I played out my pair of Shure E4c about a year ago when, ensconced in their circular case, they rolled out of my car into oncoming traffic. Realizing the driving public wasn't trained by years of reading signs on the back of 18-wheelers declaring "Where there's a rolling earphone case, there's a running audiophile," I erred on the side of caution. Bye-bye Shure.

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There's a time late in the day when lighting is so gloriously perfect, even Thomas Kinkade comes out for a look. It's during these times that directors coax camera men to get the shot during the few short minutes of perfect light they have remaining. Filming proceeds without idle chatter or Tomfoolery because everyone knows what is at stake.

Yup, that's how I feel at the beginning of a new consumer electronics cycle. You know, like when DVD's first came out. Most people could only afford one player, it cost $1,000 and it sat in the family room along with all the newly acquired and quickly-piling-up discs. Want to see a movie? They're right here, in perfect alphabetized order, on the barely populated new format shelf. Brilliant!

Later in the cycle, when the product is mature, well, that's when things just go to hell.

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Dedicated to the memory of Arthur C. Clarke, who last week, took the big rocket to the stars.

Toshiba Japan has developed a talking, and listening, robot, of sorts, that can eavesdrop on your remote control usage and, when it "reads" an infrared code it doesn't understand, asks you just what you think you were doing. You can tell the ApriPoco anything (this is better than teaching your parrot to swear) and it will then associate your verbal command with a remote control function that it, too, can now do. Presumably, at your command.

I can see it now . . .

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Truth be told, if my old wireless router, an ancient 802.11g model (okay, "ancient" is a relative term – in this case it means almost two years old) was still working, I'd have kept it longer. Change is stressful.

Technically, the old wireless router was still working, provided you sat within 10' of it. That's quite a bit short of the 50+ feet it provided when new. One brown-out or power surge too many I guess. The kids adapted. They used to huddle in the corner of the room directly above my home theater because they could get a connection there (and a fairly decent massage from the subwoofer). Quality time I would have thought, until the oldest, an almost-lawyer, threatened legal action.

Besides, I wanted to try some new things that are more-or-less related to home theater in general, and iPods in particular. I have two identical 250 GB external USB hard drives that I can daisy chain together, and I keep my photos and music on those. But I hate cables, so I'd like to put them in corner somewhere, away from spilt drinks and prying fingers, but still connect to them. Enter the Belkin wireless USB hub.

I don't have it yet, but if it works as I think it will, I'll be able to load music wirelessly. But that's not all. If you're a geek, the Vision N1 has some cool features too, like the ability to act as an access point or a router. Though truth be told (again), CNET didn't think it was the fastest of the N routers, in fact, it scored near the bottom (but tons faster than "G"). Still, I'm getting farther (200' to the house next door) and faster (as fast as the cable company can pump out the data) than I ever did before. Of course, you have to have a special "N" USB adaptor to get "N" speed, but I'm showing a 130 Mbps connection (though that's not throughput - that tops out at about 4 Mbps with my cable.)

So I'm happy for now.

I'll have more to report when the wireless USB hub arrives and I figure out how my music collection can get even easier to use.

BBC has an iPlayer feature that let's you watch TV broadcasts you may have missed on the "Beeb." Problem is, it's only open to folks who live in the U.K. So I have to keep reading little inside references to the "EastEnders" in Nick Hornsby novelettes but do I get to see what all the fuss is about? Hardly.

So sure, I fired off this missive to Mark Thompson over at the BBC Internet Blog explaining my discomfort with their decision:

Dear Mr. Thompson,
I wish I knew a lot of British swears so I could correctly describe my feelings towards the Beeb for not letting us Yanks take a gander at your programming online. Rumour has it (yes, "rumour" not "rumor" - we can be retrained) that you've come a long way since Sheep Herding in the Highlands, or whatever it was I watched that one time. Well, just to say, two can play at this game and you're not allowed to read my Blog.

It's the honor system. We don't quite have your IT budget. We certainly look forward to your cooperation,
Despondent in the USA

Ok, I Suppose I should be happy that Torchwood (Sci-fi with a lemon twist) is available here via BBC America's channel and leave it at that, but something's really wrong in this world if an American can't watch whatever he wants to, whenever he wants, global distribution rights be damned.

But I suppose what we see on the internet is turning into big business. Case in point, the writer's strike in Hollywood. According to Cynthia Littleton, a reporter for Daily Variety, this week's settlement between the writers and studios means money in the pockets of the writers. Another story I heard on the radio claimed writers would receive up to $1,200 each whenever an episode they worked on was posted on the web. When you consider how many writers it takes to write an episode of Lost or Heroes, then you know this is going to cost the studio a pretty penny to give away online what they've heretofore been giving away on TV. The cost of giving things away for free just keeps going up!

Of course, lots of people like to pay for these downcasts, er, podcasts. I've never considered paying for something I'd end up watching on a tiny handheld, when I could get the same thing for free on my DVR and watch it on a large screen. With the right aspect ratio even.

But maybe the studios have already figured out another way to turn the screws on us.

I mean, besides American Idol.

I don't get it. I read anecdotal stories on the Internet about people who think their upconverting DVD player is high-def. I find folks who order high-def cable to go along with their new flat screen TVs perfectly happy to view that "high-def" over s-video, per the cable company installer's wishes. So I guess J6P (Joe Six Pack) is a bit, well, ignorant, in the original intent of the word. No offense.

But a week after Warner cut the rope and set HD DVD adrift, the public is proving there' are no flies on them (that means they're not brain dead – my readers are multi-generational so I have to explain everything). Sales of HD DVD discs have practically evaporated and wow, that 2-to-1 BD to HD DVD disc sales ratio of just last December is starting to sound like the good old days to Toshiba!

Prices are rock bottom these days for any Toshiba player (as low as $99), if you can find a retailer willing to sell them. Woolworth's in the U.K. has announced they'll stop selling the players in March. Woolworths! I mean, they made their reputation selling crap and even THEY won't sell HD DVD!

Too bad Toshiba can't figure out a way to convince J6P (see above) they need an HD DVD player to watch the Superbowl. That could be 100,000 units sold right there!

But while we don't know for a fact that the Giants are going to pick up their ball and go home defeated next Sunday (well, we do know, but we're pretending we don't), we do know what's happened in the HD DVD vs Blu-ray debacle. It's over. C'est fini! Acabou Cara! I mean, don't let the door hit you in the ass and all that jazz.

Part II – A New Renaissance

I have a confession to make. I used to buy a lot of conventional DVDs. At some point in 2006, I slowed way down. I mean WAY down. The weekly trips to Costco to pick up a couple of new movies on DVDuesday became a thing of the past. I even bought a new projector, thinking, hell, that'll perk me up, but in the end, I used it more to watch HD programming like HerosPrisonBreak24LostLasVegasTheUnit than HD discs. Oh sure, I'd slap on an HD DVD for a review, but when it was over, back to I Love Lucy on the flat screen.

And I apparently wasn't the only one. Sales of standard DVDs are in the toilet. The market needs a shot in the arm, and hopefully, with the FUD factor gone (fear, uncertainty and doubt), things should start to look up.

Well, you know, provided the economy doesn't tank.

The war is over. It's time to rebuild. I'm actually very excited about being able to commit to something. Maybe retailers could start committing as well. Hey Costco, how about carrying more than one high-def disc at a time?

Maybe I'll try and find that old bookmark I had lying around here somewhere to www.dvdpricesearch.com and do me a little Blu-ray shopping.

I hate making predictions (like the one I secretly made where HD DVD wins the format war), but I think 2008 is going to be the beginning of a new era in disc sales, one where combined Blu-ray and DVD sales easily surpass, at least in gross revenue, DVD sales at their summit.

Let's all hope I'm right this time.

What's interesting is how others have reacted to Warner's strategic shift. The first thing the HD DVD Promo Group did is cancel their press event. I wonder what happens to all the goody bags?

Next, Warner Home Entertainment President Kevin Tsujihara followed with a conference call where he clarified that HBO and New Line, WHV subsidiaries both, were not covered by the main Warner announcement and that they were free to do what they thought best. Within a few hours, New Line, at least, thought it best to fall in line and go Blu-ray exclusively as well. As for HBO, no word yet, but I'd expect Meatballs to get Blu-Balls as well.

And what about Universal? Well their first act (of desperation) seems to be laying the blame for inclusion of the NC-17 HD DVD release of Ang Lee's film Lust, Caution in the announcement of the February DVD release to a "clerical mistake."

Riiiight!

Oh, and what about the Blu-ray fanboy websites? Well, let's just say, they're getting their jollies. Reading their condescending, smarmy reactions is right up there with drinking the lemon bleach your Doctor prescribes before a colonoscopy.

So if I were a bettin' man, I'd say my Toshiba XA-2 will be relegated to being a great upconverting DVD player. Which, fortunately, it is.

Oh, and yeah, I always knew . . .

There isn't much to complain about this year, but that won't stop me.

Walmart – while my local store has not one, but two, dumpster filled with $5 DVDs in their electronics section, they have a single endcap whereupon Blu-ray and HD DVD discs are crammed. All those wives who show up to buy HD DVD players for their husbands – just like the wife in the Walmart commercial – are going to be awfully disappointed unless their husband is 12-years-old, because Harry Potter and Pirates are more than half of the available fare.

Costco – because there's more to high-def than just three-packs of movies, at least one of which you already regret owning as a standard DVD. Maybe when they start shipping back all the standard DVDs they couldn't sell at Christmas, Costco will finally get into the right spirit.

20th Fox Century – with emphasis on the "20th" for putting out 28 Days Later on Blu-ray to showcase the standard definition video tape on which it was almost entirely shot.

The Format War - because it's not hard enough to get people to adopt new technology. Now they feel they have to make a to-the-death commitment. With this only-available-on-Blu-ray-ring-I-thee-wed.

The Sony PS3 - Oh, I know, it's the best Blu-ray player out there and that's why I bought it. But I thought there were supposed to be some good games for it too?

Directv - who decided just before Christmas they would pull Universal HD and HDNET Movies out of my $9/month "high def" programming package unless I coughed up another $6/month (which I most certainly did not!)

Shameless Blu-ray promotion site - to call their chief spokesman a whore would be to unfairly besmirch the world's oldest profession.

The Perfect Vision - who shuts their print bureau down at the end of the year. Don't worry Scott, paper is way overrated!

TheDigitalTwits - I'll be the first to admit, I visit the site and read up to get the latest news, but this slavish devotion to being right about which format should succeed is indeed tiresome.

AVS Forum - Don't get me wrong. Love it. Absolutely love it. That being said, if you have to spend an hour reading 23 thread pages of contradictory, un-vetted, un-credited and un-medicated drivel to find out something, anything, that resembles the truth, perhaps we should admit; the "forum," as a concept, is broken. Viva UAV!

Do you find that others in your home don't bond with electronics as well as you do? Do you get calls at work that start with "how do I . . ." and end with "your [optional expletive deletive] [brand and function of your last electronic purchase]?

You're not alone. We, dear readers, are the hard-core. Everyone else, is not.

I bought Gina an iPod last year for Christmas. She loves it. She went out and bought a dock with speakers and thought it would be nice to bring to the office. It was cheap. How did it sound? Cheap too. She returned it. Even for the office, it wasn't going to cut it.

That's the problem with little docks. No matter what they promise, they can't break the laws of physics without (and I'm thinking of the $3,000 Ferrari red Meridian F80) also breaking the bank.

mStation thinks big. Walk right up and plug your iPod into their Stereo 2.1 Tower without bending over. The mStation has 100 watts of power in a five channel amplifier. The most powerful of the amps drives the 5-1/4" woofer in the large center tube. Each of the smaller tubes contains two 2" midrange drivers and a 1" tweeter. The brunt of the power, 30 watts, goes to power the woofer. Then the two midranges drivers and single tweeter get 15 watts each, per side. I know, it doesn't quite add up to 100 watts, but who's counting.

Bass is specified down to a very useful 50 hz (-5 Hz). There's a remote control that's about the size of an iPod, but a fraction of its weight. Play, pause, bass, treble, volume, next and previous tracks and power. That's all you need. Want to pick another artist, initiate shuffle play, things like that? Rub the magic iPod.

Each of the units three tubes are extruded aluminum. The 2.1 Stereo Tower weights 21 lbs, stands 43" tall and everyone that saw it said the same thing. "Cool!"

Assembly was minimal and easy. Just screw in the small midrange/tweeter towers and plug it in. mStation provides a USB connection and a line input as well, for hooking up computers and other portable music players without docking, respectively.

You can angle the midrange/tweeter sections horizontally up to 45 degrees from straight ahead. I faced them out and put the 2.1 Stereo Tower pretty close to a corner in the dining section of a very large kitchen. The bass was more than ample, in fact, I had to turn it down more than once. This is no fainting violet of a speaker.

Mating substantial bass to the rest of a system can be problematic, but the 2.1 Stereo Tower is extremely well balanced. While low notes are powerful, the midrange and upper frequencies are still open and very inviting. In fact, I'd use the word "crystalline" to describe the sound. There is no bass overhang into the midrange, no chesty sound to male vocals. I listened to hours and hours of music, turning off the TV in the kitchen every chance I got to fire up the iPod. Al Stewart never sounded so good!

The quality of the drivers is surprisingly good. No ringing, no fatigue from extended listening. The system never, ever sounded cheap. In fact, I find it amazing that mStation can build and sell the 2.1 Stereo Tower for only $300. Its nearest competitor, at nearly twice the price, would be Bose. But the last piece of Bose gear I liked were a pair of 501 speakers my house-mate Ted had in college. Now those sounded good. Since then? Not so impressed really. Besides, the Bose and just about anything else will chew up the better part of an end table, where as the mStation 2.1 Stereo Tower can stand on it's own two feet!

If you're looking for a really great addition to your home electronics arsenal, one that is simple enough for your grandmother to use, loud enough that she can hear it, and good enough that you'll love it too, I can't recommend the mStation 2.1 Stereo Tower more highly.

Where I live, AT&T continues to mail me offers for cheap DSL when they know very well they can't provide the experience in my area. You have to be close to the CO (that's phone company speak for "central office") to get DSL. I think they use Mapquest or something to see if you're close enough.

I was, they said. One second phone line, a box of phone company gear and two weeks later, turns out I wasn't.

To the rescue came Adelphia, who was later swallowed up by Comcast like a unattended Crispy Crème at a charity event. Now for $45/months, I get high speed cable.

Until this morning. Comcast has on-line "chat" tech support. I'm not sure how you're supposed to use it if your high-speed connection isn't working ("Hello, McFly!"). But most people are resourceful I guess. If I didn't have my Blackberry, I could drive around the neighborhood with my laptop looking for a wireless router named "default."

Anyway, I connect to the online chat support because the alternative of calling an 800 number on a Saturday is too strangely repulsive to consider.

Within seconds, my "Analyst" Dominque has connected. In a few minutes, she tries pinging the lights-are-on-but-nobody's-home cable modem and fails. She said they would have to schedule a repair.

Schedule a repair? Couldn't I just drive over the cable company office and pick up a new modem, I whine? A joke about Soviet era Russia pops into my head, except this time the man isn't buying a car and being told it will be ready in ten years. No this time, he's waiting for the cable guy.

"Mornink or Afternoon?" says the customer.

"What's difference" says the perplexed salesman.

"Plumber come mornink!"

Anyway, Comcast will be here tomorrow, a Sunday no less, between 11am and 2pm. I'm going to end this blog while there is still the appearance of a happy ending.

I remember sitting in a CES press conference sometime in the year $149 D.V.D. listening to Toshiba whine about how no one was making any money selling DVD players any more. But moments later, they were announcing new models with new features and even lower price points. I guess you can't blame them. After all they had a lot of competition back then.

Fast forward to this year when the Toshiba A2 started off selling for $500 and is now available, in limited quantities, for – ahem - $99 at Walmart, "this" Friday only (10 per store, tough nuts if they run out). That's what capitalism is all about my friend. One guy sells a hot dog for a dollar, the other guy drops his price to $.95, then the first guy lowers his price to $.90 and then – oh wait, there is no other guy. Toshiba is pretty much the only hot dog salesman on the block!

So why the rapid price cuts? This week in L.A., the BlurayFlooziesFest kept harping on the newly announced Panasonic DMP-BD30 player which streets November 12th for a new, super low price of $499! They're getting seriously excited because the price dropped $50! Meanwhile, Toshiba has what, to a casual observer, could look like "Going out of Business" signs pasted to their storefront. Come on Toshiba, don't let 'em see you sweat.

As much as I love HD DVD, and as much as I appreciate the fact that every HD DVD player to date (okay, every Toshiba player to date) can accept firmware updates with just a few clicks of the remote (and a high speed connection), it's painful to know that I might never see Ratatouille in high def unless I get a Blu-ray player. And yes, Tom, I'm being a little facetious.

All the hype aside, there really is more room on a BD disc and being an audiophile first and a videophile second, I can get behind the better sound of lossless PCM tracks. So a BD player is definitely in my future, but exactly when is open to discussion.

At first, I was planning on making the jump to Blu-ray when MGS4 (Metal Gears Solid 4) came out just after Christmas. If you don't know what that is, it's a game, not a movie, but never mind, it's been delayed to Q2 2008. So now I need another reason. Maybe Ratchet and Clank starring – ah okay, just funnin' ya! It's a PS3 game too. So I guess you know what kind of a Blu-ray player I'm going to get. And I guess you know what kind of software is driving me to Blu-ray. Besides, Sony's announced the PS3's will get firmware updates to profile 1.1 and I'm guessing 2.0 as well in the future. Nice having a hard drive and an Ethernet port.

So what about the sub $100 HD DVD players? Well, look at it this way. You're a Blu-ray snob fan and your wife puts an HD DVD player she picked up at Walmart under the tree along with some paperwork that nets you five free HD movies. You struggle with the decision whether to tell her that any moron knows that Blu-ray has space for 20 extra gigabytes and that for an extra $400 she could have gotten something truly meaningful and worthy of you – or you just graciously accept the gift and thank her, whipping out your laptop and ordering a boat load of movies with the $400 she just saved.

We'll see what the Holidays bring, but if the rocket scientists of retail can figure out how to put a $200 HD DVD player (hey, quantities of the $100 ones were limited!) next to a couple of 2-for-1 HD DVD discs, Toshiba, Universal, Paramount and Dreamworks are going to sell a heck of a lot of hot dogs.

First of all, I wouldn't expect the purveyors of either high-def format to do their laundry in public, but absence of evidence, as they say, is not evidence of absence. So I went to the industry to see if there is anything that lent credence to the word on the street that Blu-ray replication may be more problematic than some like to believe.

PacificDisc is a disc replication house that deals with smaller production companies, not the major movie studios who have their own tightly integrated sources for disc replication. But their pricing policies clearly indicate that BD replication goes for a 12% - 26% premium over HD DVD (single layer discs in both formats, at quantities of 100,000 and 10,000, respectively). But don't read too much into this because after AACS encoding, PacificDisc sends their BD masters out to Technicolor (a subsidiary of European consumer electronics giant Thomson) for actually pressing. So you might be inclined to chalk up the pricing discrepancy to middle man syndrome.

Things get more interesting, however, when you start talking about the total picture. For instance, PacificDisc's (PD herein) website notes that "copy protection or encryption (AACS) is required on all Blu-ray discs (though not for HD DVD) and costs $2,500 per title plus $0.10/disc," that last dime being for royalties. And that's pretty much the route PD's customers take, paying the company for the AACS service because, in the sub 100K replication market, investing in equipment and software for Blu-ray just isn't in the cards.

So if you're looking to press 10,000 discs on Blu-ray, it's not the $1.75 per disc you see posted on PD's website, it's more like $2.10 a disc out the door. Now the difference with the $1.39 HD DVD disc is more like a 50% premium. In fact it's exactly a 50% premium. And you can forget about dual layer BDs (BD50), because they're not offered. Dual layer HD DVD replication, on the other hand, are offered and go for not much more ($1.71/ea @ 10K).

A spokesman for PacificDisc told me that getting a check disc to his BD customers could take as long as 10-14 days. PacificDisc can usually beat that outside number, but still, it's not like the one day turn around they often swing for DVD and, yes, even HD DVD check discs.

Most of his PD's high def business is, not surprisingly, HD DVD.

For actual replication, PD converted some of their HD-9 (dual layer DVD) equipment fairly economically to HD DVD production, so they can service their customers directly.

One last point – I asked about rumors of problematic yield rates with BD. My contact basically said he'd heard and read the same things we had, but it didn't really matter to him what Technicolor's BD yields were, since he only paid for finished and functioning product.

We also talked about the format war. My contact at PD said he's following it just like everyone else. Given Blu-ray players at $200-$300, he sees Blu-ray as dominating, but that's not $200-$300 years from now, it's this Christmas.

Can the Blu-ray consortium do it? And if they do, can the replication facilities keep up?

Yes, please do. The Home Theater "Specialists" of America (my quotes) threw their support behind Blu-ray this week. Not that anyone I'm aware of was asking their opinion. If the story in Twice is correctly attributed, executive director Richard Glikes claimed "better resolution" as one of Blu-ray's advantages. Over DVD, VHS tape and a drunk at a New Year's Eve party, definitely, but in comparison to HD DVD, claiming a better resolution is simply flat out false.

The group's 62 member appear to be mostly high-end custom installers catering to an exclusive clientele. If they were weighing in on the relative benefits of walnut over oak cabinetry, I'd be more likely to take them seriously, but electronics are just a portion of the whole experience HTSA members are expected to provide to their customers. What they do, I'm sure they do well, and settling on Blu-ray is a simple decision that, as we used to say about buying IBM, isn't something that's likely to get them fired.

But down here in the pits, where the plasma-endowed nouveau riche still know that Walmart closes at 9:30, everyone realizes the battle isn't going to be decided by the 1% of the budget that a Blu-ray player represents in a high end home theater installation. Blu-ray is a fine format on paper, but it still suffers the growing pains of its premature birth. To this day, standalone BD player lack Ethernet ports making them little more than boat anchors once BD Live (Profile 2) players appear. With Toshiba players like the HD-A2 available for under $250 on Amazon, the twice as expensive BD players have a hard time justifying themselves. Even disinterested parties like Forrester Research are insisting that Blu-ray has to hit a price point of $250 by the holiday season or, as we also used to say, their ass is grass.

I don't know about you, but I'm going back to the Comfy chair until this thing is over.

Michelle Kessler who covers technology for USA Today has a great little (short) read on price sensitivity in today's electronics marketplace. It's not how high of a mountain you shout from after all. It's how far the people listening are willing to tilt back to hear you.

For instance, Tim Bajarin, a researcher with Creative Strategies says that angle is $399.

Not $400.

So where does that put us? A few days ago Toshiba announced three new HD DVD players, two of which were at or below $399. A Chinese HD DVD player is due in stores this fall (allegedly lead-free but I wouldn't suck on the remote)

Still, rumors of Blu-rays ascendancy run rampart. A friend walked into a local dealership last week (looking for free advice no doubt, before he bought on-line) and was told by the salesman that Blu-ray was the way to go, that it was kicking HD DVD's butt. Hmmm. That's certainly what they want you to believe.

But we know that Sony blew out all the existing stock of 60 GB PS3s that were starting to cause pile-ups in the supply chain lanes when they cut the price to $499. And now rumors of a 40 GB PS3 selling for – yup - $399 surfaced today, further fueling speculation that things aren't necessarily as clear cut as that local dealer insists.

Even if that magic number is hit before the holidays, not everyone wants a video game console for their player. Especially not college professors who leave their wives to marry grad students and then want to raise their new offspring in the ivory tower environs that attaining tenure demands.

Okay, that was random.

Dedicated Blu-ray players are around $500, and nothing announced at Cedia seems to indicate that's about to change any time soon or any time soon enough. Coupled with the new incentives that will hit the HD DVD player market later this year, like getting a player with two free HD-DVD (Bourne Identity & 300) in the box and a coupon for another five free HD-DVD for around $250 is going to move a heck of a lot of boxes.

And so, the battle (en)rages.

The letter I received from DirecTv was only sent to people who owned one of the newer mpeg4-capable setup box or DVR so they could receive local stations in high definition over DirecTv's satellites (as opposed to over the air). But while DirecTv was pretty confident I had an HR20-700 DVR, they were less sure that their crack installation team had hooked it up properly. Without the B-Band Converters (BBCs) in-line with each of the two satellite inputs on my DVR before September 1st, I wasn't going to be getting those extra channels (just call them if you don't see the little interface dongles and they'll ship them to you). So Sept 1st, 2007 is the earliest date these extra channels would be available, but the "by year end" is the CYA language that gives the good folks in El Segundo a little bit of breathing room.

But what, exactly, are these new stations? The letter indicates at least one more Discovery HD station, CNN, USA (yes, Monk, Psyche and Burn Notice!) and additional HBO and Starz HD offerings. Naturally they'll be lots of new sports offerings too, like NFL Network and the Tennis Channel. Wii!

What about the rest of the line up? Courtesy of our friends at dbstalk (sorry, you might have to register to get directly to this thread) here's what they know, or they think they know. I've carved out the relevant bits. So, coming in September:

• A&E (Ab Fab!?!)
• Animal Planet
• Big Ten Network (not sure what this is, but hey, if it's big, and it's a ten . . .)
• Chiller (spooks in hidef!)
• CineMax East (don't get it)
• CineMax West (don't get it 3 hours later)
• CNN (What with Paula Zahn leaving, what's the point of hi-def here?)
• Discovery Channel (simulcast)
• Food Network (Baam!)
• HBO West (not really new programming now, is it. . . )
• HGTV
• History Channel
• MHD (MTV)
• NFL Network (Full-Time)
• Science Channel
• Showtime West
• Starz! East
• Starz! West
• Starz! Edge
• Starz! Comedy
• Starz! Kids & Family
• The Movie Channel
• The National Geographic Channel
• TBS
• TLC
• The Weather Channel
• Versus/Golf (whatever "it' is, it wins)

• Bravo
• Cartoon
• CNBC (someone take my pulse)
• FX (more HD movies! And the next season of The Shield, watch out)
• HBO2 East (okay, some real new choices, sorta)
• HBO2 West
• HBO Family East
• HBO Family West
• HBO Latino East
• HBO Signature East
• MoreMax East
• Sci-Fi (Eureka!)
• Sleuth
• Speed
• USA (It's a Jungle Out There)

So – hypothetically – let's say a certain movie came out in both formats but sold much better in the blue case than in the red one. Does this say a lot about the relative strengths of the formats and their market penetration – or, as I believe, does it say more about the movie itself. After all, 300 (oops!) was immensely successful with the pimple-popping crowd. Yes the same people who play lots of video games and own the #1 most popular video game console that also doubles as a high definition optical disc player have shown a much greater interest in a sword and sandals tale than, well, everyone else.

Or seen the other way, is it too far a stretch to figure out that people who like movies like 300 would have a proclivity to sit around on the off night and whack aliens or Nazis or, better yet, Nazi aliens? Considering the cartoonish content of 300, I shouldn't be shocked if it turns out it sells better on Blu-ray than HD DVD. In fact, I should expect it to.

So cheer up depressed pathetic HD DVD-owning journalists who go running to your Mommy's every time the Blu-ray Group kicks your ever lovin' ass on a title you wouldn't watch twice even if they paid you. Hold your heads up high and say, "Hey, when the Ingmar Bergman commemorative edition high definition box set comes out, we'll see who's zoomin' whom!"

The announcement indicates they'll be stocking and selling the Sony BDP-S300 which sells for around $500 currently. By holiday, I'm predicting Sony's internal "Target" for their least expensive player will be $450 or even less. For one reason, the blue diode dilemma of last year is over and yields are way up. Sony doesn't seem to have any problem cranking out PS3's and in business, you have to keep making your payroll, even if you're Sony. So to meet sales forecasts and keep thousands of manufacturer's happy, it has to be a Blu Christmas and that means setting price accordingly.

Another reason Sony's player will be selling for less than its current $500 list is because of the competition. No, not HD DVD – I'm talking about the Playstation 3. Sony is currently running a fire sale on the 60 GB PS3, marking it down $100 to a cooler $500. But once the current stock is depleted (and it looks like that will be very soon), the new 80 GB version is set to take its place – supposedly at $600.

But everybody knows, it isn't so. Once the lower $500 threshold has been reached, there ain't no going back, 'State side at least. (Europe never got the price reduction, but heck, they're used to paying $8/gallon to gas up their weenie cars). Oh sure, ask the president of Sony if the PS3 is getting a price cut three days before it actually does, and he'll tell you that no decision has been made. Isn't he pretty much the last guy who would want you to hesitate before throwing down for a Sony product? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Meanwhile, the HD DVD consortium has introduced a lot of fear and uncertainty about Sony's sales numbers, claiming (depending on the week) that HD DVD's dedicated player numbers are superior to Blu-ray numbers. But they won't say if they're including the Xbox 360 add on HD DVD drive in their numbers which, any shrewd lawyer would tell you, is technically a dedicated "player" because it can't spin up a game.

Like Mark Twain said, there are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

And forget the Blu-ray / HD DVD format war, there's another format war going as well, and that's the war of the gaming consoles. Sony's PS3 is still $100 higher than Microsoft's 360, and the quality of Sony's games is, well, improving shall we say. But this winter, the first of the truly amazing titles for the Sony (Metal Gear Solid 4) will hit shelves and the blessed economies of scale will kick in.

But don't rule out HD DVD. They may have seemingly been losing some battles (Target and Blockbuster), but that doesn't mean they're going to necessarily lose the war. For example, back on the $10/gallon continent (yup, it went up while I was typing), HD DVD sales are better than Blu-ray. And on the opposite side of the world, Asian manufacturers are pretty convinced they can crank out HD DVD players to the point where they'll be the prize fodder in a Happy Meal in the not too distant future.

Which brings me to Costco. A few years ago, they used to carry a cheddar cheese from England that sold for roughly twice the not-too-shabby aged Cabot I'd been buying. Breaking down, I finally tried the English cheddar and fell in love. A week later I went back for more, but Costco had discontinued the line. They did that with a salsa once too, but that memory has finally started to fade. Anyway, my point is, no sooner had my local Costco set up a table and hired strippers at the entrance to sell the Toshiba HD-A20 HD DVD players then they pulled the plug!

They're not selling Blu-ray either though, but my feelings are no less bruised by their being an equal opportunity Troglodyte.

Except now, all the combo discs I've tried work just fine. So let's just put problems with combo discs down to teething pains. On the other hand, I know someone that's on their third HD player, so maybe, just maybe, it ain't the disc.

Now that that's settled, or not, we can revert back to the regular question of the week: Who is winning the format war?

Fox's hesitancy releasing anything in the BluRay format may have been mitigated to life a few weeks ago when Fox announced that a BD+ Technologies LLC product would be used as an extra layer of protection beyond AACS (Advanced Access Content System), the default security scheme with all current BluRay releases. What convinced them was the "extra layer of protection" provided by BD+, like a new and improved antiperspirant that keeps your security scheme from stinking it up.

Meanwhile, as Shane already reported, Sony is responding to calls that their BluRay players are too expensive by cutting prices by $100 on their Sony BDP-S300 BluRay player (new MSRP is $499) and throwing in five free BD movies with the purchase of any BD player (including the PS3!), just like the boys at HD-DVD have been doing for two months.

And speaking of PS3 consoles, thank God you no longer have to run into light poles in the parking lot of Walmart to get one. Rumors abound that both Target and, shortly, Circuit City will be cutting the price of those critters to $499 as well. According to Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb over at G4TV's X-Play, the newer PS3 games no longer suck, so now might be the time to pick one up. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony announced some sort of official price cut for the PS3 at the E3 show next week. Of course, the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut will continue to sell them for $999 in their Wampum club. I think you still have to run into a pole in the parking lot before that seems like a good deal.

And finally, check out this guy's video on how long it takes to watch a BluRay movie. Sharp plans on addressing the lousy start up times with something they call "Quick Start". Sharp's BD player will start playing a movie in a few seconds. Not like the one used by our hapless Youtuber.