Crave

The new metallic blue DSi with five titles.

(Credit: Nintendo)

Starting on Black Friday, Nintendo will offer two new DSi bundles featuring metallic blue or white Nintendo DSi systems, plus more than $20 in DSiWare games, the company announced on Monday.

The new bundles will come with different games, depending on the DSi customers buy. The metallic blue version of the DSi will come with five Mario DSiWare titles, including Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again; Dr. Mario Express; WarioWare: Snapped!; Mario Calculator; and Mario Clock.

Nintendo's white Nintendo DSi comes preinstalled with Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters; Brain Age Express: Sudoku; Brain Age Express: Math; Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics; and Photo Clock.

Nintendo said the DSi bundles will be available as long as supplies last, though a company representative wouldn't divulge how many units will be shipped. Nintendo also pointed out that although the white DSi has been around for a while, the Metallic Blue color is new. So far, Nintendo hasn't responded to my inquiry about whether or not it will offer a Metallic Blue DSi as a standalone unit after the bundle runs out.

Both the White DSi bundle and the Metallic Blue offering will be available in stores on Friday for $169.99, the same price as the standalone DSi.

See also: Be prepared for Black Friday tech deals

Editors' note: Updated on November 23, 2009.

A few years ago, we used to do a feature highlighting some of the top DVDs that made your home theater really look and sound like one. Well, with Blu-ray in full swing, we thought it high time to come up with a similar roundup of our favorite Blu-ray Discs that will help show off your home theater in all its glory.

While my face is at the top of the column, the list was compiled with input from editors John Falcone, Matthew Moskovciak, and David Katzmaier, who look at a lot of content in their day-to-day testing of products. We also keep an eye on AVS Forum's Blu-ray picture- and audio-quality threads and have always appreciated the site's "tier" rating system.

This list is not set in stone, and we'll be adding and removing discs as new ones come out. As always, feel free to make comments and suggest your own personal favorites. They may get added to the list in the future.

Also: If you're someone who likes demoing your system and skipping around between scenes, you'll want a fast Blu-ray player. Right now, the fastest players we've tested are the LG BD390, Sony PlayStation 3, and the Samsung BD-P3600. Though not quite as fast as its step-up sibling, the Samsung BDP-1600 is among the fastest sub-$300 players we've tested. (See CNET's full list of best Blu-ray players.)

Click any of the images below to start the slideshow.

CNET's Top 40 must-have Blu-ray Discs

Before you shell out hundreds of dollars on holiday hits like Modern Warfare 2, Assassin's Creed II, and Uncharted 2, you could easily be enjoying some of this generation's classics for a fraction of the price.

Console games are expensive and this holiday season everyone is watching their budget. So when Black Friday arrives, resist the urge to go straight to the new releases rack and instead pick up a few of these gems for yourself or the gamer in your life. Besides, if you haven't played these epics before, they're new to you!

Click on over to our slideshow to see our top-rated picks for holiday gaming on the cheap. Most titles featured can be had for well under $30.

Holiday gaming on the cheap (photos)

The Wii is coming to...Sports Authority?

(Credit: Nintendo)

You might be used to buying your video game consoles only at an electronics store, but all that will soon change. National sports retailer Sports Authority announced Tuesday that it will start selling the Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit Plus in its stores.

Aside from being able to pick up a Wii and Wii Fit Plus, consumers will also find Sports Authority stores that boast a Wii "interactive fitness experience." The section of the store will have "knowledgeable fitness trainers allowing customers to try Wii and Wii Fit Plus before they buy."

While it's certainly interesting to see a Wii being used by a fitness instructor in a sports store, Sports Authority said it believes that it will help set it apart in the marketplace. According to the company, users will now be able to "satisfy their fitness- and sports-gaming needs under one roof."

But just how much of a benefit Wii Fit actually affords its users is up for debate. Sports Authority might claim that it helps users "achieve better health," but a recent study (PDF) from the American Council on Exercise found that the game offers a "very, very mild workout."

That could throw a wrench in Sports Authority's plans as it attempts to make the case that the Wii and the Wii Fit Plus make sense next to other products designed specifically to improve the health of its users. As appealing as it might be to some, Nintendo's game might not be able to stand up against fitness-focused products.

Regardless, Sports Authority has thrown its support behind Nintendo's console. The Wii and the Wii Fit Plus will be available in 102 stores starting on Thursday. It will be rolled out to remaining company stores by spring 2010.

Got an HP Mini 311? Download the Flash 10.1 prerelease update ASAP.

The HP Mini 311 is one of our favorite current Netbooks, thanks to its hi-def screen, reasonable price, and Nvidia Ion graphics. Our main knock has been that the accelerated video, while great for basic gaming and HD video file playback, didn't work with the kind of streaming flash video used by Hulu and other sites. In our recent review, we said:

Video playback was excellent, and our test HD WMV file ran flawlessly--something no other Netbook has been able to do. Web-based video is a bit of a different story, but an updated version of Flash (reportedly available in November) will let streaming Web video take advantage of the GPU. For right now, Hulu on-demand content ran decently as-is, but not radically better than other Netbooks.

So, we're pleased to see the Flash player 10.1 update is available (as a prerelease version) for download. It's not even in official beta form yet, but we downloaded and installed it on an HP Mini 311 Netbook to test it out.

Even in this early form, full-screen HD video via Hulu was much improved. Playback was mostly smooth, with a tiny bit of occasional stuttering. Prior to the Flash update, low-res Hulu programming played reasonably well (and even then, not in full-screen mode), and HD video was very hard to watch.

If you're interested in installing the pre-beta version of Flash 10.1 on your Nvidia Ion Netbook or Nettop, you can find it here.

(Credit: CNET)

Last month we blogged about a bug marring Flash playback on the latest 27-inch Apple iMacs. Users on several Web sites, including the Apple Discussion Threads, noticed a problem with the Flash player that caused choppy audio and video playback, but it appears that the newest Mac OS X v10.6.2 update fixes the issue that was apparently caused by a conflict with the Airport driver.

According to Apple, the update "addresses video playback and performance issues for iMac (21.5-inch, late 2009) and iMac (27-inch, late 2009) computers that may occur in some situations while AirPort is turned on." Since our own 27-inch iMac also experienced slow Flash streaming and intermittent sound hiccups with the AirPort turned on, we downloaded the 10.6.2 update and left it to sleep overnight.

Prior to the update, the Flash Player consumed 114.4 percent of system resources, but 24 hours after the update we're happy to report 26.8 percent usage in the activity monitor and smooth performance across all popular streaming video Web sites like YouTube, Hulu, etc.

Much thanks to the Apple Forums and Apple itself for quickly addressing the needs of its community. If you haven't updated yet, simply choose Software Update from the Apple menu to install OS X v10.6.2.

"9" will be one of the new Blu-ray titles to feature iPhone interactivity.

(Credit: Amazon)

Excluding the recent Netflix PS3 disc, BD-Live has been a bust. Still, we give the movie studios credit for not completely abandoning the technology yet, and according to a recent Video Business story, Universal will feature iPhone interactivity on many several releases, "including Bruno, Public Enemies, 9, and Inglourious Basterds."

While it's easy to write it off as a gimmick, the iPhone functionality (called "Pocket Blu") is aimed at overcoming one of the biggest hurdles to interactive content, which is the painful process of entering text using a standard Blu-ray remote. While iPhone functionality won't solve that problem for Blu-ray owners that don't own iPhones, it's probably the easiest workaround at this stage. (We would have loved if Blu-ray players included a remote with a built-in keyboard, similar to Vizio's bluetooth remote.)

Universal is also planning to offer some exclusive content for iPhone users. We've complained about this before, but there's really no reason to limit that content to iPhone users (or even BD-Live users), since there's nearly always extra capacity on the disc for the bonus features.

Perhaps the best news is hidden at the bottom of the Video Business article; Universal says new titles will allows users to view much of the BD-Live content without having to register first. BD-Live has plenty of problems, but nothing kills enthusiasm faster than having to enter an e-mail address using an onscreen keyboard and a Blu-ray remote.

Libe Goad

(Credit: Libe Goad)

The much-anticipated and controversial Modern Warfare 2 finally arrives in retail stores today, which gives us an excuse to invite AOL GameDaily.com's Libe Goad to give us some insight into all the action. Although it's definitely not the first Call of Duty game, Libe and Jeff tell us it's the most controversial of the pack, with disturbing scenes that let you take the side of terrorists.

It's hard to believe anything can be scarier than making the trip down to Chinatown, NYC, to pick up your "advanced" copy, though. Don't call it a bootleg; the copies they're selling down there are actually legit, a first for Canal St. merchants. And although they cost the same as copies from the big box stores, Modern Warfare 2 has been available at these "select retailers" for the past week! Good to know I live in such a respectable part of NYC.

Yesterday's episode sparked such a heated conversation about censorship, video game and movie ratings, and parenting video gamers that we're happy to revisit the topics today, with Libe's valuable industry input, of course! This time, we address the world of online gaming that's brought a new level of offensive material to young people who might not understand the implications of their trash-talking. With no moderators to police Xbox Live or PSN, players are allowed to communicate directly with each other, which often results in racist and misogynistic epithets. Tune in to today's episode to listen to our opinion on what should be done.

Finally, we hate to take the spotlight away from Libe, but we've been resisting the urge to announce our guest for the past week. We finally got the green light, so we're happy to announce that Tony Hawk will be in The 404 studio on Monday, November 16, to chat with us about his latest game, Tony Hawk: Ride and maybe even do a live in-studio demo! Start thinking up questions, as we'll most likely be taking questions from the audience as well.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2--photos

The Zoom Q3 camcorder brings quality audio to the solid-state video camera market.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET)

As the audiophile's answer to the Flip camcorder craze, the Zoom Q3 ($249) takes a basic pocket video camera and bestows it with a high-quality stereo microphone and advanced audio-recording options. After a weekend playing with the Q3 and testing its audio and video capabilities against the Flip Ultra HD, I have a few initial observations to share.