Samsung SDI said today that it will be spending over $500 million USD to boost production of next-generation OLED displays to six times its current level by mid-2009.

This latest move comes as panel makers try to get bigger shares of the growing market for OLED displays, which offer better contrast ratio, slimmer designs and better energy efficiency than current LCD or plasma displays.

Currently, however, production costs are still high, too high to make OLED TVs available to the masses.

Samsung currently produces small-sized AM-OLED screens used in watches and other handheld devices and there was no word on whether this large new investment will be to increase production of small OLED screens or for all OLED production including TVs.

Using 2-inch screens as a basis, the new investment should raise capacity from 1.5 million units a month to over 9 million by mid-2009.

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written by TMP

MCE Technologies has announced it is bringing a 6x Blu-ray burner to Macs that can playback DVDs at 16x as well as read both Blu-ray and HD DVD.

The drive also has LightScribe compatibility and will allow professionals to author Blu-ray movies using Adobe Premier Pro CS3′s Encore software. Non-professionals can use Roxio’s Toast 9 Titanium (with the Toast HD/BD plug-in) to author more simple BD movies.

The bare drive is meant for Mac Pro or Power Mac G4/G5 running Mac OS X 10.4 or higher and can only use the HD DVD and Blu-ray playback if using Windows XP/Vista through a Boot Camp partition.

The drive will retail for $500 USD with an external model selling for $750 USD.

According to the specs, the new “Blu-ray drive works with all DVD and CD media, and writes to both 25 GB and 50 GB BD-R and BD-RE (rewritable) Blu-ray disks. Speed specs for the new drive are 6X for 25 GB BD-R, 4X to 50 GB BD-R and 16X to DVD±R. It also burns at 4X speeds to DVD±R DL, 5X to DVD-RAM and 40X to CD-R media, among others.”

For an extra $100 USD, MCE will bundle the drive with an installation package, software for Windows Boot Camp playback of both Blu-ray and HD-DVD and Toast 9 with the plugin. For $1300 MCE will ship the drive with the Boot Camp package, Toast, and Adobe Premier Pro CS3 with Encore.

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written by TMP \\ tags: drive, Windows

Sony Europe has confirmed that the PlayStation 3 DualShock 3 controller will finally hit Europe on July 4th, months after it was launched in Japan and North America.

The controller adds “rumble” vibration technology to the PS3, a feature that many gamers missed when the Sixaxis controller was released with the console.

“We are delighted to confirm that DualShock 3 will be released in SCEE territories in early July. We hope this will add to the intense gaming experience for our fans, as we continue to evolve PS3, its software and its peripherals,” added David Reeves, president of SCEE.

The DS3 will cost GBP 39.99 and is usable for games such as Resistance: Fall of Man, Gran Turismo 5 and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune as long as you have firmware 1.94 or higher.

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written by TMP

Today, Real announced the beta launch of its DRM-Free Rhapsody MP3 Store, a completely different service then its current DRM-based subscription service.

The new store will sell MP3s and has already secured the full catalogs of all the Big 4 music labels. The store also promises to allow subscribers full-length previews of any song they want before purchasing while non-subscribers can preview up to 25 complete songs.

Giving the store another edge over rivals such as iTunes, Amazon and Napster is Real’s exclusive connection to MTV, CMT and VH1. Facebook users can also access the service and individual songs directly using the iLike application.

The Rhapsody service will not however, offer re-downloads for misplaced music like Amazon does.

Pricing for the service is identical to that of Napster, with individual songs costing 99 cents and full albums usually priced at $10. The company adds “Windows-only subscriptions will remain in place and cost $13 per month for PCs alone or $15 for those who also want device transfers to Rhapsody-compatible devices.”

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written by TMP \\ tags: Windows