Kultur Goes Blu

Kultur has announced a July 28th release date for the first Blu-ray The Pirates Of Penzance an Australian production of the Gilbert And Sullivan musical. Kultur currently offers a wide variety of performing arts DVDs, inlcuding several ballet and opera titles, so it's a safe bet that a large portion of their catalog will be getting an HD upgrade in the near future.

May's Biggest Blu-ray Releases

Summer's not just about blockbusters in theaters anymore. Be sure to check out all the massive Blu-ray releases coming in May.

May 12th:

Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture Collection

The Good The Bad And The Ugly

Fargo

May 19th:

24: Season 7

A Bug's Life

My Bloody Valentine 3D

Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Skynet Edition

True Blood: Season 1

Valkyrie

May 26th

Children Of Men

True Romance: Director's Cut

Boldy Going Where No Blu-ray Player Has Gone Before

Unable to attend the FEDCON Convention, Europe's largest Star Trek convention being held in Bonn, Germany this weekend? No worries, CBS is hooking owners of the just released Star Trek: Season 1 up with BD-Live access, updated all three days of the con with behind-the-scenes footage, interviews (Nichelle Nichols is listed among the special guests for FEDCON), and more so be sure to log on to the BD-Live portal often. You can also post any FEDCON photos or comments you have at www.cbs-bdlive.com right now.

Warner Introduces Two New Customer Programs

Warner Bros. has announced the start of two new programs that are sure to make early adopters very happy. The first is the awkwardly titled but greatly appreciated "Warnerblu Buy 5 Get 1 Free" program, which allows customers to receive a free Blu-ray (from a predetermined list) after purchasing and registering 5 select Blu-ray titles.

The second program, sure to make anyone burned by HD-DVD a little less sore about the format's death, is the "Red2Blu" program. For a small fee (typically $4.95 per disc) plus shipping & handling, Warner will exchange your existing HD-DVD for the same movie or TV show on Blu-ray. Here's hoping that other studios follow suit and adopt their own HD-DVD exchange program and a round of applause for Warner's for introducing two customer friendly programs in one day.

Home For The Holidays

As those of you who use a Playstation 3 as your primary Blu-ray player are probably aware, the much hyped Playstation Home has finally launched as an open beta available to the general public.

While Home may appear to be a watered down Second Life clone on the surface, Sony offers that Home will act as a social gathering place where gamers can get to know each other before they play together. In actuallity though, it's a place where male avatars can surround, dance on, and ultimately harass female avatars.

Still, with promised features such as the ability to share streaming audio and video and more game environments coming to (virtual) life as Home destinations, it's hard not to get a little geeked over what's to come.