In exchange for purchasing 100 percent of 180 Connect's stock at $1.80 per share, DirecTV will take control over one of its largest installers, while in a separate deal, UniTek USA is taking over all of 180 Connects old cable TV servicing units and certain DirecTV installation markets in exchange for Unitek's installation business in several areas. All this swapping and dealing should be complete in the third quarter, when a large number of customers in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Arkansas, Virginia, Hawaii and western Pennsylvania can expect their first DirecTV visit, to come from an actual employee of the company. Check out the PR for all the business details and locations involved and let us know if you think a shakeup from your cable or satellite provider's customer service would be welcomed.

In a move just short of sending Xzibit over with a copy of Windows Media Center, Microsoft is encouraging customer installers to show just how much they can do and how well they can integrate media center into a home theater setup. Sure, anyone can run a few wires here and there, or bring a boxed solution to the table, but we get the feeling they're looking for some extra flash. In return, the winning company gets a trip for one to CEDIA 2008, trip for two to Microsoft HQ in Redmond, a photo shoot of the winning install and a "technology pack" including an Xbox 360 Elite, games, Zune and AV cables. Head over to the site to check out the rules before the deadline hits August 1, and don't be too shy to slide us pics of your potentially Xbox-winning setup, we'd like to see what you play CoD4 on.

Sure we've already got the best of all the various gadgets shown off at CEDIA 2006, but what about putting it all together? We'd put some of the people in the HDBeat flickr group up against anyone, but check out how professional installers do it given budgets from 40k to several hundred thousand dollars. The 19 shown definitely take what is possible in a home theater to a whole new level. All we can do is recommend becoming fabulously wealthy, it is clearly worth the effort.

Check out this installation done by Diversified Technologies, which combines an Xbox 360, Windows XP PC and a high definition video switcher and distribution system to play music, movies and pictures throughout the house. Although they are not streaming video from the PC because it isn't running Media Center, the Zektor video switch and Audio Authority distribution system display content from the 360 or satellite source to any of the connected TV's.

Thats certainly an interesting approach, however one has to wonder about all the heat the 360 puts out, not to mention whether it has space for the hard drive on the side in that slot. That aside, the 360's smooth interface and wireless controllers make it ideal for this sort of application, I guess we'll see these showing up on the HD Beat flickr group soon.