Bad News: According to Lucasart's John Sing, "Lucasfilm Ltd. has no plans to release any of the Star Wars movies on Blu-ray or HD DVD.”. Good News: Lucasfilm has also in the past asserted ...

DVD players are increasingly common in cars, but Toshiba has announced an HD-DVD player to be integrated into autos in 2008. The player will obviously come with a high definition screen and will ...

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost present their sophomore outing on DVD and HD-DVD from Universal later this year with Hot Fuzz coming from Universal. The discs will cotnain the film along with deleted ...

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Sharp -- the company behind the world's largest LCD panel -- just introduced the world's smallest blue laser for next current generation optical players. Right, as in Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats -- your choice OEMs. Measuring just 3.3-mm in diameter, the GH04020A4G semiconductor will be available in ¥12,000 ($99) sample quantities starting June 13th before ramping up for mass production later in July. The device will suck 10mW from your laptop's battery while offering at least 10,000 hours of operation before giving up the ghost.

[Via Impress] 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Media PCs
Exceptional Innovation's endeavor into the media center PC realm was apparently about more than just fitting in, as the Life|ware Life|media machines pack some seriously potent hardware with matching pricetags to go along. The high-end machines will be packing hardware such an Intel's 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo or 2.4GHz quad-core CPU, up to 4GB of RAM, 4.5TB of hard drive space in a RAID 5 array, CableCARD, NTSC / ATSC tuner options, forthcoming HD DVD and Blu-ray drive choices, optical audio out with Dolby Master Studio decoding, a 28-in-1 multicard reader, NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS, and a host of ports including HDMI, DVI, S-Video, composite, serial, USB 2.0, FireWire, IR controller, and 12V trigger relays and contact closure devices "for screens, shades, contacts, relays, etc." Of course, all of the units (LMS-300, 400, 500, 600, and 700) will run Windows Vista, and while these Life|media servers start at around $4,500, there's honestly no telling what the ...

Filed under: Home Entertainment
A Finnish court in Helsinki has made a ruling that confirms what we've all known for a long time now; that CSS is completely ineffective as a copyright protection method for DVDs. Legally this adds an air of sanity to the previous European Ruling that banned the "the circumvention of 'effective technological measures.'" This early court decision (it could be / probably will be appealed) places CSS outside of this definition, removing the illegal aspect of circumventing CSS in the EU. If the decision of the entry-level court stands, then there are implications for other copyright protection methods, which will no longer be considered effective protection methods if software which undermines it becomes widespread -- certainly the case with CSS, and potentially the case with HD-DVD and Blu-ray. As the case is currently developing, we'd suggest you keep the champagne energy drinks on ice for now: not that the legal status of backing up your DVDs was an e...

If you've just purchased the first two Pirates movies on Blu-ray in order to get psyched up for the third one, you probably came up with a whole lot less Johnny Depp and a whole lot more firmware problems than you expected. Apparently at least two players—Samsung's BD-P1200 and Sony's BDP-S1—have difficulty playing back the first two movies. And by difficulty, we mean they throw up their hands and give up like a fat man at the starting line of a 10K.
Samsung's already released a firmware update here, which fixes the problem. You can either burn the firmware update onto CD or download it via the BD-P1200's LAN connection. Which brings us to another point. Why isn't the Ethernet in the Blu-ray spec?
The Sony BDP-S1 is one of the few players that don't have a mandatory Ethernet port. Unlike HD DVD, which makes internet connectivity mandatory, Blu-ray doesn't tells player makers to go nuts and put it in if they want. That means disc manufacturers can't count on the ...

I'm not sure why you'd want HD DVD in your car, but just in case, Toshiba and Alpine have created this car-friendly duo which brings HD DVD straight to your dashboard. The player is accompanied by Toshiba's touch screen, which has the brains to sense when your finger's shadow is hovering above the panel (that way you won't smudge or grease up your screen). The unit is expected to come out in 2008. – Louis Ramirez
Toshiba Presents Automotive HD DVD Player [Tech On]

Filed under: Displays, Misc. Gadgets, HDTV

Toshiba has shown off some auto-related products at the Automotive Engineering Expo 2007, including a mobile HD DVD player and a fresh take on touch panels. The high-definition in-dash player is under co-development with Alpine, and is planned for a 2008 release. The LCD is an improvement on traditional touchscreen technology, with no film coating -- which traditionally reduces contrast ratio and brightness -- to handle the user input, instead bundling optical sensors alongside each pixel. These sensors can then detect the shadow of a press during the day, and the reflection of the backlight at night. Toshiba also plans to upgrade that tech to use infrared instead of day/night sensors. Who cares if you can't see the difference between 1080 and 720 on a 7-inch screen, we just want our mobile touchscreen HD now! 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power...

Do you hear that sound? That's thousands of nerds cheering loudly, then coughing uncontrollably, then reaching for their inhalers thanks to a court ruling in Finland that rules CSS protection for DVDs ineffective. Why does this matter? Because under Finnish law, cracking DRM is only legal when it's "effective", and CSS has become so ineffective that it's no longer illegal.

According to the court, CSS (the DRM on DVDs) no longer achieves its protection objective. The court relied on two expert witnesses and said that "since a Norwegian hacker succeeded in circumventing CSS protection used in DVDs in 1999, end-users have been able to get with ease tens of similar circumventing software from the Internet even free of charge. Some operating systems come with this kind of software pre-installed." Thus, the court concluded that "CSS protection can no longer be held "effective" as defined in law." How long before HD DVD and Blu-ray discs get to this point? A year? Two years? M...