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Let Engadget trick out your home theater contest deadline extended, ends midnight tonight


Just a quick announcement about our home theater contest: we're extending the deadline until a minute before midnight tonight. Turns out the overwhelming response happened to overwhelm our email server, and maxed out our storage limit. Don't worry, we've sorted the problem -- just make sure to resubmit before 11:59PM EDT tonight if your email bounced. We're sorry for the inconvenience. If you haven't entered yet, check out the details here, first making sure to read the rules here. Good luck!

Vote for HDTV of the year

2006 Engadget AwardsThere is nothing new about us linking to ourselves, it is practically a Engadget commandment, but even we aren't so vain that we don't second guess writing a post for the sole purpose of linking to ourselves. But in the interest of our loyal Engadget HD fans who don't read classic Engadget, here goes (yeah, there are probably only two of you). Of all the Engadget awards, the one you guys just have to have your voice heard is: the HDTV of the year award. There are not many surprises on the list, but once again the age ol' battle of the best technology rages on and now is your chance to get behind your horse, so follow the link to stand up and be counted.

Xbox 360 getting an HDMI port soon?

That is the latest rumor from Xbox-Scene, who were also sent the requisite fuzzy picture of what is purported to be an Xbox 360 motherboard with HDMI-out equipped. No word from the anonymous source if this is actually coming soon (or ever), if it could be part of the HD DVD-equipped Xbox 360 that isn't planned, or just a mockup of some kind. We also don't know if this would be a deep color 1080p capable HDMI 1.3 output or...well really anything at all just yet but it makes for an interesting picture. Do you need a digital output on your next-gen console or are you proudly analog forever?

[Via Engadget]

Engadget: Samsung's BD-P1000 launch party

Engadget gets to have all the fun. They got the invite to yesterdays launch in NYC for the first Blu-ray player on the market - the BD-P1000. They have some nice pics up of the event over on their site. It seems like it was just a lot of Blu-ray/Samsung marketing hype to us so maybe they aren't as lucky as it seems. They rounded off the event with a Terminator 2 1080p demo on what Engadget called "a huge freakin' plasma." Plus, the room had some cool Philips'ish ambient lighting. Check out the link for tons of pics.

Engadget: Top five HDTVs

Engadget's weekly column, The Clicker, ran a topic that might be of interest to most of you. They have taken some of the pain out of shopping for a new HDTV. They have five very good HDTVs and provided a good explanation of why they are special and what makes them better then others. Plus, to make it a bit more fun, Engadget style, they have put a celebrity to each HDTV. For example. The Westinghouse LVM-42W2 is number five on their list because of its great value and name. In other words, it is rail thin, cheap and comes with a former high-end name- like Paris Hilton. See, now isn't that fun.

Bet you can't guess who goes with #1. (hint: the HDTV is a high-end projector)

Solid state TDEL flat panel HDTVs -- still -- coming soon

Cheaper than LCDs and plasmas plus better picture quality in a 1-inch thick flat panel HDTV? That's what iFire has been promising for a while now and it may be one step closer to reality. Their parent company Westaim hopes to bring the thick-film dielectric electroluminescent technology (TDEL) screens to market in 2007 at a price point of less than $1000 for a 34-inch model. It involves no gases, liquids or vacuums and requires no backlighting. Instead the materials are layered directly onto the glass which they say provides better PQ and a wider viewing angle, with half the production cost of LCDs. Much like the fabled SEDs which we still haven't seen, we've been looking out for these since Engadget first mentioned them in 2004. If/when either technology debuts, it will be very interesting to see how it affects the existing high definition flat screen market.

Qosmio HD DVD-equipped laptop shipping this week

If you can't  find an HD DVD player because they're all sold out you'll soon have another option. Toshiba is shipping the Qosmio G35 AV650 laptop this week. It also features a 2Ghz Core Duo processor, two 100GB hard drives in a RAID setup, 1 GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 videocard and HDMI output. All that plus Windows Media Center Edition adds up to 10 lbs of weight and $3000 lighter in the pocket.

[Via Engadget]

CustomFlix burns HD-DVD, Blu-ray on demand

So you're a small content producer who wants to release high definition video, but can't pick a format for fear of alienating half your customers? No problem. CustomFlix (who also just announced deals to provide DVDs of niche TV shows) will store a digital copy of your content, and burn it onto Blu-ray, HD DVD or WMV-HD disc whenever a customer wants to buy one. They also provide services for customers who choose their own set of clips from the database, and burn a DVD with whatever you want on it.

You can already buy some HDNet programs from Amazon via this service, with the other two formats to be added "soon". Hopefully this type of service can alleviate the situation detailed in The Clicker, where smaller providers are locked out because they can't afford to support HDTVs.

Zenview: Not QuadHD but still impressive

Zenview Command Center Elite

You know whats better than a 24" Samsung 1920x1200 LCD screen with component inputs? 6 (Is that the number of the day or what?) 24" Samsung 1920x1200 LCD screens with component inputs.

$12k gets you the screens above on a desk stand, the Zenview Command Center Elite seems like it would be perfect for.....well anything. We honestly can't imagine blogging on anything else. Sure it doesn't have the zip zoom pow of CMO's offering, but we'll sell our souls for one try to get a hands-on review.

[Via Engadget]

WWJD? Results @ Engadget

Mac Mini HD (photoshopped)

Because the day isn't complete without a Mac rumor, and in lieu of more real Apple rumors, Engadget  decided to have their readers make some up. In answer to the question "What Would Jobs Do?"  in his surprise announcement tomorrow, readers created their own potential Apple products.

Although it only garnered an honorable mention, this one was our favorite for obvious reasons. Check out the rest, there are some really talented and funny photoshoppers out there.

High definition DVD launches are back on again

In the on again-off again world of next generation DVD formats, everything appears to be on again. The AACS conflict from last week has been settled with an "interim" agreement that will allow manufacturers to start making players. With that, HD-DVD should be on shelves in late March, followed by Blu-ray in May.

Excellent, the day when HDTV owners can buy high priced, high DRM but low functionality DVD players is nearly upon us, are you guys excited yet?

[Via Engadget]

Engadget: How to scale video

Titanic
The talented Engadget crew has a fantastic tutorial showing you how to build your own HD video scaler. The pic above shows a before (clearly on the left) and after (even more clear on the right) using the DIY setup. Descaler is the free software app that the Engadget team uses, so you'll want to download that when you get a chance. If you've got a home theater PC with a capture card like we do, just follow the simple steps and you'll increase video quality on your PC in a simple and painless way. Note: This pics above are from a VHS copy of Titanic by by Mark Rejhon.

Sony KDS-R60XBR1 is Engadget's Readers Choice

Engadget Awards
The 2005 Engadget Awards are out and we quickly skipped past all of the uber-cool, but not so high-def devices until we found the Engadget HDTV of the year. Looks like there was a split on this one, but we can see why. The Engadget Readers voted the Sony KDS-R60XBR1 LCoS HDTV as the best high-def set of 2005. Several of our readers also like the 60-inch Sony so we can't argue with that pick. Engadget picked the Toshiba SED set and after personally viewing it at CES, we understand. The SED sets aren't available for consumers yet, and likely won't be until very late this year, so we're expecting to see the SED set top the list for the readers next year.

What HDTV sets would you consider as the top high-def TV for 2005?

Build a better HTPC with Engadget

Engadget builds an HTPC
Eliot Phillips just built a killer HTPC over at Engadget, maybe he had some DTV-envy from our WMCE how to? It's all good because he's got space for a killer amount of storage in the box: can you say 4TB in the future? There's no HDTV tuner in the box just yet, buy we forgive him; besides, he's already stated his intentions to add a card that's both OTA and QAM-capable. The HTPC costs a little more than a grand, but has some spunky components including an Intel P4 at 3.0GHz, 2GB of memory, and an inexpensive graphics card can power a 1920 x 1200 display. The step-by-step instructions are easy to follow if you want your very own HTPC that runs MythTV on Linux, but we'll warn you now: due to graphic pics of PC guts throughout the post, viewer discretion is advised.

Even the manufacturers don't know what is going on


Viiv logoMore than a week later and I'm still trying to find out what Viiv is all about and why I should be excited. I'm not even the only one, our friends at Engadget have posted their reasoning for why no one knows the secret of Viiv, making for an entertaining read at the least.

Also, over at CE Pro they're recounting just a few of the flubs and missteps live presentations had at CES,  according to Intel with Viiv they have succeded in "making the PC more PC like". Yeah great job on that one guys.




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