Mvix has announces the worldwide launch of the Mvix Ultio, a hard-disk based media center capable of HD digital media playback with video output as high as 1080p.
The company claims the device supports the largest array of AV formats and codecs of any media player.

Ever since losing the high-def format war to Blu-ray, Toshiba has resolutely refused to join the enemy camp and start manufacturing Blu-ray products.
Until now that is. According to reports coming out of its annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo, Toshiba is considering making Blu-ray products.

AMD has launched a chip offering HDTV viewing capabilities on desktop and notebook PCs around the world using analog, digital and free-to-air broadcast signals.
The company says the ATI Theater HD 750 PC TV chip uses advanced video processing and signal reception technologies to give an authentic HD home theater feel on the PC.

More than 10 per cent of TVs sold worldwide could have 3D capability by 2011, rising to 16 per cent or 2.8bn sets by 2015.
That's the prediction of research by Screen Digest, which suggests that technological advances mean today's 3D cinema viewing experience will soon be possible at home.

On2 Technologies has licensed its On2 VP6 video format and software to VisualOn Inc.
VisualOn is to integrate VP6 decoding software into its multimedia application suite for mobile platforms.
These software applications allow consumers to play rich multimedia content on mobile devices without expensive dedicated hardware.

FutureSource Consulting has produced an interesting chart that highlights the gulf between HDTV ownership and the penetration of Blu-ray disc players in Europe.
It shows that there are 69 million HD-ready TV sets but just 8 million Blu-ray players,including PS3 consoles - prompting the title: "61 million TVs starved of HD content".

Texas Instruments has launched a new video processor specifically aimed at removing video designers' concerns about video format support, network bandwidth or system storage capacity limitations.
Called the TMS320DM365 DaVinci, the processor includes production-qualified H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, MJPEG and VC1 codecs.

Panasonic has unveiled what it claims are the world's first Blu-ray recorders with two integrated Freesat receivers and an internal hard drive.
Freesat is a UK free-to-air digital satellite television service that is a joint venture between the BBC and ITV.

US consumer spending on packaged home entertainment - rental and sales of DVD and high-def disc formats - fell by 5.5 per cent in 2008, to USD $22.4 billion, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.
Spending on DVD purchases fell more dramatically than the total, declining by 9 per cent, to about USD $14.5 billion, and the shipment of DVD units was down almost 15 per cent in 2008 to 1.4 Billion

Filed under: HD DVD, Toshiba

Sure, sure, the format war is over, but we never expected HD DVD to just disappear overnight, and it looks like the combination of deeply-discounted hardware, cheap media, and a weak economy are keeping Red alive even as Toshiba pretends no one really wants true HD anyway. Players are going for as little as $60 with movies available for $10, and retailers like Buy.com say that "sales are still very strong." Of course, eventually all this stock has to run out, so we doubt this'll be a long-lasting phenomenon, but hey -- stranger things have happened.

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SIM2 has teamed up with the US's Entertainment Experience, LLC to offer just-released movie blockbusters as part of a better-than-blu high-def home-cinema package.
hdtv.biz-news.com spoke to the high-performance HD projector specialists to find out why they've launched what appears to be yet another HD format when the public is still wavering about Blu-ray.