Dell this morning officially unveiled its most direct attempt at claiming the ultra-compact desktop space currently held by the Mac Mini. Shown after multiple teases, the Inspiron Zino HD occupies roughly the same footprint as its Apple counterpart but uses AMD processors to keep the costs low while still supplying options its rival doesn’t have. The micro PC is seen as a home theater PC and comes with native HDMI output as well as options of discrete Radeon HD 4330 graphics and a Blu-ray drive.
Read more on the new Dell Zino HD from Mac PC Wiz after the break.
While Apple isn’t going to throw its weight behind the Blu-ray format just yet, that doesn’t mean everyone else is doing nothing, with Amex Digital rolling out the new Blu-ray Drive Upgrade Kit. Also known as the BD-UG1, it will retail for $199 while supporting Blu-ray recording should you happen to rely on BootCamp on your Mac mini while work under the Windows operating system. 
Let me just say right off the bat that OS/X for Mac does NOT have native support for playback of production Blu-Ray movie discs. What we have here are some “creative” solutions if you have an external Blu-Ray drive for your Mac and you want the ability not only to burn to blu-ray discs but to play back good quality blu-ray movies (have your cake and eat it as well). This process will include possible Microsoft OS additions to your Mac, so if you are a Mac purist…
MacPCWiz reports on iTunes 9, set to debut very soon. Apparently, Apple’s prime media player and iPod bridge is set to include high definition video and Blu-Ray features when it releases. Does this signal Steve Job’s reluctant surrender to Blu-Ray? Read more from MacPCWiz.