Blu-Ray May Pose Battery Dilemma, Sony Announces New Players

In an effort to move on from the HD DVD demise, I wanted to discuss two recent bits of Blu-ray news that caught my attention today:First off, we have word from Wired that Blu-ray drives in laptops may wreak havoc on battery performance. This makes sense, and it would have been an issue for HD DVD as well because both formats required significant CPU horsepower to decode their massive video files. Now that we’re beginning to see hardware Blu-ray decoding built into newer notebook graphic cards, it should become less of a problem. Wired notes that another factor in this battery drain is the titular high powered blue laser of the format, which is something Sony would have to fix in further revisions of Blu-ray drives.

Until we see massive improvements in battery technology, we’re going to be running into this issue often every time we want to add cutting edge features into our notebooks. Wired references others who believe that Blu-ray will find more of a home on desktop computers which don’t have to worry about these power concerns.Personally, I think that’s going to be the trend because people want to watch high def movies on larger monitors, not their laptop screens.

In other Blu-ray news, Yahoo News is reporting on Sony’s two latest Blu-ray player releases. Both support Profile 2.0, which includes advanced special features like Bonus View (Picture-in-Picture), and BD-Live internet connectivity. Both players will include ports for local storage, and the more expensive unit includes 1GB of built-in storage as well. The $400 BDP-S350 player will be releasing this summer, and the $500 BDP-S550 in the fall.

I suppose with HD DVD down and out, Sony doesn’t really have any impetus to lower their prices, so don’t expect to be seeing $200 Profile 2.0 until the end of 2009. Sure, you’ll certainly see the current crop of Blu-ray players dropping in price, but that’s certainly not a wise decision given that they’re feature gimped. Also, don’t forget that Sony definitely wants to keep the PS3 as the Blu-ray player of choice in consumer’s minds, a goal that will keep Blu-ray players priced high for some time now.

Richard Doherty, an analyst in the article, correctly points out that HD-DVD prices were artificially low because Toshiba was getting desperate, but I still don’t think that excuses Sony from not bringing down there prices. He also expects innovation within the Blu-ray player arena to rise as third parties focus more on their development.

This is something I’ll be keeping a close eye on, because I personally think it’s in Sony’s best interest to stifle third-party Blu-ray players to keep the PS3 as king. More on that quack theory later.