10 Cool Ways to Go Blu-ray

In what could be considered a victory lap, Sony Tuesday rolled out two new Blu-ray Disc players that add the ability to access advanced interactive features.

The new players, the BDP-S350 and BDP-S550, both support BonusView, a picture-in-picture feature offered on some Blu-ray movie titles. In addition, Sony has added support for BD-Live, a feature used to connect to interactive content online. When it ships this summer, the BDP-S350 will include an Ethernet port that makes it BD-Live ready (requiring a later firmware update to access Internet content), while the BDP-S550 will offer both BonusView and BD-Live when it ships this fall. They will be priced at approximately $400 and $500, respectively.

The product launch comes a week after rival Toshiba ceded victory to Sony's Blu-ray when it revealed plans to halt its HD DVD product business by the end of March. The HD DVD and Blu-ray formats had been battling for supremacy in the high-def DVD space.

In addition to Sony's new players, we found a few more options for customers that want to go Blu-ray's way:

PCs
Whether it's desktops or laptops, several vendors are offering business-class and consumer-grade PCs that incorporate Blu-ray. Hewlett-Packard's Compaq 8710w Mobile Workstation laptop, for one, is geared toward business users that need high-end performance without being tied to their desks. It is available with a 17-inch display, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz processors and 2GBytes of memory. Another option might be Sony's Vaio RM HD Video Editing System, a desktop setup that includes the software required to capture, edit and burn video in the Blu-ray format. Dell's in the game too with its Precision M6300 Workstation laptop.

Home Integration
With all of that Blu-ray content buzzing around, how will consumers enjoy it? Panasonic has a few ideas, including its forthcoming SC-BT100 "home theater in a box," which supports high-definition 1080p Blu-ray video. Not to be outdone, Sony offers its HES-V1000 Home Entertainment Sever, which features a 200-disc Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD changer and a 500Gbyte hard drive.

Peripherals
Hitachi appeals to the Quentin Tarantino in all of us with its DZ-BD70A Blu-ray Camcorder, which can record approximately one hour of high-def video on an 8cm single-sided Blu-ray disc. Meanwhile, Sony's BDU-X10S is an internal BD-ROM drive that can turn a PC into a high-def Blu-ray Disc player. It comes with CyberLink's PowerDVD BD Edition playback software.

For a closer look at these and the rest of our 10 Cool Ways to Go Blu-ray, click here.