Filed under: Home Entertainment
There must be something really hard about making those Blu-ray players that no one seems to have anticipated. First Sony had to announce twice that its BDP-S1 was going to be delayed until December 2006 due to software bugs. Now Pioneer has been delayed too, for unspecified failure to meet "quality control requirements," which may or may not be related to the other assorted blue laser shortages. The BDP-HD1, which was due to come out this month (after having been delayed from its previous May launch), won't ship now until December as well. The price, however, has dropped since we last eyed it at CES -- it's now down to $1500. We're still not sure which is bluer, us consumers, who have been trying to get one of these Blu-ray players until we go blue in the face, or Pioneer, who is singin' the blues. (This entry has been brought to you by the color "blue.")

[Thanks, Junger] 
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The bad news never stops rolling for Blu-ray this season, as Pioneer's BDP-HD1 got rolled back to a December release. Originally planned for October, the BDP-HD1 "has not passed the company's quality control requirements, and it will be available when it does."
It was originally supposed to be available in May for $1,500, but various "development delays" caused a delay. Our own Lam said "Aha! That's why they didn't send me a unit." We didn't have the heart to tell him that the real reason was all the review units he sends back end up smelling like dog farts and Puppy Chow. And he doesn't even have a dog! – Jason Chen
Product Page [Pioneer Electronics]
Pioneer BDP-HD1 Blu-ray Player Pushed to December [Electronic House]

Filed under: HDTV, Wireless
Six of the world's largest consumer electronics companies have joined with startup SiBEAM to form the WirelessHD interest group. They expect to complete the WiHD spec by spring of next year, using the unlicensed 60GHz frequency to stream digital information at multi-gigabit rates. The advantages of using SiBEAM's solution is that such chips can use higher power levels without overlapping other frequencies, yet are limited to a short range and won't penetrate walls. With the backing of LG, Matsushita (Panasonic), NEC, Sony and Toshiba, this standard could easily overtake WiFi- and UWB-based solutions others are working on. Its backers expect HDTVs, DVD players, receivers and other devices based on the technology to start rolling out in 2008, leaving us wondering: why can Sony and Toshiba cooperate on this high definition standard, but couldn't make Blu-ray and HD DVD work together?

[Via Yahoo News] 
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Bypass the Blu-ray and HD DVD "revolution" altogether with the Dcube Mvision, an HD DivX player that can also play ripped DVD files from its hard disk. This setup box plays back DivX, OGG, WMA, WMV and MP3 files from its internal hard disk, and sends Dolby 5.1 sound through optical and coaxial ports, too.
So where would you get the HD files for this thing? That's up to you, but we've heard of a little thing called BitTorrent that might be able to help. Grab those files from the Interwebs on your PC and transfer them to this unit via that LAN port in the back. There's everything you need back there, well, except an HDMI port, but you can use a DVI-to-HDMI adapter for that, and hook this up to your HDTV.
Lots more pics and commentary, after the jump.

This is the way HDTV will be viewed in the future, not with physical media. If Dcube could just manage to bring its ambitious little Mvision box to these shores, we'll be all set. No pricing or delivery date was...

As promised earlier today, I interviewed Fabio at the Geek Squad event yesterday. Here's some highlights.
•Fabio likes his Macs. He uses Final Cut Pro to edit video he does for TV, but is using a G4. WTF? He'll spring for a MacPro soon, though, he assured me.
•The dude is an old school gadget geek; he used to own an Amiga. Can you picture him tinkering away on an Amiga?
As the video above shows, he also knows how to solder...
•He's got a ridiculous A/V system, complete with 15 ft. x 7 ft. screen, powered by a Ronco HD projector. He's also keen on Krell.
•He's not a fan of either HD DVD or Blu-ray.
•He called the Xbox 360 "incredible." He's not really a fan of today's video games, however, but is completely blown away by the graphics. Then he went off on some weird tangent about how he and Hulk Hogan were the first real people on the cover of a video game box.
Now, what you've all been waiting for... ...

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
A media rep for the Blu-ray Disc Association recently sent us an email mentioning the Philips BDP9000/37 in it, and we couldn't find any retailers selling it at the time. Well today we're getting reports on the availability of the player at Wal-mart for only $898, apparently already shipping. Most other major big box and online retailers -- we checked Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon, Target, Buy.com, and Newegg -- either don't have it listed at all, or have it for pre-order only. A post at AVS Forum notes that some Wal-mart stores may simply be selling the player before its potential release date of November 1st, so potential buyers should move quickly in case this was a mistake. There's also some confusion as to whether the box is just a rebranded Samsung BD-P1000, or if it has different parts inside; the consensus so far seems to be that it uses the same reference design but with different video DAC (digital-to-analog converter) components (...

The Phantom Lapboard keyboard and mouse keeps coming back to haunt us, and now it's received a shot in the arm from Alienware, vowing to ship the input devices with its Media Center PCs. We've seen the Phantom before, first offered as wireless input devices for a hybrid PC console gaming system nearly 3 years ago.
But still, this might be a good keyboard/mouse combo for those smart folks who are bypassing physical media such as Blu-ray, HD DVD and DVDs, putting a PC in their home theaters and watching their movies via video files. With the Phantom's 2.4GHz RF wireless capability, that noisy PC can be 32 feet away, no Bluetooth required.
A revealing video and some mildly caustic commentary, after the jump.



Too bad there's no backlighting for the keyboard—a must in home theaters with projectors—and unless your home theater has armless chairs, a Bluetooth mouse would suffice. Anyway, it looks cool. – Charlie White
Pha...

Don't know whether to back Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Vidabox's media center PCs will play both. In Gear Factor.

No official announcement from Samsung on what this firmware update for the BD-P1000, but everyone's been complaining about the softness in the picture quality and the DTS stuttering. Good news: the update fixes the stuttering. We don't have a BD-P1000 in house, but leave a comment let us know what else the firmware update fixes if you've got one yourself. – Jason Chen
Update Page [Samsung via Home Theater Blog via Gadgetell]

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Storage
Panasonic says that its new 4-layer 100GB Blu-ray discs are so durable that you'll be able to retrieve the data in 100 years' time (which reminds us a lot of the claims they originally made about CDs, as one may recall). The company has been at work for the last few years making use of "tellurium suboxide palladium-doped phase-change recording films" (or Te-O-Pd, for those in the know) to improve the capacity of its Blu-ray discs. But the company has now achieved what appears to be the optimal ratio for durability and size: a 100GB disc that will last you a century. Of course, a few months ago Panasonic scientists completed a research paper showing a disc-making technique that kicked that timeframe up to 500 years, but could only hold 50GB of data. So that may indicate that if you have 1GB that you really need to be preserved for the next several thousand years, you may want to get some serious cash together and give Panasonic a ring. Of cou...