Another nail in the already dead and buried coffin of HD-DVD:
LG has confirmed they will stop production of combo HD-DVD/Blu-ray players this fall.
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Can't afford the high prices for blu-ray players? well a slightly cheaper alternative has been spotted at Wal-Mart in the form of the $298 Sylvania or Magnavox branded Funai MB500 blu-ray player.
It looks like a 1980's set top cable box, only supports blu-ray profile 1.1, probably sounds awful, and still costs $100 more than a great HD-DVD player did a few months back.
Thanks again Sony for buying your way to victory for your inferior product over HD-DVD.
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Pioneer's second blu-ray announcement of the day is the Pioneer Elite BDP-05FD.
It's basic features are the same as the Pioneer BDP-51FD we covered earlier: blu-ray profile 1.1, 1080p/24 output, onboard Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD master audio, 7.1 analog output, and wolfson digital audio converters.
The Elite adds gold plated connectors, aluminum front panel, touch sensitive buttons, and $200 for a total price tag of $800.
We are still not impressed.
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Pioneer has announced their least expensive blu-ray player to date.
The $600 Pioneer BDP-51FD will be out this summer features blu-ray profile 1.1, 1080p/24 output, onboard Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD master audio, 7.1 analog output, and wolfson digital audio converters.
Overall those specs aren't very impressive and the lack of blu-ray 2.0 support is a real deal-killer for us.
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So when we first heard about the $3000 R2-D2 DVD projector we thought it would be really cheesy.
Now there is a video out and it is cheesy but in an awesome spectacular way!
This thing moves around, projects movies onto the wall at 1024x768 (1500 lumens), can lead back and project onto the ceiling, 20 watt speaker system, ipod dock, it does everything (except electrocute other robots).
How long until the first video comes out showing some 40 year old overweight geek in his basement pleasuring himself to the tune of "help me obi-wan kenobi, you're my only hope" while wearing his homemade princess leia slave costume?? *shudder*
(video at starwarsblog)
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We saw Samsung's HT-X810 Home Theater Sound Bar with wireless subwoofer and integrated slot-in upconverting DVD player at CES and it is now available for purchase.
It blends in nicely with flat TVs, and has a 300W output including the wirelessly connected subwoofer.
Portable music players can connect wirelessly via bluetooth, and the HT-X910 also plays CD, DVD-Audio, DivX video, and MP3/WMA, upconverting video to 1080p on request.
(via electronichouse)
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LiveDigitally has posted a review of the EyeTop Wearable DVD System and we agree with most of their conclusions, especially the part about feeling queasy when you wear it for too long:
"Overall, I felt the Eyetop DVD was a well-made product, with a lot of attention to putting together a complete package. As far as the viewing experience goes, I found the system to be hard to watch, and have a feeling many adults would feel the same way. Which leads me to think the product might be better suited for teenagers or young adults."
Um, make that "teenagers or young adults who don't mind looking like a dork". I won't be buying a system like this until they can make one that doesn't look like a leftover prop from a bad 80's Sci-Fi series.
The first Yahoo! branded electronics (made by Diamond Electronics) have now been officially announced.
The announcement covered two home theater systems (the YHT-630, a $199 210 watt compact system, and the YHT-650, a $269 system with more features) and three DVD players (the YDP-305, a $79 DVD player with memory card reader and USB, and the YDP-700 and 701 which are both compact $99 DVD players).
It is nice to see Yahoo! moving into consumer electronics but this seems like a very cautious entry. I hope to see more interesting electronics from Yahoo in the future like portable hard drive video players and LCD/plasma TVs: Yahoo is all about the portal, so they need electronics that work with (or sync with) the Yahoo! portal.
Pioneer has started selling the DVR-A08-J: the first DVD writer capable of writing DVD-R and +R at 16x speed and dual layer (DL) discs at 4x speed.
This means that 8.5GB of data can be written to a DL disk in about 25 minutes.
The DVR-A08-J is available in white, black, and silver colors.
(thanks BIOS)
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This works out at under $2 per Oscar. 40% off on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King DVD at Buy.com. $17.99 with Free Shipping!
The ever useful engadget tells me Gateway updated their ADC-320 connected DVD player ($199.99) to support wireless 802.11g and streaming TV shows from a media center PC.
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