Not to be outdone by other manufacturers, Asus is set to release one the best looking Blu-ray drives available. According to Asus, the SBC 041S-U drive’s “elegant stand design and high glossy appearance represents its high feel of science and technology”. Asus will also provide an app for the adjustment of the blue X’s brightness seen on the side, allowing for different levels depending on read and write levels. Sleek design aside, the blu-ray drive will feature a Blu-ray disc read speed of 4.8, 8x DVD burning, and 24x CD burning all in portable USB 2.0 form factor. It will be Windows compatible with no OS X support. A release date and price has not yet be set.

[SlashGear]

With only 7 Blu-ray titles being released this week, viewers might be better off heading to theaters. The only new release includes 12 Roundsstarring John Cena. Notable catalog titles include Do The Right Thing and Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li.

Here’s the full list:

• 12 Rounds (Fox)
• Do The Right Thing (Universal)
• Flawless (Magnolia)
• Two Lovers (Magnolia)
• Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li
• Home Front (Cinevolve)
• Tokyo! (Liberation)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has just hit theaters and Michael Bay shares some of the details for its future release.  Most interesting is that it will include ‘IMAX skew’ footage that will change the aspect ratio similar to what The Dark Knight blu-ray had. “We’re going to do a special IMAX SKU,” said Bay, “where it’ll open up for those scenes. You can see top to bottom.” It’s going to include “lot’s of stuff” and be done by “Ridley’s Scott’s DVD guy”, Charlie de Lauzirika.

[iFilm]

It’s been less than a month since Pioneer announced their 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray disc and now they’ve announced that a 500GB Blu-ray disc is feasible. Research by a team of engineers at Pioneer HQ, Tokyo has found this 20-layer Blu-ray disc is possible by applying proprietary technology to the layers of the optical discs. The only thing we need to know if these will play in current Blu-ray players and drives. Pioneer previously mentioned that some kind of modification might be necessary but so we’ll keep our fingers and see what happens.

[Pioneer]

Panasonic will release the LF-BD371JD SATA Blu-ray Burner this September 13th. This internal drive burns Blu-ray discs at the speed of 8x and features an 8MB buffer. The LF-BD371JD will also support formats DVD-RAM (5x), DVD-R (16x), DVD-R DL (8x), DVD-RW (6x), CD-R (48x), CD-RW(24x). The cost will be $386.

[AkihabaraNews]

NEC announced today the EMMA 3PF chip, which is the first large-scale integration (LSI) chip that contains all the major functions of Blu-ray including Profile 2.0, analog-to-digital conversion, HDMI output, and sound encoding/decoding. The EMMA 3PF also features a multicore CPU which allows for improved startup times and operation speeds. Most importantly, the chip will significantly reduce the physical size of Blu-ray players as well as reduce the overall cost. The chip will start shipping in September so expect players that use it to begin appearing in the near future.

[Gizmodo]

Although we’re not getting as many releases as last week, we do get quite a good variety of new releases. Brand new releases include Nim’s Island and for music fans, Korn: Live at Montreux. BBC is releasing their delayed documentary, The BBC High Definition Natural History Collection. The most notable catalog release is Starship Troopers available as separate purchases for the first and third film or packaged all together in the Starship Troopers Trilogy.

Here’s the full list:

• The BBC High Definition Natural History Collection (Planet Earth / Wild China / Galapagos / Ganges)
• The Counterfeiters
• Epic Conditions: The Weather Channel
• Korn: Live at Montreux
• Lonesome Dove
• Nim’s Island
• Robin Hood – Season One
• Starship Troopers
• Starship Troopers 1-3
• Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
• Wild China

As always we bring you this week’s ad prices for Blu-ray movies and players from major retailers.

Circuit City has the cheapest prices for new releases Starship Troopers for $22.99 and Starship Troopers 3: Marauders for $27.99. Best Buy has a 2 for $30 deal when you buy any two of the following titles: Hellboy, The Patriot: Extended Cut, Black Hawk Down, and The Fifth Element. Finally both Circuit City and Best Buy will give you John Mayer: Where The Light Is for free with the purchase of the Sony BDP-S350 Blu-ray player for $399.99

See all of this week’s prices after the jump

BestBuy:

$24.99

• Hellboy *
• The Patriot: Extended Cut *
• Black Hawk Down *
• The Fifth Element *
• Lonesome Dove: Collector’s Edition
  

*Buy Any 2 of these titles and get both titles for $30

$29.99

• Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
• Nim’s Island
• The Counterfeiters
  

$59.99

• Starship Troopers Trilogy

Blu-ray Players

• Sony BDP-S350 Blu-ray Player $399.99 (Free John Mayer “Where The Light Is” Blu-Ray Concert disc when you buy any Sony Blu-Ray disc player)
• Samsung BD-P1500

Circuit City

$22.99

• Starship Troopers

$27.99

• Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

Blu-ray Players

• Sony BDP-S350 Blu-ray Player $399.99 (Receive a Free “Where The Light Is” Blu-Ray Disc by John Mayer with purchase of this player)
• Panasonic DMP-BD30K $399.99

Target

$29.99

• Nim’s Island
• Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

$59.99

• Starship Troopers Trilogy

It looks like Netflix users will have to pony up an extra dollar or two to be able to rent Blu-ray movies as the rental company’s CEO mentioned earlier this week would happen really soon. EngadgetHD is reporting some Netflix members have been notified of a $1 per month charge (plus taxes) while others say they’ve been notified the charge will be $2. Regardless of which two amounts is correct, this change will come within a month and we really don’t the see this increase as reason enough to cancel a membership.

[EngadgetHD]

We just can’t seem to get enough of LG’s BD300 since it was introduced just yesterday. First we got pictures, now Crave gives us their hands-on impression of the new Blu-ray player.

Among their impressions, they note that the Netflix functionality is identical to that of a standalone Roku Netflix Player. You load up an “Instant” queue on your Netflix account, pair the LG player to your account, and then begin watching the movie or tv show as it streams using your broadband connection. Other features includes the ‘home’ button on the remote that give you instant access to the most common features such as Netflix, as seen in the picture above. The LG BD300 will also stream music and pictures from networked PCs or flash drives plugged into its front panel USB port.

Click the link below to see more details.

[Crave]