Nothing proves your masculinity more than the size of your TV. Good thing Sony's about to launch a 70-inch LCD Bravia XBR for a mere $33,000 next month. Chump change. As you might expect (or demand for that kind of money), it's got that whole 1080p thing going for it, perfect for watching Blu-ray discs or Blu-ray rips. While we appreciate the 178-degree viewing angle, that price... I mean, for $33,000 we could buy, like, two iPhones or something. Sorry, Sony, but that's a little too much. – Nicholas Deleon
Sony Bravia XBR 70 inch LCD [New Launches]

It's day two of our Next-Gen Media Giveaway where we are giving away a LG BH100 Hybrid Blu-Ray/HD DVD Player. Each day this week we will present a piece of trivia about the player. A correct answer will reward you with one entry to the contest—so you can be entered up to five times. Here is yesterday's trivia question for those who missed it. (Hint: Reading always helps.) –Travis Hudson
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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
It sounds like we may have another name to add to the pantheon of anti-DRM digital freedom fighters: Alex Ionescu, who's claiming his driver signing bypass method allows end users to bypass Vista's Protected Media Path DRM (the junky stuff that prevents you from watching "premium" content and HD material on non-HDCP outputs, like component, VGA, older HDMI TVs, etc.) Using Alex's technique (which has yet to be released to the general public, for fear of going the way of our man Viodentia), no unsigned drivers are loaded in the process, thereby convincing the media applications that are scanning for anti-DRM "badware" that everything's peachy, go ahead and output that signal even though it may be through the analog hole. We'll all be waiting, Alex, for you to move to Sealand so you can release the hack, we've got a lot of HD DVD and Blu-ray movies to watch, and not a lot of patience for HDCP-carrying gear.

[Via Slashdot, thanks gamebi...

While the rest of the world is gawking at 108-inch LCDs and quad-resolution pixel counts, I'll let you in on a little secret: 120Hz HDTVs are going to help movies look better than ever on the little screen in your living room.
Here's how.

Film is 24 frames per second. That standard was the approximation of what was defined in the early 20th century by hand crank cameras. And just about every movie disc you can buy is encoded in this format. We're not just talking DVD. We're talking about HD DVD and Blu-ray, too.
The problem is, most TVs run at 30 frames per second. Fitting that 24-frame content onto a 30-frame screen isn't that easy; the math just doesn't compute cleanly. You can't divide 24 by 30 without filling in the gaps with some junk. That junk causes stuttering in the video. This is a jerky-looking phenomenon that's particularly noticeable when the camera pans across a scene. The conversion is better known by film and TV wonks as 2:3 pulldown. It s...

We gave you the first review of the LG BH100 Hybrid Blu-Ray/HD DVD Player and now we are giving away the actual player. Each day this week we will present a piece of trivia about the BH100 player. Answer the question correctly and be entered in the contest with a chance to win the player. So if my math is correct: five days in the week means there are five opportunities to enter to win this player. All of the standard Gawker Contest Rules apply. (Hint: This may help.)
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–Travis Hudson

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Just about everyone and their respective grandmothers have now gotten a whiff of this whole "BackupHDDVD" thing that's been floating around, as muslix64 was able to break down the HD DVD content protection and allow folks to sidestep the AACS boundaries. The folks over at Slyck sat down to chat with the infamous hacker about his motives, his work, and the obligatory "hopes and dreams," and as we expected, he's simply yet another (albeit intelligent and determined) individual that's frustrated with the limitations that DRM presents. He refers to himself as simply an "upset customer" looking to "enforce fair use," further explaining that he wasn't able to appropriately play back an HD DVD film that he purchased "on a non-HDCP HD monitor." He also said that his success with HD DVD led to his shared efforts while taking down Blu-ray's content protection, and noted that any stronger protection to limit the abilities of purchased media would likely b...

Filed under: Desktops, HDTV
Alienware's Area-51 7500 desktop has certainly been on the chopping block before, but the inquisitive folks over at Bit-Tech were able to land a refreshed unit that not only featured dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card and a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor, but a built-in (unbranded Matshita) Blu-ray drive to boot. Instantly, reviewers expected the snazzy looking machine to spin right on through every benchmark laid in front of it, and for the coin you'd be paying, we can't say that's such an unrealistic request. During 2D / 3D testing, the SLI-equipped system simply dominated in terms of FPS, image quality, and smoothness, as reviewers actually stated that current games couldn't even take full advantage of all that horsepower just yet. Also of note was the Blu-ray playback, which ended up being practically flawless after the review crew had their (understandable) doubts about how well the unit itself and HDCP films would operate with...

Twentieth Century Fox has determined that up to 50 percent of pirated movies that hit the intertubes come from Canada—particularly Montreal. If those dirty Canucks don't clean up their act, well, they'll just have to wait longer to see movies. Ha! While we're at it, let's pin cracking Blu-Ray and HD-DVD DRM on Canada too.
Apparently they need laws more like ours, where recording a movie in a theater nets you eight years of jail time on top of a $250k fine, making movie tickets in New York actually seem cheap. – Matt Buchanan
50% movie piracy from Canada: Hollywood [Canada.com via Slashdot]

This week at iLounge: Surprise! We've released a free downloadable book -- complete with photos and videos -- that you can read on your video iPod's screen. Titled the 2007 Guide to New iPod Accessories & More, this book condenses our 2007 Macworld Expo and International CES coverage -- plus iPhone and Apple TV videos and First Looks -- into a single iPod-formatted download. Developed with help from Mogopop, the Guide is automatically installed into the Notes section of your iPod; full instructions are here, and the download is here.
First Looks: We're going to spare you the many, many new iPod, nano, and shuffle cases we covered this week -- there were probably 20 of them -- and cut right to the more interesting stuff. New First Looks focused on iHome's mini tower-like iH4 clock speaker -- the first such $50 offering from the maker of the popular iH5 -- plus XtremeMac's car, airplane, and wall outlet-ready Incharge Traveler kit, and a second-gen shuffle charging cable fro...

Hey guys, toss in your captions & check back later today.So it seems like Microsoft's IPTV software isn't getting that stellar of a start. First we heard that Verizon had to go back and redo some of the code just to make it work with their FiOS TV. Now we're getting wind that "code issues" are responsible for AT&T's IPTV delay. I'm hoping they get this fixed up because I sure am sick of my Comcast subscription, and was hoping this could spur another non-satelite player in San Francisco.
And Sen. Hillary Clinton is apparently the queen of Yahoo! Answers. A couple of days ago she put up a question, and in response she got over 35,000 replies. Damn. I couldn't imagine checking on 35,000 responses to one of Gizmodo's posts.
HP just seems to be hit with one problem after another. But they definitely caught a break here. Their Pretexting (Getting personal info under false pretenses) Lawsuit was dismissed. Some thought that this would drum up worries again after last years esp...