Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, wrote in an email that Microsoft’s upcoming operating system, Windows 7, will not have native Blu-Ray playback support. Despite that, you will be able to burn Blu-Ray discs as an integrated feature though.

This means that you still will be required to buy dedicated software like Power DVD, for example, to watch Blu-Ray movies in Windows 7. On the other hand, OEMs and Blu-Ray drive makers will be able to extend the Windows Media Center, in order to support Blu-Ray playback by means of a codec.

“Blu-Ray support will be provided by PC makers or BRD drive makers. We have new extensibility in media center for those that provide BRD playback to support integrated playback. We do have support for burning BRD data discs,” Sinofsky wrote.

Samsung Electronics America Inc., a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Corporation, the number one worldwide brand of LCD display products, today announced the launch of a new line of 31 series LED-backlit monitors. This new line-up is an ideal option for budget-conscious users looking for the energy-saving benefits of an LED monitor in a stylish and affordable package.

“The 31 series LED monitors fit the needs of consumers looking to upgrade to an LED monitor on a budget, especially this holiday season,” said Young Bae, director of display marketing, Samsung Enterprise Business Division. “This line of monitors, designed with students and small and home office users in mind, stays true to Samsung’s legacy of sleek design and superior LED performance.”

Eco-conscious design
Users of the 31 series monitors save money on their electricity bills and save landfills from hazardous waste. The displays each consume up to 40 percent less energy than same-sized CCFL backlit monitors and contain no mercury or halogens making them easier to recycle. As a result, the 31 series monitors have earned the prestigious Energy Star 5.0 rating.

The 31 series monitors are built to fit almost any office or home aesthetic, with availability in four sizes – the 20 inch, BX2031, 21.5 inch BX2231, 23 inch BX2331 and 24 inch BX2431.

Unmatched image quality
The 31 series monitors offer bold colors and crisp picture quality with Samsung’s signature LED backlighting technology and limit any ghosting effects with a rapid response time. The monitors also contain Samsung’s “Magic Angle” technology, ensuring that whatever angle the image is viewed from, there are settings that will allow the user to experience full contrast and color depth.

Entertainment connectivity
Not only are 31 series monitors an attractive addition to a dorm room, home or office, they also allow the user to connect to a Blu-ray player and an HD gaming system simultaneously with 2 HDMI ports. The multiple ports help students and professionals easily transition between work and fun.

31 Series Key Specs

* Ultra-slim 19mm design
* Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution (1600×900 in BX2031)
* 2ms Response Time (5ms in BX2031)
* Mega Dynamic Contrast Ratio (5,000,000:1)
* 2 HDMI inputs (BX2031 includes VGA and DVI-D; no HDMI)

The 31 Series will be available in October 2010, priced at $169 (BX2031), $199 (BX2231), $239 (BX2331) and $279 (BX2431). It will be available through Amazon, TigerDirect, Buy.com, Staples, Office Depot, Fry’s and Micro Center.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 420 GPU is the new low-end solution for internet and office users who choose to live a tranquil life without the disturbing noises of the fans. This pretty much means that you have to say ‘hello’ to this passive cooling graphics card, which pushes the limits of the new video generation.

Latest 3D movies and Blu-ray 3D titles, it’s just a great choice for staying home up at night watching your favorite film. In addition, it seems that nVIDIA has another solution for you, called DirectX11 domination. Level-up your game with a GeForce 400 series and replace your DX9 and DX11 titles. Nevertheless with NVIDIA Verde™ Drivers, you get continuous performance optimizations for the life of your GeForce GPU.

Speaking of specifications, the card comes with 48 CUDA Cores, 700 Mhz Graphics Core, 1400 MHz of Processor Clock (aka Shaders) and finally 900 Mhz Memory Clock. The standard memory capacity is 2 GB DDR3 (really, why that much?) over a 128-bit interface that offers a memory bandwidth of 28.8 GB/sec. All known features are also supported, such as nVIDIA 3D Vision Ready, PureVideo, PsysX, CUDA, DirectX, OpenGL and PCI-e 2.0 x16 lanes port. As for the display support, there is maximum digital resolution of 2560×1600 and maximum VGA resolution 2048×1536.

Finally, let’s plug our displays in that. So, looking the back I/O panel you will be familiar with a DVI-I, HDMI and VGA connectivity ports. Please notice that Multi-monitor, HDCP, HDMI and there is also an audio input for that high definition videos, all of them are also enabled. The card has maximum GPU temp at 105 C degrees and maximum TDP of 50W. So, is this an answer to ATI Radeon 5450 ? We will soon find it out. For the time being, there are no any prices or release dates confirmed.

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This is a WHQL-certified release from the Release 256 family of drivers (versions 256.xx to 259.xx). This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, and 400-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs.

New in Release 258.96

* Adds support for GeForce GTX 460.
* Adds support for NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround technology.
* Adds additional performance increases for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games (these improvements are in addition to the previously reported Release 256 improvements). The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured with GeForce GTX 480. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

• Up to 11% in Aliens vs. Predator (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 7% in Crysis: Warhead (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Gamer)
• Up to 4% in H.A.W.X (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Very High)
• Up to 10% in Just Cause 2 (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Concrete Jungle)
• Up to 6% in Metro 2033 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 10% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
• Up to 12% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
• Up to 4% in World in Conflict (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)

* Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0224.
* Upgrades HD Audio driver version 1.0.15.0 (for supported GPUs).
* Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.

New in Release 256 Drivers

* Adds support for Blu-ray 3D with NVIDIA 3D Vision technology.
* Increases performance for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured with GeForce GTX 480. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

• Up to 14% in Aliens vs. Predator (1920×1200 noAA/AF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 4% in Batman: Arkham Asylum (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF PhysX=High)
• Up to 5% in BattleForge (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Very High settings)
• Up to 5% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
• Up to 4% in Crysis: Warhead (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Enthusiast setting)
• Up to 24% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (1920×1200 no AA/AF)
• Up to 9% in Far Cry 2 (2560×1600 8xAA/16xAF)
• Up to 25% in Just Cause 2 (2560×1600 no AA/AF – Concrete Jungle)
• Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (1920×1200 no AA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 40% in Metro 2033 with SLI ((1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
• Up to 8% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920×1200 no AA/AF – Day)
• Up to 110% in Stone Giant with SLI (2650×1600 – Tessellation on, DoF on)
• Up to 6% in The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena (2560×1600 no AA/AF)
• Up to 9% in Unigine: Tropics (2560×1600 no AA/AF – OpenGL)
• Up to 5% in 3DMark Vantage (Performance and Extreme Presets)
• Up to 19% with Transparency AA (1920×1200 4xTrSS – measured in Crysis)

* Adds support for OpenGL 4.0 for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs.
* Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.1 which includes significant performance increases for double precision math operations.
* Adds support for new extreme Antialiasing modes for 3-way SLI PCs, including up to SLI48x AA for GeForce 200 series GPUs and up to SLI96x AA for GeForce GTX 400 series GPUs.
* Adds support for a new ‘Quality’ mode for NVIDIA’s Ambient Occlusion control panel feature.
* Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel setup page for SLI and PhysX for ultimate control over multi-gpu configurations.
* Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel feature for ultimate control over CUDA GPUs, allowing the user to effectively choose which GPU will power each CUDA application.

Download:

ForceWare 258.96 Win 7 | Vista (64-bit) WHQL
ForceWare 258.96 Win 7 | Vista (32-bit) WHQL
ForceWare 258.96 Windows XP WHQL (32-bit)

Sony have announced three new home audio systems, with two soundbars for the cable-phobic and a 5.1 surround setup for those slightly more ambitious.

The Sony HT-SF470 is a 3D-capable 1000 watt (157W x 5 +167W sub) system with three HDMI inputs and an HDMI pass-through port, together with BRAVIA Sync, a Digital Media Port for use with an optional iPod cradle, two digital audio inputs (coax and optical) and digital cinema auto calibration for straightforward setup.

As for the HT-CT350, that has 400W (100 watts x 3 channels + 100 watts subwoofer) while the HT-CT150 has 340W (85 watts x 3 channels + 85 watts sub). Both have three HDMI inputs and one HDMI output, and support LPCM Blu-ray Disc audio together with 3D pass-through. They too have dual digital audio inputs, as well as BRAVIA Sync and iPod cradle compatibility.

The CT350 comes with a bracket for attaching it to Sony’s 40-inch and larger HDTVs, while the CT150 has the same for 32-inch sets. Both sound bars will go on sale in May, priced at $400 for the CT350 and $300 for the C150. Meanwhile the HT-SF470 will arrive in June, priced at $550.

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The Blu-ray Disc Association has announced the new BDXL format, which will provide customers with discs with a capacity of up to 128GB (write-once) or 100GB (rewriteable).

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) today announced two new media specifications that use Blu-ray Disc technology to provide targeted functionality for commercial and consumer applications. The specifications for BDXL™ (High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable discs) and IH-BD (Intra-Hybrid discs) are expected in the next few months.

The BDXL specification, which is targeted primarily at commercial segments such as broadcasting, medical and document imaging enterprises with significant archiving needs, will provide customers with write-once options on 100GB and 128GB capacity discs and rewritable capability on 100GB discs. The discs reach these capacities by incorporating three to four recordable layers. A consumer version of BDXL is also expected, particularly in those regions where BD recorders have achieved broad consumer acceptance.

“Professional industries have expressed a desire to find optical disc solutions that enable them to transition away from magnetic media for their archiving needs,” said Victor Matsuda, Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions Committee chair. “Leveraging Blu-ray Disc to meet this need provides professional enterprises with a compact, stable and long term solution for archiving large amounts of sensitive data, video and graphic images using a proven and widely accepted optical technology.”

The Intra-Hybrid Blu-ray Disc (IH-BD) incorporates a single BD-ROM layer and a single BD-RE layer so as to enable the user to view, but not overwrite, critical published data while providing the flexibility to include relevant personal data on the same physical disc. This allows for consumer specific applications where combining published content with related user data on a convenient, single volume is desirable. Both the ROM and the RE layers on IH-BD discs provide 25GB of capacity.

Because both BDXL and IH-BD are specially designed formats with specific market segments in mind, newly-designed hardware is required to play back or record BDXL or IH-BD media. However, because the new media specifications are extensions of current Blu-ray Disc technology, future BDXL and IH-BD devices can be designed to support existing 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray Discs.

Sources report that Blu-ray disk drives are now priced between $70 and $80, which is still significantly higher than the $20 price point of DVD drives. Nevertheless, the general impression is that it is only a matter of time before the industry moves on, especially considering that the Blu-ray format is supported by companies such as Broadcom, NEC and MediaTek.

There are two main reasons why DVDs are still more popular than BRs. One is, as already mentioned, price. Blu-ray burners have definitely gotten less expensive, to the point where there is no longer a high-enough price gap to dissuade end-users from purchasing one.

Unfortunately, Blu-ray disks themselves are still considerably more expensive than DVDs. The second reason is the actual multimedia capabilities themselves. The fact that Blu-ray quality is significantly superior to that of DVDs is undisputed, but the difference is not exactly relevant for regular home TVs. Full HD video formats make more sense on wall-sized TVs or such display solutions.

An analyst from NPD Group believes that basic devices can be obtained for as little as $49 on Black Friday.

“It’s conceivable we could see a $49 Blu-ray player on Black Friday, but I think we’ll see more $99 deals. Anything is possible,” said Ross Rubin, NPD Group’s director of industry analysis, in an interview with Video Business web-site.

At present many Blu-ray profile 2.0 players with BDLive, BonusView and video streaming support already cost $199, substantially less than back in 2008. Moreover, since large manufacturers would like to sell off their previous-generation BD profile 1.1 players, it is highly likely that on Black Friday those players will be available for $99, whereas first-generation BD profile 1.0 devices may cost just about $49.

According to Consumer Electronics Association, Blu-ray disc playback devices sold 3.3 million units through the first three quarters of 2009, an increase of 13% over same period last year. Through the first three quarters of 2009, Blu-ray Disc set-top player sales grew 112% over same period last year. Blu-ray playback device households are nearly 11.7 million and include PlayStation 3 consoles. Approximately 80% of Blu-ray devices are BD-Live capable.

“We’ve seen very strong growth in Blu-ray players this year. It has been a bright spot in a very gloomy industry landscape. Nearly all other electronics device categories have been down, such as digital cameras and MP3 players,” said Mr. Rubin.

Auzentech has released the Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD, an HDMI 1.3a compliant audio card. The Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD has been designed around the latest Creative PCI Express X-Fi audio processor.

When paired with CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra software, the X-Fi HomeTheater HD sound card provides the highest quality lossless multi-channel audio experience for enjoying Blu-ray discs at home (24 bit, 192 kHz), taking full advantage of lossless digital audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD™ Master Audio.

The X-Fi HomeTheater HD sound card provides full quality Blu-ray audio through eight 24-bit analog outputs, as well as providing the capability to “bitstream” the audio through your HDMI 1.3 connection. Simply route your HDMI video signal from your video card or integrated graphics output through the X-Fi HomeTheater HD, and the full quality audio is merged with the video signal, providing a single cable connection to your HDMI 1.3a capable television or receiver.

The Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD audio card is the only native PCI Express HDMI 1.3a compliant card in the market that supports bitstream audio and bit-by-bit video output.

For home theater enthusiasts, the processor includes HDMI 1.3a support and features Dolby Digital and DTS encoding for a single-cable connection to home theater systems. For gamers, the card leverages the power of the PCI Express-optimized X-Fi processor to deliver accelerated audio for improved game performance, with ultra-realistic EAX 5.0 effects and 3D positional audio. For audiophiles, Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD includes an independent Headphone Amplifier, Microphone Pre-Amp, and implements Auzentech’s Pointing Ground Design™ which greatly reduces noise and distortion in the circuitry.

The Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD brings together technologies of Auzentech, Creative Labs, CyberLink and Silicon Image.

“Auzentech and CyberLink have worked in collaboration to bring this amazing sound card to the market, and we’re pleased that this masterpiece is now available” said Alice Chang, CEO of CyberLink. “The X-Fi HomeTheater HD is the ultimate sound card for the home theater PC enthusiast, delivering the highest quality multi-channel audio through HDMI or via high quality analog connections.”

“We would like to thank all our customers who have patiently waited through the long development cycle, and all parties involved in creating the finest sound card to enter the market so far,” said Stephane Bae, President of Auzentech, Inc. “By teaming up with Industry leaders Creative, CyberLink and Silicon Image, end-users and Home Theater enthusiasts can enjoy Blu-Ray in its full glory.”

The Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD is priced at $249.99.

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Now, if you like to think big we should recommend you the CX960 MegaChanger. Sony has announced three brand new Blu-ray players today that are sure to capture the attention of the high-end market. First up is the BDP-CX960 MegaChanger, which can actually hold up to 400 Blu-ray titles at one time.

It can also hold DVDs and CDs, if you’d like, and sports Ethernet, BD-Live support, DTS-HD Master Audio, 7.1-channel Dolby TrueHD, and more. It will be available in the fall for about $800. Next is the CX7000ES, which can be used as a multi-room device with IR and serial ports and 12-bit Deep color support all for about $1,900 once it’s released next month.

Also announced today was the BDP-S1000ES, which is a single-disc Blu-ray player that features 14-bit image processing, 802.11n Wi-Fi, BD-Live support and the same audio specs as the MegaChanger models. You can get this player next month for about $700.