If you thought the well-to-do crowd wasn't feeling the pinch from the rotten economy, consider this -- D&M is not going to be at CEDIA Expo 2009 in a couple of months. You know, the show that features pricey, high-end custom install toys. Not being able to get our paws on the latest toys from Denon, Marantz, McIntosh, Boston Acoustics, Snell and Escient breaks our hearts, but D&M has decided to commit its resources to dealer training (and promotions, we hope); all the better to drive new customer sales. To be clear, D&M will have a presence at CEDIA, it just won't be on the Expo floor -- meetings will be by appointment only. We're just keeping our fingers crossed that similar measures won't have to be taken at CES in January. Planar (and by association, Runco) may take a similar CEDIA approach, not entirely surprising given its recent performance.

No doubt TiVo has long since released its proverbial ATRAC codec, but it is so bad now that every time we hear about a TiVo offer, we click on through to find the super lame catch. Of course this time is no different as TiVo is offering up to $100 off a TiVo HD to existing Series 1 or 2 owners. So you probably figured out the catch by now, which is that if you have lifetime on your existing TiVo, you can't transfer it. If you log in and try the site actually suggests you give away your older TiVo or recycle it. It seems that TiVo knows there aren't any alternatives so what are you going to do if you're treated like crap? It's not like there are any comparable acceptable alternatives.

Finally, Canada is getting a legit digital download option, now that Zip.ca and Sonic Solutions have announced plans to team up on a movie service. Though short on details (according to the PR it is still "exploring a number of models," including a la carte and subscription) CEO Curt Millar's stated goal to become consumer's destination for online movie access should be bolstered by using CinemaNow, since its service is already supported on hardware from TiVo to PC to LG Blu-ray players and more, it shouldn't be too difficult to work with hardware already in customers homes or coming out in the future. Millar told Joystiq his company "would love" to follow Netflix's lead to console access, but don't run to your Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii just yet, Canucks, there's no partnerships to announce yet.

[Via Joystiq]

We're not saying we've ever downloaded anything off the internet that wasn't 100% on the up and up, or that we're here to judge those who have. We just thought it'd be fun to post all the various rationales we've heard over the years by those who do to justify their potentially shady activities. Some of these sound like pretty good reasons to us, but we doubt any of them would hold up in court if the MPAA ever came a knocking. Regardless, if you do download gray area content you might want to have a couple of these ready, and by all means let us know which ones we missed.

1. I ran out of tuners on my DVR.
2. I accidentally deleted the show.
3. My DVR hard drive crashed.
4. I don't get that channel in HD.
5. My cable was out.
6. I have satellite and it was pouring rain.
7. I don't live in the US and the show isn't available here.
8. I delete the shows after I watch them once.
9. The show isn't available on Blu-ray.
10. I live in a valley and can't get over-the-air.

Always good for an optimistic Blu-ray outlook, analyst Futuresource this week continued to peg 2012 as the year Blu-ray breaks into the mainstream, while reducing its prediction of discs sold this year in the format from 95 to 75 million. The expectation is that within the next couple of years hardware could drop to as cheap as $50 for an "entry-level" Blu-ray player, with dedicated set-top box owners snapping up high definition discs at a much quicker rate than the currently PS3-dominated (6% to 3%) audience. Check Video Business for the full recap, but just in case you hadn't heard, rumors of Blu-ray's impending demise are greatly exaggerated.

Pioneer and Sharp have officially finalized their deal to combine Blu-ray operations, completing the joint venture planned since Pioneer began navigating its way out of several businesses including its Kuro plasma HDTVs. The official PDF has all the details, but the salient points are that Pioneer will have 66% ownership and 3 of 5 seats on the board of the 450-employee joint venture, ready to start up on schedule October 1, for the development, design, manufacture and sale of optical disc products, primarily Blu-ray.

And to think we've been worrying about all those poor people who weren't ready for the DTV transition, only to find out that they don't even watch TV. We mean, what other explanation could you have for the fact that it's been solid week after the big analog shutoff and 2.1 million households still can't watch TV. Of course not all of these people just let the DTV transition pass them by, some of them are affected by the reception problems, and others probably don't even understand the question. Either way we'll find out soon enough as most broadcasters should be full power by July 1st and no doubt Nielsen will have the results of another poll out by then.

Current CableLabs CEO & prez Richard Green is moving on later this year as Paul Liao from Panasonic takes over the reigns and the first part of Multichannel News' interview with him covers the first time he saw HDTV back in 1980 and the process that eventually gave us the standards we have today.That goes back through the first NFL game recorded in HD, and why high definition took so long to take off -- apparently not everyone wants a 1 million+ lb 40-inch CRT and broadcasters were never happy about spending all the money necessary to upgrade -- from the days of 5x3 with 1125 lines. It's not a crystal ball to the success of Blu-ray, digital downloads, 3D or anything else, but worth a read for some interesting anecdotes on how tough progress is.

As much as we'd like to put stock in Satoru Miyashita's forecast, we're still hesitant to believe that we're just two Consumer Electronic Shows away from seeing big-screen OLED TVs for sale. After Sony's polarizing XEL-1 hit the scene around two years ago, we've seen an anemic amount of action in the commercial OLED TV space. Sure, we've heard promise after promise, but we've still got no solid evidence that a large-screen set is anywhere near a Sam's Club shelf. In a recent interview with the general manager of Seiko Epson's Core Technology Development Center, OLED-Info managed to get this out of the exec: "We see 2012 as being the year that 37"+ OLED TVs will be launched by various makers, and 2015 as the year that sales will really take off for this market." He's referring to the year in which OEMs will begin to use its new inkjet-printing approach to making OLED TVs, which will hopefully allow for easier development of larger panels. 'Til then, we suppose we'll just have to be content with using the Zune HD as our primary television.

Just as we heard back in February, Time Warner and Comcast have joined hands in order to regain control on some of the content that is slipping right out from under 'em. In the olden days, the only portal for catching content was the 'tube; today, a vast array of television shows are available gratis on the web, and that's downright frightening for pay-TV operators. Today, both firms are detailing TV Everywhere in the most general way possible, only telling us that paying Comcast subscribers will soon have access to "premium long-form content" via a web portal. TNT and TBS are the only networks specifically named thus far, but considering that both of those already offer their best programming online to everyone, we're not terribly impressed.

The agreement also includes a trial with around 5,000 Comcast users, which will be used to heavily test a newfangled authentication technology that will be necessary to allow paying Comcast users to access the material from any internet-connected PC. NewTeeVee has also assembled a clean, easy-to-digest FAQ that explains what exactly all this is. To be frank, it seems like a solution in search of a problem from the consumer viewpoint. After all, with portals like Hulu and individual network websites already providing in-demand content online, why is there even a need for some "special portal" for Comcast users? We've heard that paying subs will have access to even more material, possibly movies or other premium shows. But we won't front: we certainly don't want TV Everywhere to convert some of the content that's already free into pay-only content in order to accomplish the aforesaid "even more" goal. At any rate, the public at large probably won't hear more about this until the trial sessions end at an undisclosed time, but you can bet we'll be keeping a cautious eye on any developments.

Read - TV Everywhere press release
Read - NewTeeVee FAQ

It's no secret we were holding out hope for speaker and electronics manufacturer NHT to make a comeback, but we didn't expect it's happen this soon. The iconic audio company powered things down at the end of March, and now co-founder Chris Byrne bringing the company back with a new factory-direct web-centric business model that will skip right over the middleman to the tune of as much as 30-percent savings. There's no substitute for a live demo, especially for audio, so authorized dealers will still have showrooms; but orders will still come factory-direct to consumers. Sounds reasonable, but we're curious about how much of a slice dealers take, and how they get credit for sales they generate in exchange for not having to carry any stock. Still, we've got to give credit to NHT for trying to get the crusty audio market moving in a new direction and hope this thing catches on so we can see some of the eight new product concepts currently in the works at NHT.

When it comes to Blu-ray deck price decreases, we'll take whatever we can get -- especially with the naysaying that seems to follow the format these days. So file the fact that Zoran and DTS have put their legal disputes behind them, and Zoran plans to have single-chip solutions for Blu-ray decoding with support for DTS' codecs shipping by the end of the year under "more competition has to be good." Zoran filed suit against DTS back in October, claiming that the company wasn't being fair in its codec licensing terms; not surprisingly, Zoran wasn't granted a license. But the suits ironed it all out, and after paying out a settlement that will have a "modestly positive" impact on DTS' financials, Zoran is the latest licensee to the DTS codecs.

You just knew that Texas Instruments wasn't going to leave the 4k cinema projector market to SXRD, right? Sure enough, TI unveiled its DLP Cinema 4k technology and announced that Barco, Christie and NEC will be sprinkling the new tech across more than a dozen new projectors. Now, if TI would get serious about 3-chip DLP consumer solutions -- not even 4k -- we'd be out of our seats (or maybe the movie house's). Until then, we'll have to settle for the possibility that the lowered costs of the next generation of the DLP Cinema platform will allow for more screens to go digital. One thing's for sure -- those IMAX DLP setups need all the pixels they can get.

Just some more data for you HD fans to pore over, as The Harris Poll talked to a couple thousand people in April and came away with statistics it claims show interest in Blu-ray is still "lukewarm." We're a little less than convinced, especially after reading over the press release that uses HD DVD to refer both to the dead format and all high def media as a whole in the same sentence, while mentioning that its stats show sales of HD DVD players are up over their 2008 marks by the same amount that Blu-ray is (excluding the PS3). Once you've gotten over that shock, there's also interesting stats showing the number of people planning to switch to Blu-ray in the next year is down to 7%, from 9% last year. Grab the PDF at the read link for the full breakdown, but we're not sure you'll give the survey any more credence than we do (not much.)

We'll be honest, while others were predicting how poorly implemented the new Managed Copy system for Blu-ray would be -- mostly because the studios can charge for copies -- we were dreaming of new ways we'd like to enjoy our favorite movies. With DVD's CSS, everything was very restricted; simple tasks like transferring a movie to your PMP or storing 'em all on a Media Center PC was way, way more complicated than it should be -- not to mention a violation of the DMCA. Obviously we wanted to know more, so we went straight to the source and asked the AACS-LA exactly how it'll work, as well as how it'll handle things like rent, rip and return. Surprisingly, we were actually happy after the call and contrary to what you might believe, Managed Copy was actually designed with the consumer in mind.