Believe it or not, this is far from the first we've heard of bringing high-def video to cellphones, and it's not even the first application to dabble in mobile 1080p. Still, we'll take all the innovation we can get in this space, and when the real Touch HD ever arrives, we'll be ready and waiting with Full HD capabilities. Announced at ISSCC 2009 in San Francisco, Renesas Technology is showing off an application processor that enables handsets to process 1,920 x 1,080 resolution video at 30 frames-per-second; the processor's core has a maximum operating frequency of 500MHz and supports MPEG-4 AVC / H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video formats. There's no telling when the 6.4- x 6.5-millimeter chip will be available en masse, but we need the HTCs of the world to get us a 1080p phone and a retina implant or two to read 0.2-size fonts before it even matters.

After seeing what we saw at CEDIA this year, we knew this innovation was only a hop, skip and a jump away. RCDb and Nortel have teamed up to showcase what they're calling the Video Bulletin Board, which is an interactive application that enables cellphones and Blu-ray players to communicate like never before. With it, you can "send a photo or video from your mobile phone to your own or a friend's BD Live-enabled Blu-ray deck and then, using the remote, activate a click-to-call feature that would automatically have your phone call back the mobile user who sent you the photo." It won't be long before you're ordering pizza from your Blu-ray player and watching outtakes on your handset -- at least, we hope.

[Image courtesy of Blu-ray.com]

Eager to live in the fantastical future it has prophesied, NTT DoCoMo went to CEATEC and demoed an upcoming addition to its Pocket U service: MH2H (Mobile Home to Home), which gives you the ability use your cellphone to stream content from your computer at home to a friend's TV. The phone connects to your friend's WiFi network and sends his or her DLNA-compliant receiver the IP address of your also-DLNA-compliant server, then tells said server to accept the connection and start streaming any videos, songs, or photos you feel like sharing. When you leave, the connection ends and every one goes back to partying on their own isolated media islands like it's 2006.

[Image courtesy of Tech-On!]

Can't say it still feels like summer in some parts of the US, but regardless of semantics, DirecTV is forging ahead with its HD locals rollout. Effective immediately, a half dozen more markets can find at least a couple of the big broadcast stations in HD, with Mobile, Richmond, South Bend, Syracuse, Toledo and Youngstown all getting gifted. For details on which DMA got which stations, head on down to the read link.

[Thanks, VANBROTHERS]

Starting this month, viewers in the Florida panhandle (Pensacola, Fort Walton Beach and Mobile, Alabama to be more precise) can start catching their local news in high-definition. The region's ABC affiliate (WEAR-TV) has finally seen fit to bring a clearer view of its newscasts to locals. Hailed as the "first and only" local station in the Mobile-Pensacola Metro area to air its local news in HD, the station is showing five different sessions per day in high-def. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Thanks, Scott]

Call it a hunch, but we're being told that DISH Network is gearing up to launch HD locals in eight new markets within the next 24 to 48 hours. Right around a week after it got busy with its last round of HD local rollouts, we're fully expecting a handful of other cities to get the same treatment. In no specific order, Greensboro, NC, Providence, RI, Burlington, VT, Greenville, SC and Knoxville, TN will all see high-def versions of their nearby ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX stations. Meanwhile, Huntsville, AL (CBS, NBC, FOX), Jackson, MS (ABC, CBS, NBC) and Mobile, AL (ABC, CBS, FOX) will be receiving higher-resolution versions of three out of the four major broadcast networks. Keep a close on that EPG, and be sure to let us know when these areas go live.

[Thanks, HDJ]

Toshiba has shown off some auto-related products at the Automotive Engineering Expo 2007, including a mobile HD DVD player and a fresh take on touch panels. The high-definition in-dash player is under co-development with Alpine, and is planned for a 2008 release. The LCD is an improvement on traditional touchscreen technology, with no film coating -- which traditionally reduces contrast ratio and brightness -- to handle the user input, instead bundling optical sensors alongside each pixel. These sensors can then detect the shadow of a press during the day, and the reflection of the backlight at night. Toshiba also plans to upgrade that tech to use infrared instead of day/night sensors. Who cares if you can't see the difference between 1080 and 720 on a 7-inch screen, we just want our mobile touchscreen HD now!

It's not terribly uncommon to see a manufacturer try to push a product (or platform) into every crevice of your life, and it seems that Texas Instruments is diverting quite sharply from its calculatorish ways of old and making an aggressive push to get that DLP logo slapped on everything you own. While we've seen (literally) the diminutive Microvision display do its thang here at CES, TI is hoping to steal that thunder away by talking up its forthcoming palm-sized DLP projectors. The "fully featured" Pocket Projectors, which are co-developed by OMAP, would weigh "less than one pound," use the .55 DLP chip, and could purportedly connect to handsets or PDAs to beam up that big(ger) screen imagery for a crowd to see. Unfortunately for TI, these devices are not (at least initially) supposed to be integrated units, which could easily get overlooked if those built-in alternatives can muster acceptable quality. Additionally, TI is hoping to get that DLP logo stamped on your brain even when you visit the cinema, as the company now has its technology in 3,000 theaters worldwide and is frequently throwing logo-clad splash screens onto the canvas during pre-show advertisements. So if you wonder why you're strangely drawn to the DLP sets during your next HDTV shopping trip, trust us, it's not the mirrors, it's the marketing.

[Via AboutProjectors]

Your next automobile purchase may have an option for not just the DVD players available in so many cars today, but a Blu-ray player. That's what Panasonic had to say to Technoride, they expect to be able to sell a ruggedized player with the capability to read Blu-ray discs in the next year. While they won't be adding 1080p screen resolution to a 7-inch display, this way people can bring along their new Blu-ray discs (since there won't be any Blu-ray/DVD hybrid discs) on trips without buying additional DVD copies, or they can burn large amounts of SD content onto a single Blu-ray disc. All the same, 2007 might be the year when that Escalade on 22-inch rims in front of you sports a Blu-ray sticker on the bumper.

[Via Autoblog]

Engadget already let us know about rumors indicating Acer would be one of the first third parties to release notebooks with either HD DVD or Blu-ray drives. Now, both NVIDIA and ATI have announced that their graphics cards will be available in Acer's HD DVD laptops. The Aspire 9110, 9510 and 9800 will all feature graphics technology from NVIDIA, including their PureVideo HD acceleration. The Aspire 5670 will utilize ATI's Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU and Avivo high-def acceleration. According to Acer's announcement, all will feature HDMI and HDCP support for outputting high-def content to TVs. The LCD screens on the laptops themselves range in size from 15.4 to 20.1 inches, plus Core Duo CPUs, Acer's stereo speaker and subwoofer technology as well as S/PDIF output for Dolby and DTS output. They should all be available later on this month, no price mentioned.

Read - NVIDIA powers Acer HD DVD Laptops
Read - ATI drives high definition in Acer HD DVD Laptops
Read - Acer unveils high definition notebooks

Digital Hollywood Conference  is the place where the various companies that bring us much of the content we'll be experiencing on our HDTVs, cell phones, game consoles, and iPods get together and talk about the best ways to do it. 


Your next home server-mediacenter-xbox720-ps4-RSS parser-cell phone-breadmaker?  Yeah they've got that.  You can watch for updates here, as well as via a live blog of the event if you're interested (and we know you are) and a podcast; although several companies have already made notable announcements, and we'll keep you updated as it progresses.

I'll be keeping a definite eye out for information from today's "Transforming Television" seminar, because HDTV, PVR, OnDemand and Interactive TV all touch me in my special place.  Also at the conference will be our own Shawn Gold, speaking on Alternative Media & Advertising: Personalized Consumer Broadband, RSS Feeds, Blogging and Podcasting