Time To Start BluRay Planning

Once again, it is advantage Panasonic. With this new product, BluRay now reaches the domain of every day user. All of us who were fond of taking back up n DVD can now start leering about humongous data storage capability of BluRay.

Panasonic is releasing next month in Japan BluRay media that is capable of writing at 6X. Initially, these will be available in two vesions: the 25GB (LM-BR25MD) and 50 GB (LM-BR50MD). Theoretically, it can achieve transfer speeds of upto 216MBps. According to Panasonic, that is 20% faster than any present 16X DVD transfer speed. Expected to retail for $16 and $37 respectively for 25GB and 50GB versions, next month will bring a new era of back up capability in the hands of a home user. One Grey area remains though. There are no compatible BluRay drives that can handle these discs. It is assumed, by September, all this would be sorted out.

I guess it is safe to say that era of high definition is here to stay. How long will it take for mass production to start and prices to tumble is anybody's guess. It will be safer to assume that end 2008 will see a lot of activity in this arena, now that major studios have thrown their weight behind BluRay.

AMD Does The Magic Trick

It has taken a while, but finally there is good news from AMD camp. They have virtually done equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of hat by offering overclocking possibilities in their existing Phenom triple core (8000 series) and Quadcore (9000 series). Six “hidden pins” on the processors and chipsets are the secret, which will enable simple overclocking through the southbridge and accelerate the current processors on demand.

If you are running an upcoming 2.8 GHz Black Edition CPU, a motherboard with the old SB600 model (RD690) will keep the processor cores operating at 2.8 GHz. However, if you have a motherboard with the SB700 chipset, you will receive a free upgrade to 3.0 GHz. And if you get a motherboard with a SB750 chip, your processor will run at 3.2 GHz, which matches the clock speed of the Athlon X2 6400+ - the highest clocked processor AMD ever offered.

The trick will be performed through the BIOS. AMD has not yet officially released the trick, but is most likely to be announced with release og 790GX chipset. This is what we like, competition! However, power consuption details of this trick are not known as of now. Here is wishing AMD all the best.

courtesy:TGDaily.com

Blu Ray Rolls Out

Just when all the format wars news was cooling down, Blu Ray has landed the first meaningful punch. If you own a PS3 and like high def audio, this a BD you want to get your hands on just for the pleasure of enjoying High Def audio. After being immersed in High Def video and enjoying 5.1 channel audio tracks, it is now time to get immersed in a totally new experience that offers 2.0 LPCM, 5.1 LPCM, 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio, 5.1 Dolby True HD, 5.1 Dolby Digital at 48KHz.

These formats, all on single BD, are offered by Thondheimsolistene, an orchestra from Norway. The album is labeled "Divertimenti" and is eleased by the 2L label in full HD audio glory. Fans other than this label will have to wait a little longer I guess. Since a beginning has been made, others to follow suit will not be far behind, espacially if MPAA is going to be the first to jump on the bandwagon, as worried about stuff like DRM they are!

Welcome "The Grid"

If you know your history of Internet, you probably know about CERN. If yo do not, for a low down on functioning of CERN, there is a fiction version in "Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown. I find this source to be more readable than scientific mumbo-jumbo about Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Right, the new phenomenon designed by those folks at CERN is called "The Grid" and it could revolutionize Internet as we know it. At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds. Now that is fast!

The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at CERN have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the LHC, the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates. CERN, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realised the LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs - enough to make a stack 40 miles high.

The Grid has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, unlike hotch potch of cables in case of Internet, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data. The 55,000 servers already installed are expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years. What this means is that this summer, most of students in US and UK will also be riding the fibre optic band wagon. How long you and I have to wait?