 59% discount off retail. Retailers and manufacturers are preparing for a strong 2008 holiday shopping push in spite of the recession. Warner Bros. offered a $50 discount on discs when a Sony Blu-ray player was purchased. Target is offering a free $40 gift card to customers purchasing a Blu-ray player and two new movies if both originate from Sony. Circuit City has the Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player for $199.96 shipped. Sony has launched the Sony Pictures Blu-ray Club, which will reward customers for purchasing movies on Blu-ray and make them eligible to win Sony products.
First Impression Music Ultimate Disc – The audiophile F.I.M. label has handcrafted a set of two custom optical discs string for demonstration purposes. Their “Ultimate Disc” (UD) combines a 24 karat gold pressing with Resonance Control Coating. It is directly burned from the master disc or hard drive, one at a time, then washing by de-ionized water, and finally dynamically balanced and tested with an average block error rate lower than 5 (220 is the industry standard). The repertory was carefully selected from the F.I.M. catalog, which includes many classic audiophile albums from other sources. Due to the expenses of handcrafting the two-disc set, the cost is $300 each. It has not been decided if the set will be released on the market.
Another F.I.M. project is what may be the world’s first effort to transfer a direct-to-disc LP directly to digital format. F.I.M. used the latest mastering technology of 352.8K/24-bit DXD (Digital Extreme Definition) and eliminated all other generations of transfer in the process. Many feel that no two-channel format has ever equaled the fidelity of the best direct-to-disc vinyl LPs (and those cut at 45 rpm are better yet). The album is the direct-to-disc classic Jun Fukamachi at Steinway.
Denon Debuts High-End SACD Player – Denon’s new DCD-SX weighs 60 lbs., has their Advanced Alpha 32 Processing which upconverts CDs to 32 bit and reduces distortion, uses Denon’s DAC Master Clock, and has the third generation Denon Link to transfer highest quality multichannel SACD as a DSD bitstream to compatible AVRs or preamp/processors. The stereo outputs are fully balanced XLR or RCA and 192K/32-bit. Available next month, retail will be about $7,600.
Sony Desktop for Movie Buffs – Sony has introduced in Japan their new Vaio JS1 computer, which is designed to compete with Apple’s iMac, having a sleek 20-inch screen, Dolby HT and even SACD playback. It comes with a 500GB hard drive and 3GB of RAM. Price was not announced, nor availability in the U.S.
