Battlestar Galactica: Season 1 HD DVD arriving sans quality?
by Darren Murph 
posted Dec 14th 2007 at 10:23AM
[Image courtesy of Amazon / J. Ryder, thanks Robert P.]
issues posts
[Image courtesy of Amazon / J. Ryder, thanks Robert P.]
Charter hit by second fire in Malibu area
by Darren Murph posted Nov 28th 2007 at 8:58PM
For the second time this season, Charter Communications and its Malibu, California-area customers are dealing with outages stemming from wildfires. Granted, one's cable service is the least of our worries when dealing with situations such as this, but a whopping 12,000 feet of the operator's primary fiber optic cable was recently torched and will have to be replaced. The cable also provides feeds to homes in Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Hidden Hills, and while the firm is working to provide service to those affected, it's having to wait for power crews to sweep through first. Notably, Charter was already in the process of constructing a "redundant path to make the company less vulnerable to fire damage," and the latest word is that it's still a few weeks away from being completed.Popular Mechanics cranks out another ten HDTV myths
by Darren Murph posted May 20th 2007 at 2:33PM
[Photo courtesy of Chris Eckert/Studio D, thanks Matt]
The Descent giving fits to BD-Java-less Blu-ray players
by Darren Murph posted Jan 6th 2007 at 6:03PM 
If you've just picked up the recently released The Descent on Blu-ray disc, hold back from tearing the plastic off just a minute. If you're using a first-generation Blu-ray player that doesn't yet support the "BD-Java environment," chances are you'll be graced with a depressing black screen instead of an action-packed thriller. Users across the web are complaining that the film isn't playing back on their particular Blu-ray player, and High-Def Digest has suggested that units that don't play nice with BD-Java extras are having a hard time swallowing (and playing) the featurette-packed disc. Sony's BDP-S1 and Pioneer's BDP-HD1 have been singled-out as the two most problematic players in this ordeal, and while Sony has promised a firmware update to add BD-J support "early this year," the Pioneer users are currently out of luck. Notably, Panasonic units, Samsung's BD-P1000, and Sony's own PlayStation 3 are having no troubles, although some Samsung devices may need the latest firmware installed to overcome any glitches. Hopefully more manufacturers will get on the ball and start supporting these newfangled extras that were supposed to make high definition discs worth more than the pretty resolution, and kudos to Lionsgate for pumping this one up with BD-J action -- even though some of us are still trying to make it spin.[Via High-Def Digest]
Any problems with your DirecTV HR20?
by Erik Hanson posted Nov 10th 2006 at 12:21PM
JJ over at PVR Wire has an interesting article up about the quirks and problems people seem to be having with their recently-released DirecTV HD PVR, the HR20. It's the satellite company's MPEG-4-based box which has enabled them to begin shifting customers to the lower-bandwidth codec and hopefully alleviate some of the problems they seem to have with getting enough space for all those HD channels -- without turning others off, of course. The product was launched nationwide just about two months ago -- beta test launches notwithstanding -- so customers have had a chance to mess around with their units and get familiar with its features. Or, perhaps they're doing too much messing around, as the article mentions all the problems and complaints about the device. As Ben will tell you, it's no TiVo, but it should do as well as any other cable or over-the-air box, right? Among the issues mentioned on blogs and forums are freezing and crashes, slowness, and general interface problems.Are our readers having the same problems? Is it just people who don't know one end of the remote from another? Or are we expecting too much from a new (to DirecTV anyway) product and technology launch? Let us know.
