LATEST ADDITIONS

LG shocked the consumer electronics world at CES when they announced that, not only were they coming out with a player that would play Blu-ray and HD DVD, but it would be shipping in less than a month. True to their word, it did, and I got one in to try out. Around the same time, Toshiba released a pair of second-generation HD DVD players. The model I look at here, the HD-XA2, is notable as it is the first HD DVD player to output 1080p. The Blu-ray camp (seeing as they had just released most of their players) had no such exciting newness beyond what you read about in our April issue. So, we got in the Panasonic DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player, which is unique in that it doesn't seem to be a clone of any other players (which you can't say for many of the BD players out there). Where should your money go (if at all)? Just keep reading.

Q. My home theater employs small tower speakers with a matching center speaker below my rear projector, dipole surrounds, and a 12-inch powered subwoofer. I'm building a new family room and would like to move to a flat-panel TV with in-wall or ceiling home theater speakers.

Expanding its already formidable lead in next-gen interactivity, Toshiba within the last month or so has released firmware updates for its HD DVD players that enable web-based interactivity features that are now starting to appear on HD DVDs. The first two titles on the market with web-enabled features are Warner's <I>Blood Diamond</I> and Bandai Visual's <I>Freedom</I> volume 1. Warner's intimate character drama <I>300</I>, set for release later this month, will also feature web-based interactivity.

HDMI connections, combined with a pristine source and a great display, can produce beautiful images, perhaps the best ever available to consumers. But the format has not been trouble free. Even if we ignore consideration of which version of HDMI we're dealing with, and the length limitations of the connections, more than a few videophiles have had problems getting HDMI some combinations of source, display, and switcher to work together.