We know how it goes, you pick up a nice big HDTV and a wall-mount only to get it all setup then realize you still need a place to put your HD set-top-box. Or maybe you have a nice piece of furniture nearby to hide the box in, but since it is out of sight you need to get the IR remote working. Or you could even be like us and refuse to have any equipment with a loud fan in your home theater -- yes we're talking about you Mr. Xbox 360. Luckily there is a workable solution and with a little money and some elbow grease, you can hide that box in a place that will be out of sight and out of mind.

No doubt TiVo has long since released its proverbial ATRAC codec, but it is so bad now that every time we hear about a TiVo offer, we click on through to find the super lame catch. Of course this time is no different as TiVo is offering up to $100 off a TiVo HD to existing Series 1 or 2 owners. So you probably figured out the catch by now, which is that if you have lifetime on your existing TiVo, you can't transfer it. If you log in and try the site actually suggests you give away your older TiVo or recycle it. It seems that TiVo knows there aren't any alternatives so what are you going to do if you're treated like crap? It's not like there are any comparable acceptable alternatives.

It wasn't that long ago that there wasn't a way for Blu-ray fans to enjoy the latest and greatest audio encoded with TrueHD and DTS-HD on their home theater PCs and now there are about to be two. That's thanks to the fact that Auzentech is going to start shipping its X-FI HomeTheater HD sound card by the end of July -- no word on the price. Unfortunately just like the ASUS Xonar before it, you'll still need a separate video card for a complete solution. From there you'll connect the X-FI to your HDTV via HDMI 1.3 to enjoy your choice of bitstream or PCM lossless audio. You can even use analog outputs if you desire as well as other sources. We're really happy to see some competition in this space, but still wonder how long before you'll be able to just buy a video card that can do both.

We're not saying we've ever downloaded anything off the internet that wasn't 100% on the up and up, or that we're here to judge those who have. We just thought it'd be fun to post all the various rationales we've heard over the years by those who do to justify their potentially shady activities. Some of these sound like pretty good reasons to us, but we doubt any of them would hold up in court if the MPAA ever came a knocking. Regardless, if you do download gray area content you might want to have a couple of these ready, and by all means let us know which ones we missed.

1. I ran out of tuners on my DVR.
2. I accidentally deleted the show.
3. My DVR hard drive crashed.
4. I don't get that channel in HD.
5. My cable was out.
6. I have satellite and it was pouring rain.
7. I don't live in the US and the show isn't available here.
8. I delete the shows after I watch them once.
9. The show isn't available on Blu-ray.
10. I live in a valley and can't get over-the-air.

For some reason almost all DVRs are like cell phones, they have lots of strings attached. You either need to pay a monthly subscription or you need to get a CableCARD from your provider and give up access to other features your provider offers that you pay for. There are a few exceptions and the newest one is from Dish Network in the way of the DTVPal DVR. It doesn't require a monthly subscription, or even a cable or satellite provider because it works with free over-the-air TV. It does HD, has two tuners, and a 250GB hard drive; all for the reasonable price of $250. If this all sounds good so far, then keep reading because like all things there's a catch.

Wow, we don't even know what to say about this week's slate of new releases on Blu-ray. All we can really say is that even though we're used to being bored by the studio's Summer offerings, this week is especially weak. We'd like to say things are about to turn around in the coming weeks, but in all honesty it appears that Hollywood wants us to go to the movies instead of enjoying our HDTVs.

• 12 Rounds (Fox)
• Do The Right Thing (Universal)
• Flawless (Magnolia)
• Two Lovers (Magnolia)
• Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li (Fox)
• Home Front (Cinevolve)
• Tokyo! (Liberation)

Around Engadget we're always looking for a better way to enjoy our HD home theater experience and a central part of that is the remote control. Now let us tell you, we've been through more programmable remotes then most people know exist and we still have yet to find one we're satisfied with. All that being said, we just can't believe that it's been well over a full year since capacitive touch screen devices have been readily available to consumers and no one other than Apple seems to understand the potential. As cool as touch screen interfaces look, for the most part they down right stink at controlling anything in a home theater. The root of the problem is that most require you to look at 'em, instead of the HDTV. This is such a bad idea on so many levels, but most of all, it doesn't work because just drawing a regular remote with buttons on a screen really defeats the entire point. Apple has shown it understands this in the past and with the latest update to its Apple TV/iTunes remote app it has stepped up its game a notch.

And to think we've been worrying about all those poor people who weren't ready for the DTV transition, only to find out that they don't even watch TV. We mean, what other explanation could you have for the fact that it's been solid week after the big analog shutoff and 2.1 million households still can't watch TV. Of course not all of these people just let the DTV transition pass them by, some of them are affected by the reception problems, and others probably don't even understand the question. Either way we'll find out soon enough as most broadcasters should be full power by July 1st and no doubt Nielsen will have the results of another poll out by then.

We had a feeling something was up with the results of the recent Harris Poll and it looks like we had good reason. No one is trying to say that the folks that conducted the poll had a Red agenda or anything, it is just like Adams research puts it when talking about consumer polls in general, "you can't trust the average survey respondent to correctly identify the high-tech devices in their homes." You can say that again. The funny thing is that the results of the poll even look screwy when compared to the HD DVD Promotion group's numbers which reported that even after a few months following the format war, only 1 million stand-alone HD DVD players were sold. This is nowhere near the 10 million that it would take to make up 9 percent of the 111 million US households the poll reports. And in case you care, analysts project -- you know, the ones actually based on retail sales instead of a consumer survey -- that 14.8 percent of US households will have some way to play a Blu-ray Disc by the end of 2009, which is almost double what it was at the end of 2008.

Although we were just kids when all the world's computers connected to each other via a coax cable, we still recognize the throughput potential of the medium. This and the fact that just about every home in America already has coax running through its walls has always made us wonder why we couldn't utilize those wires to connect our computers. If you've wondered the same thing, then MoCA might just be for you. It is a CableLabe specification that allows devices to utilize the unused bandwidth on the coax at your house to send bits where no other medium can. So if you're sick of trying to stream HD via Wifi and power-line technologies, you're going to really want to click through and read about how these babies work.

Some think that discs are already dead, but that's because they're ignoring all the success Netflix is still having. Of course any company with a name like Netflix is obviously forward thinking -- the name isn't Discflix after all -- and on that note Reed Hastings, the CEO, told the WSJ that he expects to see significant declines in packaged media rentals in the next "four to nine years." We think that estimate is as good as any, but can't wait to see how the home media landscape changes between now and then. This is of course why Netflix is actively building it's streaming service which evidently is currently only used by 20 percent of Netflix customers.

We've seen this so many times we're not sure why we even care anymore, but this one struck a chord. You see it's one thing when some website capitalizes the R in Blu-ray, because you know, they don't know any better. And it's another thing when a PR person for one of the members of the board of directors of the association does it in a slide at a press event. But it's a totally different animal all together when one of the members of the board of directors builds the incorrect spelling into the auto-correct feature of its flagship mobile phone. We knew Apple thinks Blu-ray support in OS X was a bag of hurt, but does that mean is has to go and spell it wrong? Hit the read link on Blu-raydisc.com for the correct spelling.

In our world the only thing that stays the same is our desire to discover the next great thing. The cycle starts with new product announcements, which builds to anticipation, and eventually to disappointment once we realize the latest gadget isn't everything we hoped. This is more true in the DVR world than any other category we cover because although DVRs have been around for about 10 years now, it seems little has changed since. This is especially true when it comes to 3rd party DVRs which have been few and far between. In fact we are hard pressed to think of even a hand-full of DVRs that made a single dent in the market. TiVo is the most notable, but far from perfect and ReplayTV was great, but didn't last. Both LG and Sony had an HD DVR out there at one point, but you don't remember them for a reason. It's just a really hard sell to convince people to spend cash up front when their provider will give 'em a box for free. So it should come as no surprise that we couldn't wait to try out the Moxi HD DVR from Diego. We thought, finally a real competitor to TiVo, and now with a real HD interface for our HDTV.

Yes, that's right, this week's releases are so weak that we actually have the box art from The Pink Panther 2 on the right there. Unlike last week this week doesn't even have any solid TV shows to help hold it up. No, there's not much to talk about now, so catch up on all the Blu-ray movies you haven't seen yet, or you might just consider going outside, the beach maybe?

• The Pink Panther 2 (MGM)
• Waltz With Bashir (Sony)
• Confessions of a Shopaholic (Disney)
• Dragon Hunters (Peace Arch)
• Inkheart (Warner)
• Mr. Troop Mom (Warner)
• Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion)