Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

It just wouldn't be a proper format war without a rebuttal from the opposing side about this week's announcement that Blu-ray has sold over a million discs. The HD DVD PR machine scrambled to life to point out that they, too, are so close to that magic million, with their own sales numbers showing 998,000 units sold, up from the 937,500 reported by Home Media Research. The HD camp also points out that -- not including the PS3 or Xbox add-ons -- standalone next-gen DVD hardware is selling 4-to-1 in favor of HD DVD this month, and content sales numbers are very close week-to-week between the two formats. Meanwhile, the average consumer sits on the sidelines waiting for a winner to emerge from the fight -- that is, if they can even spell it. 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Now that ATI's CableCARD problems are fixed and CableLab's five-week certification process is almost done, more companies are jumping in on offering CableCARD-compatible media centers. The latest is S1Digital, which just announced that they will offer Media Centers and Servers with HD DVD and Blu-ray playback, 1080p HDMI output, 7.1 channel surround, multi-terabyte storage, quad-processor computing and Vista Ultimate.
If you're curious to see how Vista handles CableCARD recording and playback, check out our first hands on with Niveus's units early this month. – Jason Chen
Product Site [S1Digital via Press Release]

Filed under: Media PCs
Those disappointed by the lack of CableCARD support in S1Digital's line-up of Media Centers released earlier this year may want to give the boxes a second look, as the company's now finally decided to join the likes of Niveus and Velocity Micro in the CableCARD game. Both the company's ProLine and Home Series Media Centers will be getting the upgrade early next month, with each able to be equipped with up to two CableCARDs apiece. The systems appear to be otherwise unchanged, however, running on Core 2 Duo or Quad processors, and configurable with up to 1TB of storage, Blu-ray or HD DVD drives, and up to two ATSC and NTSC tuners, among other goodies. 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

If you're looking for a great deal on HD DVD drives for the Xbox 360, now's the perfect time to hit up Sam's Club. Reader Chris tipped us off to this $72 deal, which is coming as a result of "Wal-mart" not stocking these HD DVD drives anymore. Chris isn't sure whether they meant only Sam's Club or Sam's Club and Wal-mart, but you're probably set on getting one at Sam's. Incidentally, can anyone see if Wal-mart is doing this as well?
In light of recent announcements from Wal-mart that they're going to stock tons of cheap HD DVD drives, having an even cheaper drive for the Xbox 360 may not make sense. They don't want to confuse and conflict with what they're trying to do there. – Jason Chen
Thanks Chris!

Avid Technology announced the latest version of its wildly popular consumer video editing software package, Pinnacle Studio 11, set to ship next month. Now the software is offered in Basic, Plus, and Ultimate versions.
If you don't need to edit HD, the Basic version for $49 will probably do everything you need. Bump up to the $99 Plus version and you can edit HD videos and also burn HD DVDs. Another 30 bucks gives you Pinnacle Studio Ultimate, unlocking chromakey and film-look effects, panning and zooming tools and a few audio tweaking toys.
Sounds good, but the previous version of this software sucked. Find out more:

This used to be the most popular video editing software in the world for good reason—it's traditionally been easy to use and well-priced. Let's hope Avid has fixed the disastrous problems with its crash-prone and balky-to-install versions 10.0 and 10.5 of Pinnacle Studio, which almost sunk the entire franchise.
Beyond ...

So you've heard the rumor about Walmart getting a wave of cheap Chinese HD-DVD players? Here's an article by Digital Trends riding the 1000-Digg wave declaring the format war is done. Finshed. Decided. All by the giant retailer's might, HD-DVD will win. It makes some sense, and gives some insight to how the retailer decides what to stock.
One thing the article ignores: Current facts.
Right now, Walmart carries not only an HD-DVD player for a marginally more expensive $349, by Toshiba, but a $900 dollar Blu-ray player, too. So the $300 dollar rumored price of the Chinese players are a factor, but not more than it already has been with Walmart's existing stock. So there's no reason to write this article now. Unless you factor in the quantity of the rumored players: 2 million. That's more than the combined title sales of both Blu-ray and HD DVD together, which says more about the pathetic states of both parties. (Anyone know DVD's adoption rates by year one offhand?) But I'm...

When we first received an Epson PowerLite home Cinema 1080 projector earlier this week, we were eager to take it into our test theater for a look-see, wondering just how much projector you can get for your $3000 these days. Surely there must be a catch to a 1080p projector that it costs so comparatively little. It didn't look like it was missing anything when we looked at the spec list: Packed with three LCDs, this puppy has the latest HDMI 1.3 input in the back, a quoted 12,000:1 contrast ratio, that Blu-ray and HD DVD-friendly resolution of 1080p, and it doesn't look half bad, either.
The first thing we wanted to try was an HD DVD using its HDMI 1.3 port. Loading a our newly acquired HQV benchmark test HD DVD disk, it was hard to find anything wrong with the picture we were looking at. The blacks were some of the blackest we've seen with an LCD projector at any price, and blacks are a weakness of LCDs. There were hardly any visible jaggies in the diagonal lines test, and tha...

Onkyo's got a press event today -- in Jersey City, of all places -- where they're showing off their top line TX-NR905. The most important thing you should know about the NR905 (and 875) is that it uses a Reon-HQV video processor. That's the same processor that the Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray and the Toshiba HD-XA2 HD DVD players use to do their stunning DVD upconversion to 1080p from all video sources. So, it's likely when videophiles like Gary Merson get their mitts on it, they'll have the same scaling verdict as they did with the players: Awesome.
The NR905 also has HD radio reception out of the box, Ethernet for internet radio, and PC streaming, as well as a USB port for thumbdrives, and HDDs, presumably holding MP3s. Room acoustic compensation, alters frequency and delay for up to 8 listening spots in a room. No word on wattage, but the 905's "high-current power supply with a massive toroidal transformer" and Ultra2 THX certification are probably good enough.
The 7.1 rece...

Of the high-definition discs bought by consumers in the first quarter, 70% were in the Blu-ray Disc format and 30% were HD DVD, according to sales figures provided by trade publication Home Media Magazine.