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Rotel unveils pricey 1080p upcoverting RDV-1093 DVD player
For the person who just has to have everything, or is willing to spend more money to stick with DVD than cave in and buy two separate high definition players (or not), Rotel has announced the forthcoming RVD-1093 upscaling DVD player. The high-end boutique has cranked out yet another snazzy looking standalone flagship device, which touts 1080p upcoverting, a built-in scaler, HDMI, component / S-Video / composite outputs, and silkly smooth progressive scan playback. Additionally, the device plays nice with recordable discs, SVCDs, JPEGs, MP3 / WMA CDs, and even the lost-but-not-forgotten DVD-Audio format. To somewhat justify the lofty pricetag, the company points to its "switching power supply" which reportedly touts "an advanced pulse circuit and individually regulated supply stages to generate optimal voltages," and also boasts about the wideband DA converters, "Adaptive Geometrical Chroma Mapping," optical / coaxial digital audio outs, NTSC / PAL-compatibility, RS-232 interface, and discrete IR commands. We're still not entirely convinced this player is worth the $1,499 asking price, especially considering the forthcoming price drops in the Blu-ray arena, but those still interested can pick one up sometime this quarter.
Toshiba unveils SD-H903A HD DVD burner for PCs
Hot on the heels of all this last minute, pre-CES HD DVD-related action is the SD-H903A, which Toshiba touts as "the world's first dedicated PC-based HD DVD burner" that writes "to all main optical discs." Aside from the obvious (albeit expected) hand-to-the-face to BD-Rs in that last claim, the burner does manage to write nicely to HD DVD-R (single and dual-layer at a measly 1x), DVD +/- R, DVD-RAM, DVD +/- RW, CD-R, and CD-RW. Additionally, it'll include an 8MB buffer, and if all goes well, should play back all your precious HD DVD titles without complication. While we've no idea how much coinage will be required to pick this (admittedly sluggish) drive up, sample shipments are scheduled to take off this month, and we should get a good look at just what it's capable of at next week's CES.
Verbatim adds background color to LightScribe discs
Nothing adds a dash of holiday cheer like a little color to brighten things up, or at least that's the mantra Verbatim is banking on you believing as it "ramps up shipments" of its recently-unveiled LightScribe-compatible CD-Rs. While we figured color would come this way awhile back, we were honestly hoping for actual color etching technology to be a part of LightScribe by now, but we guess a spindle of "red, green, blue, yellow and orange discs" will have to suffice for the time being. Notably, these discs utilize the same ole LightScribe burner you've already got, but adding color silkscreens to your laser drawings certainly won't prove cheap, as these stocking stuffers will run you $19.99 for a 25-pack.[Via Chip Chick]
