Audio Video News

If you bought an HD DVD player or Xbox drive before February 23, here's some good news from Best Buy. You now have two options. You can keep your HD DVD player and the store will give you a $50 gift card to ease the pain. Or you can trade in your HD DVD player for further gift-card bounty.

The marketing of Ghosts I-V, the new Nine Inch Nails album, puts Radiohead and R.E.M. in the shade.

Following in the footsteps of Radiohead, R.E.M. will offer its new album Accelerate free on the internet for a limited period before official CD and download release.

Panasonic showed off two distinct approaches to flat-panel color reproduction yesterday at a New York press event. This was just one facet of a sweeping presentation that covered new LCD as well as plasma lines, all rebranded with the name Viera, much of which will reach the market in a "critical mass" slated for April.

Bits of debris from the HD DVD explosion continue to hit the ground. Among the possible consequences are lower Blu-ray pricing and an Xbox drive--though not right away. And at least one retailer appears to be holding out a helping hand for consumers who invested in the wrong format.

In a press release issued today, Pioneer announced it will stop manufacturing raw plasma panels, stating, "We have judged that maintaining the cost competitiveness of plasma display panels at projected sales volumes will be difficult going forward. Accordingly, we have decided to terminate in-house plasma display panel production and to procure these panels externally, after panel production for our next series of models is complete...Pioneer is currently in discussions on the feasibility of procuring panel modules that may incorporate the Company's proprietary technologies. Details will be announced as soon as they are finalized."

How does Toshiba plan to move forward in the wake of HD DVD's demise? The company's CEO says improved DVD upconversion is among the strategies to be pursued. Here's a nugget from a Wall Street Journal interview with Atsutoshi Nishida: "If you watch standard DVDs on our players, the images are of very high quality because they include an 'upconverting' feature. And we're going to improve this even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images. The players would be much cheaper than Blu-ray players too."