Whittling down the amount of remotes in one's living room has long since been a challenge for the amateur home theater builder, and while there are some decent universal solutions on the market, the RF4CE Consortium is hoping to make things painfully simple. The group has been formed in order to "drive the adoption of an open radio frequency (RF) entertainment control specification based on IEEE 802.15.4." If you'll recall, this isn't the first time we've heard that standard called, as it's also used in MaxStream's XBee Xtender. Notably, Freescale is hoping to incorporate its Synkro technology into the specification, and in an ideal world, we'd see said protocol filter into DVD players, AV receivers, set-top-boxes and all manners of components. Let the IR-to-RF transition begin, we say.

Read - Sony's RF4CE Consortium release
Read - Freescale's RF4CE Consortium release

For those feeling too locked down by Xbox Live and Apple TV's restrictive DRM policies, there is a ray of hope, as the LA Times notes the PlayStation 3's yet-to-debut but still due in '08 online video service could be based on "open standards" with an eye towards multiple device compatibility. Sony might not usually be the name we'd associate with relaxed copy protection, but with several standard (Bluetooth, SATA, DivX etc.) technologies already finding a home on the PS3, we're cautiously optimistic. Now, Sony, tell us what we want to hear about all HD downloads and background transcoding for copy to portables.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Although Toshiba has been quite a player in bringing HD DVD to more and more laptops, Rock is now boasting that it is the first company to "feature HD DVD as standard" on lappies. Granted, it's only standard on select machines, but at least it's a start. The firm's Pegasus 670 features the obligatory HD DVD reading / DVD writing drive along with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 processor, a 15.4-inch WSXGA panel, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA's 512MB GeForce 8600M GT graphics card, WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, and Windows Vista. The higher-end Xtreme 770 is available with most of the same specs, save for the 512MB GeForce 8700M GT, 17-inch WSXGA+ display and a number of additional ports. An HD DVD-equipped Rock laptop can be yours for as low as £999 ($2,037), but if your credit card is up for some pain, you can ratchet that figure way on up.

[Via Stuff]
Read - Pegasus 670
Read - Xtreme 770

While it's admittedly unfortunate that the world just can't agree on a single high definition broadcast format to use around the globe, boundaries have already been laid across most of the first world nations. Many South American countries, however, still haven't chosen which format to support, and proponents for both ISDB and DVB are lobbying intently to get their support business. As we suspected early last year, Brazil has finally made its choice, and will take in ISDB as it looks to create more local jobs by manufacturing the equipment from within in new construction factories. Brazilian officials were even able to solicit $2 billion in Japanese funding to erect a "local semiconductor factory be financed by Panasonic, Toshiba, NEC, and Sony." Argentina, however, wasn't swayed one way or the other by the snazzy presentations it saw, and enters 2007 with an "undecided" bid. So as unfortunate as it may be, it looks you'll probably be picking up a separate portable tuner for almost every nation you visit, but hey, at least some things are universal, right?

We're not sure how to take this. Just as Blu-ray launches, with its own HD DVD players having already been on store shelves for some time, now Toshiba wants to hold out the olive branch again. Even as Blu-ray struggles with underwhelming launch titles and delays, they still hold the trump card of higher capacity, possibly higher burning speed, and more movie studio support. Maybe Toshiba sees this as the best time to cut a deal, maybe not. We already have reports that they are spending a lot of money to make sure HD DVD gains acceptance, but what is the long term strategy?

They're not stopping at version 1.2, HDMI's Licensing group today announced that they plan to add more features to the specification in the coming year, while maintaining backwards compatibility with existing devices (believe it when I see it).

In addition to the tighter relationship with PC's via the newly announced UDI connector, they expect to support greater color depths (30, 36 and 48 bit), higher speed connections, a new mini connector for cameras, a/v synchronization and new audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD.

But not from the side you may think. On Thursday the mouse & Co. put its money up, along with Christie Digital Systems (cameras) & Access Integrated Technologies (software) to not only distribute it's movies digitally, but to put up 150 new digital screens by the end of the year, and up to 4000 more by 2007. Theater operators have the same thing to gain by going to digital that we did coming from tapes, no more reels breaking or wearing out as they are repeatedly showing, plus it will lower costs of getting the movies to the theaters. 

As many other large media companies continue to hem and haw on standards for digitally showing their films, it's good to see Disney take this step, although they really need to upgrade their facilities.

They also haven't answered the most important question of all in getting me back to the movie theater, when am I going to be able to get a two tickets, two sodas and tub of popcorn for less than $25? If it happens, you won't need to check HD Beat, just look outside for the pigs flying.