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A day after I examined the problems Japan’s media firms seem to have with sites like YouTube creating new fans for them for free, another internet giant is elegantly putting the movie industry under the spotlight.

It’s taken a while but the dual-format Blu-ray/HD DVD player we’ve been dreaming of for so long is finally here, with the announcement of LG’s Super Multi Blue player at CES.

Mainstream magazines in Japan are pretty different from what you get in the rest of the world — images that might turn heads on a subway in the US don’t even register in the hyper-sexualized society here and provocative advertising is pervasive.

Toshiba’s plans for the future of the Cell processor seem to see it powering everything from cellphones to washing machines but our video from last week’s Ceatec shows it doing a couple of far more interesting tricks.

If you’re thinking of using your PC to play high-definition Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD movies then you might have to think again. While computer drives for both blue-laser formats make PC playback a possibility, you’ll need to have a high-performance PC if you want to watch the majority of movies.

That NEC Blu-ray PC showed us its water-cooled mojo yesterday and it looks like one mighty beast. One question, though — are all Blu-ray movie releases gonna be as totally worthless as the one NEC had on show?

Japanese users won’t have to worry about a noisy cooling fan disturbing them while they watch high-definition movies on NEC’s newest computer — the PC, equipped with a Blu-ray drive, uses water-cooling instead.

Hitachi Maxell has developed a thin optical disc that could lead to data cartridges capable of storing terabytes of information.

Blu-ray is now firmly entrenched in Sony’s lineup, from Vaio PCs with video editing software right through to high-def TV recorders with hard drives. Check ‘em out after the link.

Toshiba and Canon demonstrated a television with a 55in SED screen today at the Ceatac exhibition in Chiba, Japan, saying they plan to put the screens into production next year.

Hitachi will soon ship two large plasma televisions equipped with internal hard drives and a chip that can reprocess high-definition video at a lower bit rate in real time, allowing users to double the amount of video they can record.

Sony will launch a pair of Blu-ray Disc video recorders in Japan this December, the company said Tuesday at Ceatec.

On Tuesday Toshiba will unveil the first slim-type HD DVD writer drive suitable for use in laptop computers.

Warner Bros wants to scale China in a single bound, releasing Superman Returns on DVD in over 8,000 retail stores nationwide on Thursday, at least two months ahead of its scheduled DVD debut elsewhere in the world.

Panasonic will launch a pair of Blu-ray Disc recorders in Japan in mid-November that pack hard-disk drives and the ability to playback commercial high-definition movies, the company announced Wednesday.

Remember that new home Blu-ray burner Sony told us all about yesterday? Well, they’ve been kind enough to let us film inside their secret Tokyo HQ and here’s the vid to prove it. Click away, hi-def fans.

Sony unveiled on Wednesday a Blu-ray Disc recorder it plans to launch in Japan before the end of this year.

BitTorrent plans to open an online movie store to sell foreign films and other hard-to-find video, including content from China, Japan and India.

Toshiba and Memory-Tech have developed a three-layer optical disc that can be read by both DVD and HD DVD players.

The new and improved LocationFree lineup just went on show in Tokyo, so here’s a look at it doing its mighty-impressive thing. As a little bonus, we’ve even scoped a prototype LocationFree mobile viewer for you. Check it out after the link.

Sony is upgrading its LocationFree platform with more efficient video compression and a receiver add-on for televisions. The upgrade comes a year after Sony last introduced a new base station and should mean better video images for users, the company said Wednesday.

Blu-ray movies are on their way to Japan and so’s the PS3. More on those and some of the upcoming home Blu-ray players in living color after the jump.

Japan will soon become the world’s second major market to see the launch of Blu-ray Disc movies. A handful of movie and video content studios including Sony Pictures, Paramount, Warner Bros and Buena Vista will begin selling titles in Japan in November, they said at a joint news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Now that the world’s first HD DVD recorder is finally on sale here in Japan, our crack team of otaku simply had to get a review of the beast known as the RD-A1 on camera for you. Click on and tune in for some hardcore high-def action.

Blu-ray Disc players and movies expected on sale later this year in Japan and the U.S. will share the same region code, Sony said Thursday.

Japan prides itself on being a “convenience” society, which is usually taken to mean that the locals can buy any number of items from vending machines, including soiled schoolgirl panties. Well, for traditionalists who don’t watch movies on their PSPs while commuting to the office, Tokyo Metro will start offering 10 DVD vending machines with up to 330 titles each.

Sharp has a bright and powerful HD DLP that will appeal to those who enjoy top-end gear. And if you get your kicks from high native contrast, you’re in for a treat.

Challenger is set to come out with a robust box of tricks in the form of the Movie Tank III, which will take just about everything you throw at it, digitally speaking.

BenQ is set to release a fab DLP projector for a price that won’t break the bank.

With LCD TV prices plunging, Sharp faces increased competition for its flagship Aquos tellies. Its answer is to keep cranking them out, with nine (20-37in) G series models debuting September 1.

Victor seems to have put the driver of its soon-to-be released 32in LCD telly on steroids.

Kojima’s latest bargain portable DVD player has a screen that rotates through 180 degrees, can be attached to the back of a car headrest and costs just ¥19,800.

Even Sharp sometimes has to admit that bigger isn’t necessarily better. The company has gotten over its strange obsession with extra inches and will put 15in and 13in Aquos LCD TVs on sale in Japan on August 4.

Something bugging you about your brilliant new HD DVD player? Bit noisy in there? Toshiba just announced that it’s releasing an upgrade for the HD-XA1, the world’s first commercial HD DVD player. We actually talked about this before.

Sony has an interesting little package for us today in the shape of a triple-whammy HDD-DVD-VHS combo that handles 1080i hi-def broadcasts.

Toshiba is delaying the launch of its first HD DVD recorder by about two weeks, the company said Thursday morning.

How much will it cost to add 1-seg viewing to your portable Sanyo DVD player? Quite a lot, it seems, if you buy the company’s DVF-DTV100 tuner, which will be on sale August 21.

It’s bright, it’s fine, it’s almost good-looking. It’s the EDP-XD205R mini-DLP data projector from Elmo.

Remember our story on how Samsung wanted to dish out olive branches, release doves of peace and put a stop to the high-def format war by cooking up a dual-format Blu-ray HD DVD player?

Axes must be making HDD makers happy with its Pict star VP8360-B/100, which packs in 100GB of storage in the name of playing the roles of both PMP and RAW-capable photo storage unit.