If you've been reading <I>UAV</I> regularly you know that the remaining first generation Blu-ray disc players scheduled for release this year are just starting to trickle in. <I>UAV</I> has recently posted its takes on <A HREF="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/1106panasdmpbd10/">Panasonic's DMP-BD10</A> and <A HREF="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/1206sonybdps1/">Sony's BDP-S1</A>, and rest assured that a full review of Sony's PlayStation3 is being fact-checked by Sony and will appear soon.

In one significant way, the Blu-ray Disc format got off to an even more inauspicious start than the rival HD DVD format. <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/706dsamsungbd/">Samsung's BD-P1000</A> player was the first, and for months, the only BD player on the market. It had shipped with a Noise Reduction circuit cranked up to 11, softening the picture substantially and actually increasing the noise in the image by several orders of magnitude. On top of that, many BD titles released over the last several months have been surprisingly variable in image quality, even compared with broadcast HD. In short, a lot of the BD titles released so far just don't look very good.

In the wake of the nearly simultaneous introductions of Sony's Blu-ray capable PlayStation3 and the HD DVD external drive for the Xbox 360, some answers are already coming in on the impact these gaming consoles are going to have on the format war as a whole. And so far, aside from radically altering the install base of hardware for both formats, the gaming rigs are playing a big role in moving HD software off the shelves too.

Sony took official ownership of CEDIA 2006 on Day 1 when it officially announced the VPL-VW50 SXRD front projector. Sony had previously lit the world on fire with the VPL-VW100<A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/videoprojectors/1205sony/">"Ruby"</A>, a fully outfitted three-chip 1080p SXRD projector with a retail of $10K, which was significantly less money than the premium single-chip 720p DLPs that ruled the day when it was released in Fall 2005 (not to mention that is a full two-thirds cheaper than Sony's first SXRD front pro, the <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/videoprojectors/504sony/">Qualia 004</A>).