LATEST ADDITIONS

The introduction of a 1080p projector for less than $5,000 would have been big news early last year. While that field is now getting increasingly crowded, with projectors from Sony, Mitsubishi, and JVC muscling in on the action, it's still big news—news that now includes the new PT-AE1000U from Panasonic.

Starting April 1st that shiny HD DVD player might look a little shinier still. $100 to $200 shinier, to be exact. On that date Toshiba is dropping the price of its entry level HD-A2 HD DVD player to just $399 and cutting the upscale HD-XA2 from $999 to $799. The 1080p-capable HD-A20, which is to be released this Summer, gets an in vitro price drop too, going from $599 to $499. On top of that, if you buy any of these players by July 31st you can still send in a form to receive <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/news/30807hddeals/">five free HD DVD movies</A>, according to TWICE.

According to an AFP article at Breitbart.com, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070322121539.enwwmbqh&show_artic... target="new">Nielson Tracking</a> reports CD sales for (almost) the first three months of 2007 are down 20% over the same period last year. Only 89 million retail CDs were sold year to date, compared with 112 million sold during the same period in 2006. Downloads of albums were off too, dropping from 119 million to 99 million this year.