CSI helped defined HD in its early years and now it will finally be available on Blu-ray. The show, along with ER, was one of the first primetime programs to showcase why the 16:9 format at a higher definition was so damn spectacular. I don’t even think CSI: Miami would still be on the air if it wasn’t for the HD eye candy compensating for the horrendous acting. Anyway, the show’s first season… → Read More
Sound & Vision has a list of what they feel are the top high definition shows this fall. CSI: Miami Pushing Daisies The Mentalist Heros True Blood The Office Dexter While I don’t disagree with first two, Dexter (best show on TV, btw) and True Blood should be higher on the list. Plus SNL, Stargate: Atlantis, and ER all better looking than The Office. Great show, but there are… → Read More
Picking the right TV to pimp out your dorm is important. You don’t want to be the poor kid, sporting a tube TV but then again, you don’t want to spend all that open house cash just on a plasma. I’ve got a few solutions that will work nicely with your understandably low budget. → Read More
My goodness, there has been a lot of digital cameras launched within the last few days. Nikon, Canon and now Sony. This firm’s latest sports a 10.1 megapixel paired up with a 5x optical zoom and a 3.5-inch touchscreen, but the main selling point of the T500 has to be the HD video capture mode. This mode allows for up to 10 minutes of continuous video that should fill a 4GB memory stick. Said… → Read More
Vudu has big plans for their IP-based content delivery service. Big plans and we don’t mean that .99 cent rental thing. “In a very short time we’ll have 1,000 HD titles,” says Donnigan. “That’s more than Blu-ray. We have some huge deals.” That’s a lot of high-def content. More than any service we can think of. But also, the company wants to help… → Read More
The boob tube has been squawking lately about some big political event next week in Denver. If you plan on tuning in, Multichannel News is reporting that CNN plans on broadcasting the entire shebang in high-def. Apparently, the outfit splurged on new cameras and related gear for the event. You would think that this gathering was important or something. Multichannel News via TVP → Read More
We’ve featured Neuros’s wares on Crunchgear before, so we’re glad to see the DIY Linux systems mature to high definition age. Their latest box, the OSD2.0, aimed at developers is going to have the capability. Yeah, you read that correctly, as of right now it doesn’t but as soon as the functionality is available, a firmware refresh will add it. Once you throw in the… → Read More
As many of you are no doubt aware, I do my fair share of downloading. Movies, music, terrible TV shows, and so on. Usenet, BitTorrent, plain ol’ HTTP, whatever. So be it. Those of you who read the site closely—God bless you—also know that I have a rather ghetto entertainment setup: an iMac connected to a TV via HDMI, and good-enough surround sound system via toslink. It does the… → Read More
Blu-ray isn’t dead yet. Sales of Blu-ray players in Japan topped sales of regular DVD players for the first time last month, an indication that consumers are finally warming up to the high-def format. Spun a different way, sales of Blu-ray alone in April were three times the amount of both Blu-ray and HD DVD combined in January. Reasons for the sudden uptick in sales include people finally… → Read More
My brother told me that HD DVD died a few months ago because I hadn’t heard or read anything about the format war, but Blu-ray still ain’t doing so hot. And by “doing so hot,” I mean selling any better than it did when it was still entrenched in the utterly pointless war. From January to February, Blu-ray sales plummeted some 40 percent, only to get a slight bump from… → Read More
Time Warner Cable in New York adds a bunch of HD channels to its lineup today, chief among them Fox Business Channel HD and Disney HD. The e-mail it sent me this morning touts the fact that all TWC customers can now enjoy 100 free (for some reason “free” is capitalized in the e-mail, like it’s a proper noun) HD channels, never mind that lots of those channels are junk (like Fox… → Read More
You’re wasting your shiny new HDTV if all you do is watch Leno in high-def. Why not see what your display can do and play one or two of these standout video games on it? The list, compiled for High-Def Digest, includes both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games, so there’s no need to worry whether or not your system is represented. Xbox 360 games include Gears of War, BioShock and the… → Read More
WrestleMania XXIV airs this Sunday on pay-per-view and will be the first WrestleMania broadcast in high-definition. They’ve jacked up the price this year, so if you want to see Randy “The One Man Dynasty” (wtf?) Orton defend the title in HD be prepared to fork over $70. (The standard def version is $55.) In all likelihood, I think I’ll just grab the torrent the next day. → Read More
[photopress:twbbbr.jpg,full,right] There may be blood, but it won’t be on HD DVD. Paramount clarified earlier reports concerning its upcoming HD DVD release schedule. The final two HD DVD releases will be Into the Wild (anyone see that? Opie seemed to like it.) and Things We Lost in the Fire. They are currently scheduled to be released next week. Paramount isn’t expected to release… → Read More
I totally forgot to mention this yesterday, but the very first high-definition WWE pay-per-view aired on Sunday. The Royal Rumble, held at New York’s Madison Square Garden, is an annual last-man-standing sort of thing. It’s a big deal for wrestling fans. Raw also made its HD debut on USA last night. It’s broadcast in 1080i, which is as good as you’re gonna get on broadcast… → Read More
[photopress:imgp4584.JPG,full,center] Apple TV has been a bust thus far, but Apple hasn’t given up on the concept yet. Here’s what Jobs just announced during his MacWorld keynote. • It’s a free software update. No having to buy Apple TV V2 or anything. • Most importantly you no longer need a PC/Mac to use Apple TV. You’ll be able to rent movies, including high-def… → Read More
[photopress:pipelinehd_lr_.jpg,full,center] Product Name: Seagate PipelineHD Series Hard Disc Drives Description: A hard drive that’s specifically built for high def DVRs with (initially) up to 1TB in storage space Price: TBA In-store date: First-half of 2008 Site: Seagate Why it’s cool: Because storing high def, DVR’d content takes up an obscene amount of space. PipelineHD is… → Read More
Tuesday came and went, along with it the fall update for the Xbox 360. (I would have downloaded it, but my stubborn younger brother refuses to give me my 360 back.) Microsoft lists “improved deinterlacer support for video playback,” but does this do anything to remedy the 360′s generally shoddy DVD playback? In a word, no. No it doesn’t. ExtremeTech points out that the 360… → Read More
Yet another “HD DVD wins, Blu-ray stinks” article made the rounds this weekend, only it’s from a guy whose opinion actually means something (I think). Don Lindich, whose “Digital Made Easy” books—I don’t know—make digital easy, says HD DVD is the better value right now. An abundance of cheap players, increased studio support, Wal-Mart support, ease… → Read More
The Times’ David Pogue, who always comes across as an incredible nerd, is old. How old? Why, he’s so old, small things like the Slingbox Solo knock his socks off. What, it can transmit video from my home TV to my laptop halfway around the world? That’s insanity! It can, and it’s not. Pogue’s overview of the just-released Solo had to have been written with luddites in… → Read More
If you’ve recently purchased an HDTV and still don’t have a hi-def movie player, you’re really missing out. Lucky for you, Wal-Mart is supposedly selling the Toshiba A2 HD DVD player for a stunning $198, making it the cheapest standalone hi-def player on the market. The A2 is no throwaway chinese knock-off player either. This is the real deal as far as HD DVD goes. Wal-Mart… → Read More
Blu-ray outsold HD DVD by a nearly 2-to-1 margin for the first nine months of the year, selling 2.6 million units to HD DVD’s 1.4 million. All that is bupkis now that Transformers is out, which sold more than 100,000 copies on its first day of release last week. Vince made a good point in the chat room… aside from rabid fanboys, does anyone really care who outsells whom? Like… → Read More
AP image What’s more shocking to hear than “the Mets won’t be in the playoffs this year”? Oh, I don’t know, how about “Halo 3 doesn’t natively run in high definition.” Um, wtf? Halo‘s not in HD? ‘fraid not… → Read More
Sharp, that Japanese maker of things, has now added a dual layer, dual TV tuner Blu-ray recorder to its lineup. For good measure, Sharp also threw in a 1GB hard drive. Sure, why not? It’ll carry the BD-HDW20 moniker (a BD-W20 also exist, but has only one TV tuner and can only record onto single layer Blu-ray discs) and should carry a price of around… well, Akihabara lists the price at… → Read More
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