ONKYO Corporation has announced that it will release its first Blu-ray Disc Player for the international market in late 2008. This player is designed to partner with Onkyo’s high-definition A/V receivers equipped with full HDMI processing of 1080p video and decoding of Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD™ Master Audio surround sound formats.

Pioneer is set to launch a number of products in Europe this fall.  They have made announcements for: four Home Theater Cinema Systems (three which include Blu-ray players), four standalone Blu-ray players (one which is Profile 2.0), three KURO LCDs, four KURO Plasmas, and a Media Receiver.  US product release announcement to hopefully follow soon.

In a move to educated Blu-ray owners and potential consumers, Samsung has launched a new website, the Blu-ray Resource Center.  The site is dedicated to anwsering some of the fundamental questions about Blu-ray technology, support current Blu-ray owners, and a little propaganda to boot.

Kaleidescape, known for their DVD and Blu-ray archiving systems have claimed that their new 1080p Player and 1080p Mini Player rival the viewing experience provided by Blu-ray using SD DVDs.  Kaleidescape is not the first to make this claim.  Toshiba recently announced that they would not support the Blu-ray market, and instead focus on their DVD upscaling technology.

Panasonic has announced they are going to be first to market with 6x compatible 25GB and 50GB BD-R discs begining July 10th in Japan.  While Japan will have 6x burnable media, the US will have the LG's 6x capable Blu-ray recorders.  Panasonic says that Blu-ray recorders compatible with 6x media will be available in Japan by the end of September 2008.  Panasonic has made no announcement of a US release date for 6x media.  Hopefully sooner than later the hardware and software will meet, giving everyone the opportunity to burn large capacity discs in a reasonable amount of time.