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HD DVD vs. Blu-ray

January 10, 2007, 1:21 AM

With the realization today that the LG "Super Multi Blue" player is a bit lax on its capabilities in the HD DVD department, not to mention all-around, it's fair to say it's premature to declare the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray format battle over by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the language we're hearing today only suggests it might be prolonged.

Blu-ray + HD DVD hybrid

January 10, 2007, 12:40 AM

Posted in: High-definition video

LG Electronics logo

Nate Mook, BetaNews: LG may have a difficult time bringing its newly announced BH100 hybrid Blu-ray and HD DVD player to the market, BetaNews has learned, because it will not receive certification from the DVD Forum. Without such certification, LG cannot publicly claim the player supports HD DVD as it is doing now.

LCD-TV

January 9, 2007, 6:42 PM

Posted in: Flat-panel displays

LCD TV

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: You would think, with the transition date to digital television broadcasting in the US just over two years away, that consumer demand for the devices necessary to help them make the exodus would be on the upswing. For a while, they were. Then last December, analyst firm iSuppli noted an unusual trend: The worldwide growth in LCD-TV decelerated to 57% annually in 2006, and will peak at about 20% this year.

Now, in fairness, we're talking about a market that rocketed from out of the base of nothingness just in 2005, so the growth curve was bound to flatten. But the 20% number was a bit of a shock. This at a time when prices for LCD flat-panel monitors are plummeting, the last CRT manufacturing facilities worldwide are shutting down, and the US Government is joining others in investigating whether LCD manufacturers actually conspired...to keep prices artificially high. So which is it? Is market demand being driven down due to high prices, or driven up due to low prices? You'd think the answer would be clear-cut.

Michael Dell Keynote

January 9, 2007, 4:04 PM

Posted in: The show in-depth


Michael Dell had a keynote address at CES Tuesday morning. With all due respect to poor Michael, he had a lot of competition, and we weren't listening to it right up front - something else was going on that had our attention, so I hope he forgives us. Mr. Dell reportedly used a lot of his time on stage to announce some new top-of-the-line XPS desktop and notebook combos, as Ed Oswald reports.

HD DVD

January 9, 2007, 2:05 PM

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: During the Bill Gates keynote on Sunday, Microsoft's Robbie Bach referred to HD DVD this way:

Robbie Bach, President, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft: [from Sunday night keynote] Our HD DVD player, [which] you can buy for Xbox 360 - Now, I want to point out, we've been making as many of these as we possibly can, and they continue to sell out. Demand for this product is incredibly high. Perhaps the bigger news than that, though, is that the HD DVD format has been the top-selling format this year, and that's a combination of the fact that it's had the most movies, it's been the most affordable, and it's had the most compelling interactive features with our technology that we've put into that product. So this really creates a great environment for people who want to use the disc space environment, to access and interact with high-definition movies.

US digital broadcast TV

January 8, 2007, 11:51 PM

Posted in: Digital TV services

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: On February 17, 2009 - just over two years from now - the analog broadcasting system used by American broadcasters for the entire 20th century will be shut down. Some of the spectrum will be turned over for emergency response use, while other portions of it will be auctioned off by the FCC, perhaps for use in wireless Internet service. But at that time, the old analog receivers will fail to receive signals; they'll need set-top boxes or compatible cable TV inputs to keep them functional.

With just a few years to go, we're not getting a very clear picture of what it is that the new low-resolution (i.e., 480i) DTV broadcast receivers will look like. Meanwhile, a new class of digital broadcast service is busting its way into the party, with the notion of being geared for portables and handhelds, but with the technological infrastructure to be a competitor in consumers' living rooms. Is The Next Television going to be the next battleground?

TiVo for Cable

January 8, 2007, 10:35 PM

Posted in: Digital TV services


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Photos: TiVo for Comcast
At CES 2007, DV-R maker TiVo showed off the first working demo of its video recording software for Comcast's set-top boxes manufactured by Motorola. The software is surprisingly different from TiVo's standalone boxes, which company officials attribute to the collaboration process and requirements of the cable provider. With TiVo's DirecTV partnership now over, deals with cable companies such as Comcast and Cox will prove critical to TiVo acquiring new customers.

Notebook PCs

January 8, 2007, 9:05 PM

Posted in: Mobile computing

What's fashionable in mobile PCs this season isn't the built-in communications - the next-generation platform there has some shaking out and finishing up to do. What's in, are high-definition optical disc burners, and here, the question is whether you need high-def optical for its video output or for its storage capacity.

WiMAX vs. UMB vs. HSDPA

January 8, 2007, 2:33 PM

Posted in: Mobile broadband

The biggest and most active battle in consumer electronics may not be in the high-definition format space, since after all, the technologies there are pretty much decided - all that remains is an outcome. Indeed, the big battle is over whose technology will serve as the infrastructure for wireless broadband service. In the US, the big carriers are clearly choosing sides: Sprint Nextel is making a huge WiMAX push at CES, while Verizon - by virtue of having backed EV-DO all this time - is now the de facto supporter of Ultra-Mobile Broadband (UMB, the former EV-DO Rev. C), while Cingular stands squarely behind the upgrade to its services, which would bring its EDGE network up to the 4G specs of HSDPA.

Maybe if Internet broadband service were roughly the same, it shouldn't matter who picks what technology, if it ended up looking the same in the end to the consumer. But flexibility is key to winning customer appreciation, while at the same time, one of these technologies - probably not all three - will be key to the next generation of mobile computing platforms. Intel has an edge there, and can drive WiMAX adoption, but that doesn't mean every mobile computing platform in the foreseeable future has to be Centrino. This could be a big, long, brutal battle, with all the major players on a roughly equal footing.

Xbox 360

January 8, 2007, 10:09 AM

Posted in: Gaming consoles

Sunday night's keynote speech from Microsoft's Bill Gates re-introduced the Xbox 360 not as the blast-'em-up gaming console we saw last year at E3, but instead as the digital home entertainment arbiter of choice, through which all things digital eventually pass.

The revised Xbox 360 will, according to Microsoft, deliver 1080p resolution (matching PlayStation 3) and include the HDMI connections. The HD DVD player will still be available as an add-on, though Microsoft's Robbie Bach made it clear Sunday night that the company was still firmly behind HD DVD over Blu-ray, stopping just short of declaring it the victor in the high-def format war. (That wasn't the only premature conclusion we heard from Bach Sunday.) But demonstrations of Xbox 360 playing UNO - that's right, everyone, the card game - made it clear that Microsoft is positioning this as the family-friendly device that connects people everywhere and that provides downloadable, high-definition content. This makes Xbox 360 a contender in the IPTV set-top box arena, where the rules are very different, but Microsoft enters with a clear advantage: market penetration.

Consumer HDDs

January 8, 2007, 9:50 AM

Posted in: Hard drives

The Maxtor product line will not fade into the sunset after all, as Seagate has decided the brand it acquired last year still has plenty of value to it. As Ed Oswald reports, Maxtor will serve as the company's brand for consumers' basic storage needs.

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