Categories
Home Entertainment Microsoft Xbox

Xbox 360 is in the house!

xbox360logo.jpgSo, I’ve been secretly lusting for the Xbox 360 for some time. I told myself and others that I wasn’t going to hang out at Best Buy or Costco like the other nerds, but all the while I’ve made side trips into these dens of electronic goodness for the past several months.

The persistence finally paid off yesterday, when everyone and their brother could finally get the 360. Apparently, local Best Buy, Walmart and others received shipments of around 60-80 Xbox 360’s. Mind you, they still sold out, but a lot more people got their hands on Xboxes this weekend.

I’ll post a more detailed report later, but so far the experience has been fairly positive. While a minor detail, the most impressive thing so far is how well the wireless controllers work with the Xbox. If you’ve ever tried to pair Bluetooth devices, you’ll appreciate how you turn the Xbox on, hit the big X button on the controller and it just works. You’d think Apple made it 🙂

Categories
Downloads Home Entertainment Media Servers and Streamers

Movie downloads compete with DVD

brokeback.jpgMovielink and CinemaNow announced today that they will have day and date releases with their DVD counterparts reports the Wall Street Journal this morning. Starting tomorrow with Brokeback Mountain, both companies will give users the ability to buy movies the same day they arrive on DVD.

Both seem to limit what people can do with the movies. Movielink will allow users to burn the movies to DVD, but those DVDs will only be playable on PCs. For the privilege, Movielink will be charging between $20-30 per movie for new films, on par with DVD’s MSRP, but not the actual street price. CinemaNow will be charging between $10-20 per movie, but users won’t be able to burn the movies to DVD.

More details at WSJ.com (paid subscription) and Yahoo!

Categories
Home Entertainment Tivo

New Tivo?

images.jpegNo Series 3 Tivo yet, but Amazon has specs on a SD dual cable tuner (one analog, one digital). Sounds like they may have one input for an external tuner and one internal tuner. Probably not the most straightforward thing to hook up, but Tivo has been pretty remarkable in the past making this stuff just work.

No official word from Tivo yet, but Amazon, Buy.com and a few others seem to have product info, but no ship date.

(Via Zatz Not Funny. . ..)

Categories
Apple Home Entertainment HTPCs Microsoft

Windows MCE on a iMac

imacmce.jpgNot satisfied with just running regular XP on an Intel Mac, the folks over at the OSX86Project have gotten Windows MCE up and running on an Intel iMac. They don’t have the IR port working yet, but I imagine that it will only be a matter of time.

Read

(Via Matt Goyer’s Media Center Blog.)

Categories
Downloads HDTV Home Entertainment Media Servers and Streamers Wireless

Moviebeam relaunches

moviebeam.jpg

A number of stories this morning regarding the relaunch of Disney’s Moviebeam service in 29 markets this year. In a nutshell, Moviebeam is a hard drive based set top box that receives movies over unused television spectrum. The box ships with a 100 movies on the hard drive and about 10 movies are swapped out each week for new ones. Movies then can be rented for $1.99 to $3.99 (catalog versus new releases) with HD movies costing $1 more.

While the service is interesting, the biggest problem that I see is that the set top box is $250 before rebates, which is a huge barrier to entry for many folks. Not to mention it is another piece of hardware to hook up to a television. I have a sense that if this service were being a promoted by someone like Apple it could be hugely successful, but with backers such as Cisco and Disney, the future of Moviebeam is fuzzy at best.

Read

(Via Zatz Not Funny)

Categories
Home Entertainment Portable Entertainment Rumors Sony

AIBO, Qualia Roadkill

aibo.jpg

Sony, in a cost cutting effort, has cut the AIBO and Qualia lines from production, according to Akihabara News. I think quite a few geeks will be sad to see the AIBO line die, but few will lament the passing of Sony’s Qualia line.

Qualia, FYI, is Sony’s ultra high end line of consumer electronics. This line includes a $27,000 projector, $12,000 rear projections television, $3300 headphones, and my personal favorite the $3300 2 megapixel digital camera.

The problems withe Qualia brand were not just with prices, but it was incredibly questionable if there was a market for such devices. Sony wasn’t successful in making Qualia truly aspirational products. I mean, if the incredibly rich don’t want them, why would John Q. Public?

Oh well, no one is crying over Qualia, but AIBO lovers, you might consider the Robosapien or some other more-human robot companion.

Read

Categories
HDTV Home Entertainment

Netflix + HD DVD = Peanut Butter + Chocolate

bd-rom.jpg

Two great tastes…(ugh, must not post while tired). Looks like you won’t have to rush right out to replace your old shiny discs with new shiny discs after all. Netflix announced they will have both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs when they launch. They don’t expect demand to be too high(I’ll second that), but want to support both formats for early adopters. No word on additional costs, but I haven’t heard anything about the cost of these HD discs.

Read

(Via eHomeUpgrade.)

Categories
CES Home Entertainment

HDMI is pretty

and everything else is really, really messy. If you’ve ever taken a look at the back side of my receiver it looks like something that NASA would use to launch rockets. Between 5 cables for audio and 3 for video for one frickin’ source, it makes one wonder if Monster Cable has been subsidizing A/V component development for the last 10 years.

DSC_0032.jpg

DSC_0033.jpg

These pictures speak volumes about the simplicity the industry is aspiring to and god, I hope HDMI is powering everything in the next few years.

Categories
CES Games HDTV Home Entertainment Microsoft Xbox

External HD-DVD for Xbox 360

hd-dvd.jpgJust to keep it nice and confusing, Microsoft has announced an HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360. The announcement talks specifically about movies rather than games, so this unit better be cheaper than standalone units, or MS has a nice Sega CD on their hands.

Read

Categories
CES HDTV Home Entertainment

Holy Big Ass Plasma!

bigassplasma.jpg

Ok, normally I don’t get really excited about bigger, better, faster(Ok, that’s a lie, but generally I expect it.) CES is the place for the big electronics companies to show you who has the biggest screen, but I think that LG has the biggest plasma by far. Now, 50″ plasmas are nice and all, but let’s say you need a really, really, really big tv to bling out your media room, this 102″ monster is for you. No price on this sick tv, but if you have to ask…

One more picture after the jump.