Sharp Electronics has announced that they will release their first Blu-ray player, the BD-HP20S, this fall. No price info but here are some specs: output 1080p at 24fps (and 60fps) and supports Dolby TrueHD; comes equipped with HDMI v1.3 as well as 5.1 analog outs.

odd-, the company with the name that breaks all writing style rules (like always capitalizing the first letter of a sentence), will be releasing the P480DN, a device that breaks other rules (like not stuffing too many features into a single device). You know what they say about being a Jack of all trades. But, if they pull it off with an interface that  manages everything with aplomb, some people will be quite pleased with built-in: standard PMP functionality, DMB TV tuner (not so helpful in the US, granted), SD expansion, 30GB or 60GB HDD, GPS, e-dictionary, all powered by Windows CE. Whew, that’s a mouthful. Pricing and availability are unknown, but "King’s Ransom" comes to mind.

Radboud University Nijmegan (in the Netherlands, and quite a mouthful), has developed a laser-based storage system that is 100 times quicker than the plain old hard drive (POHD) we’re used to. There’s been a bunch of research into light-based computing, and much of it’s been pretty positive–if not yet quite practical. Now, if they can shrink this thing down to a reasonable size, they’ll really have something.

Even though Warner had promised us differently, it now says that its Total HD discs won’t be delivered this year and they are shooting for early 2008. In the meantime, Warner promises to keep releasing titles on both formats.
Hi-Def Digest

Panasonic has introduced a new consumer digital camera, with the world’s first 12.2 Megapixel resolution.  It’s called the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX100.  Besides being the first camera to incorporate all those megapixels into one compact camera, it is also capable of shooting 16 x 9 high definition video with 1280 x 720 frames per second of motion, plus still frames of 1920 x 1080 in high definition. Perfect for displaying them on HDTV’s.  Sounds like a nice combo to me.   Panasonic says the digital camera will be available in July, but Amazon.com has it up for pre-order with a release date of August 15th.  Price tag, just under $400.