Sony is one of 9 companies that are supporting the Blu-Ray high-definition DVD format. Today it released the world’s first notebook that is able to play Blu-Ray discs and produce high definition visuals.

The VAIO AR comes in a Standard and Premium versions. The Premium version will support Blu-Ray Discs and allows one to watch movies in high definition at 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. The AR notebook contains a 17-inch screen.

However, what is pretty neat with the notebook is that it has a HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) connector which allows you to connect to a high-definition television and view your movies on a larger screen.

The VAIO AR Notebook not only supports reading of Blu-Ray discs, but also allows the writing to Blu-Ray discs. So, if you took video footage from a high-definition camcorder, you now have the ability to place that movie on a Blu-Ray disc and then pop it into your Blu-Ray DVD Player and watch it on an HD television.

Mike Abary, VP of VAIO product marketing at Sony said, “The VAIO AR has the ability to capture, edit and record in HD on a notebook PC right out of the gate.”

It seems that the VAIO AR is already packed with software that allows you to edit the high-definition footage and place it on BD-R (one write Blu-Ray disc) or BD-RE (rewritable Blu-Ray Disc). The AR also allows you to burn to DVD discs as well.

The notebook includes an Intel Duo Core processor chip and includes a NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7600 graphics card that contains 256MB of video memory. The card contains enough memory to play games, and watch or edit high definition media.

The VAIO AR will also come with Microsoft® Windows® Media Center Edition 2005. Certain models of the VAIO will carry a TV-Tuner and onboard TV controls so that you are able to record and watch live television.

Pricing will start at $1800 for the Standard VAIO AR, but will cost $3,500 for the Premium version of the VAIO AR. The price may seem a little steep to some, but it is priced in such a way because the technology is still not that widespread. You can expect prices to drop as the technology becomes more popular.

All in all, I think it’s neat that we now have a Blu-Ray supported notebook so that we can now use Blu-Ray discs to actually place data on them. Toshiba (a company backing the HD DVD format) has already come out with an HD DVD notebook. And the format wars continue.

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