Panasonic uveils Blu-ray player intended to be final nail in HD-DVD's coffin

TWICE: Panasonic Bows Blu-ray Deck With "Final Standard" Features

Panasonic today introduced a next-generation Blu-ray player it said is the first with the format’s Final Standard Profile feature, and will ship it in November.
Final Standard Profile is an advanced function added to the Blu-ray standard, which Panasonic said allows new functions such as picture-in-picture and audio mixing (which allows the consumer to switch the sound between the main and sub windows).
Panasonic’s DMP-BD30 is said to be the first Blu-ray deck to also feature the inclusion of an SD card slot for playback of high-definition content recorded in the AVCHD format. The SD slot also allows for viewing of digital still images recorded to an SD card.

Sounds lovely, but I have a question. When we start seeing SD cards with 50+ gigs on them (and don't kid yourself, it will happen. We're already seeing other flash memory types in that ballpark), why will we need Blu-ray optical discs?

Going back to my previous day's metaphor comparing the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD fracas to the Great War (ie: a senseless and futile waste of resources and lives), is a bigger, better, beefier Blu-ray player the CE equivalent of the Dreadnoughts that European naval powers channelled insane amounts of funds into at the end of the 19th Century: impressive as hell, but ulitimately ineffective at attaining dominance, and obsolete before the conflict was even over?

The smart money is on hi-cap flash memory, and bigger, better high-speed downloads.

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Wireless digital cameras

Where are they going with this, you ask? Read on:

TWICE: Card Makes Digital Cameras Wireless

Eye-Fi has begun selling a Wi-Fi-enabled SD memory card for use in digital cameras.
The 2GB Eye-Fi SD card lets digital cameras connect to wireless home networks and online photo-sharing sites. After a four-step configuration, images can be automatically sent from the camera to a PC/Mac and online simply by turning the camera on within range of a user’s wireless network, said Jef Holove, Eye-Fi CEO.
...
Holove argued that Eye-Fi would succeed where Wi-Fi-enabled digital cameras had not because of its ease of use and the breadth of its online partner network. “For the most part, wireless hasn’t been easy.” Conversely, the Eye-Fi card “saves times and gets images out of the camera.”

I can see this being a big hit with people who are too lazy to plug their camera into their laptop in order to save or upload their pictures!

For more, go to Eye Fi's website.

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