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Sept. 5th - Reserve the date.

The consensus bet on the Sept. 5th special event Apple announced yesterday is new iPods which are due for a refresh, and the coverflow theme certainly seems to point in that direction.

But Carl Howe speculates that a confluence of circumstantial evidence points to HD movie downloads and rentals.

Either way, the Macalope doesn't really care as long as the words "iPod Hi-Fi" do not come up at any time.

Chestnut Hill's George gets cheaper

Remember George? The iPod-friendly tabletop radio from audio start-up Chestnut Hill Sound garnered mostly positive reviews when it debuted earlier this year, thanks largely to its unique wireless remote control, but the $550 sticker price limited its appeal. Well, as of today, it's a decidedly better deal. Chestnut Hill has lowered the price to $500 and will bundle in the outboard remote charging stand--pretty much a must-have accessory--at no extra cost for units sold through the end of the year. To date, the charging stand cost an extra $50 as well, so the net savings on the new deal … Read more

Hot deal: Xbox 360 HD-DVD, plus six HD-DVD movies, for $170

Update at 2:09 pm, August 24, 2007--Sorry, folks, but almost as soon as we posted this Deal, the seller ran out of stock. If you still have a hankering, try CNET Reviews' price comparison feature here.

We've seen the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player listed at close to $200, so we're happy to find it offered for quite a bit less.

The Xbox 360 HD-DVD player is an inexpensive way for 360 owners to get high-def movies. For you gamers who already love your Xbox, just plug in the HD-DVD player and boost your at-home viewing with ultra-sharp … Read more

Mitsubishi planning 3D Blu-ray player for early 2008

Along with a few other tech journalists, I spent a couple of hours today over at the Westchester Country Club, which is gearing up for The Barclays PGA Tour event. What the hell was I doing there? Well, as part of a marketing deal with the PGA Tour, Mitsubishi is the "official large outdoor video display provider" of the Tour, and the PR team wanted us to see some of these displays in action--along with the Tour's ShotLink technology, which tracks players' shots almost down to the centimeter (the info is then displayed on those giant Mitsubishi scoreboards). That's all sorts of interesting if you're a golf fan, but things got a little sexier when Mitsubishi representatives took us into a hospitality suite, handed us each a pair of fancy 3D glasses (a little smaller than the ones shown in the photo), and showed us a demo of some new 3D-imaging technology the company's working on.

The demo was run from a massive Dell desktop and output onto a large DLP set. In an effort to inject new life into the fading rear-projection category, the company's pitch was that the 3D technology worked with existing DLP TVs and projectors (due to DLP's native 120Hz refresh rate, which allows you to split it into 60/60 for 3D) but not with LCD and plasma displays.

Most of us were pretty impressed by the demo, which included clips from movies, commercials, and sporting events. There was real depth to the 3D, and you got that 3D-feeling of objects poking out at you from the screen. All the demo material had been shot in 3D, but the kicker to the whole presentation was that Mitsubishi apparently has a Blu-ray player in its labs that can convert existing 2D movies into 3D on the fly. Better yet, according to company representatives, it may be available early next year.

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Price cut on Cambridge SoundWorks tabletop radios

Looking for a deal on a high-end tabletop radio? Cambridge SoundWorks has cut the price on its four newest models:

Cambridge SoundWorks 705 (was $120; now $80): This retro-styled AM/FM radio also features a line-in port, so it can double as an iPod speaker.

Cambridge SoundWorks 820HD (was $300; now $200): The only Cambridge model that receives all-digital HD Radio broadcasts also doubles as an excellent alarm clock.

Cambridge SoundWorks 735i (was $300; now $200): More conservatively styled than the 820HD, the 735i adds a dedicated iPod dock to its AM/FM clock radio functionality.

Cambridge SoundWorks 745i (was $… Read more

Listen to HD Radio--without buying any new hardware

Sony just sent me the XDR-S3HD tabletop HD Radio to review. I'm not quite done with it yet--I'm still evaluating the sound quality and reception versus the Polk Audio i-Sonic--but it appears to be a perfectly capable HD Radio. The big advantage of the Sony is that it's the first name-brand tabletop HD Radio that's available for under $200. That edges out the earlier Sangean HDR-1 ($250), as well as the Boston Acoustics Recepter HD and Cambridge SoundWorks 820HD (both $300). (While the Radiosophy HD100 is available for a scant $99, the photos alone don't exactly inspire confidence). The relative advantages and disadvantages of the Sony versus those competing models will be covered in the full review later this week, but the bigger question I keep running into when reviewing these products is this: is the HD Radio format good enough to justify the purchase of a dedicated radio?

HD Radio's extra stations For me, the supposed increase in sound quality just isn't that much of a selling point--you're just hearing those same lame Clear Channel playlists, albeit on a digital rather than an analog band. But the multicast (or HD2) stations are a different story. They're substations that offer alternative programming that's unavailable on the analog dial. For instance, New York's WPLJ offers adult contemporary music on its main station (analog and digital), but has two multicast stations--95.5-2 and 95.5-3--that play '70s and '80s music only, respectively. And because the industry is trying to hook people on HD Radio, these HD2 stations--for the time being, anyway--often broadcast free of commercials.

OK, now we're getting somewhere: there's some exclusive content dispersed throughout the HD Radio dial, so maybe it's got some value after all. But then I remembered something. When Tivoli Audio announced its two new NetWorksGo Wi-Fi radios last June, CEO Tom DeVesto defended their lack of HD Radio reception by saying that it was essentially superfluous: most of the multicast HD2 stations would still be available, just via Internet streaming instead of over the air. So I decided to put DeVesto's claim to the test.

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Blu-ray victory: not inevitable

With the latest news of Paramount and DreamWorks becoming HD DVD exclusive studios, we couldn't help but remember the ridiculous "Blu-ray Today" publication from CES 2007. Blu-ray tried to fire back by announcing Fox and MGM releases this year, but that doesn't stop the fact that Blu-ray's edge in studio support was somewhat eroded by yesterday's news. Blu-ray victory is far from inevitable, and whether or not this format war ends up being good for consumers has yet to be seen. All a high-def movie fan can do is hope that combo players start … Read more

Blu-ray camp fires back at latest HD DVD announcements

Ah, the emails and voice mails were flying fast and furious yesterday after Paramount and DreamWorks made their little announcement about going HD DVD exclusive. At just after 4 p.m. in New York, Fox and MGM put out a press release saying they were unveiling "an aggressive global Blu-ray Disc release strategy, including 29 new release and 'must-have' catalog titles that runs through the end of the 2007 calendar year."

The release went on to say that Fox intends to put out "at least one state-of-the-art title per month featuring numerous BD 'firsts'" and highlighted the fact that "Blu-ray was out-performing HD DVD 2-to-1 at retail in 2007." Among the 29 new releases, my eye was drawn to Master & Commander, Ronin, Cast Away, Independence Day, A Bridge Too Far, 28 Days Later, The Day After Tomorrow, and the Die Hard trilogy.

After the email went out, the phone started ringing: All the CNET the home-theater editors were contacted, so the PR folks at GCI Group in LA were working overtime, trying to do a little damage control. The basic message was, they may have this, but we have a whole more of that. And, did you hear that the Paramount deal doesn't include any of Spielberg's movies and that the deal only ran for 18 months? Tit for tat. Tat for tit. The war was raging.

Then, thanks to a New York Times article, word got out this morning that indeed (as I suspected), someone was getting paid off. The article noted that, "Paramount and DreamWorks Animation together will receive about $150 million in financial incentives for their commitment to HD DVD, according to two Viacom executives with knowledge of the deal but who asked not to be identified." Microsoft denied paying anything, but wouldn't rule it out as a tactic in the future. There was no word on who might be paying Universal for its exclusive HD DVD agreement, but you gotta think there's a pretty sweet deal in place there, too.

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Paramount, DreamWorks commit to HD DVD

Just when it looked like Blu-ray was getting the best of HD DVD, the latter scores a combination like Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.

Both companies announced on Monday that they had agreed to release exclusively on the HD DVD format, which is battling with rival Blu-ray to become the high-definition successor to the DVD disc.

The move by Paramount represents a setback for Blu-ray. The studio has supported both formats and the tally of studios exclusively committed to each format stands at 3-2 in favor of Blu-ray.

Sony, Disney and Fox support Blu-ray, but the momentum may be swinging … Read more