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So you bit the high-def bullet and popped for a Blu-ray player--or an HD DVD player. Either way, it's time to start building your movie library.

Best Buy is currently offering buy-one-get-one-free deals on both Blu-ray and HD DVD movies. Free shipping, too!

What's the selection like? Better than you might expect. Available titles include 300, The Departed, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Ocean's Thirteen. (There are a couple turkeys, of course, like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Are We Done Yet?.) Interestingly, all the Blu-ray flicks sell for $29.99 or $34.99, while a couple of the HD DVDs are available for $19.99. That's not an endorsement of the format or anything, just an observation. Personally, I'm snagging 300 and Transformers--what better titles for showing off the glories of high-def DVD?

(Credit: Toshiba)

Ready to take the high-def DVD plunge? I wouldn't. I think most HDTV owners are better off with a decent (and inexpensive) upconverting DVD player, which makes existing DVDs look a helluva lot better and saves you from having to choose sides in the ridiculous Blu-ray versus HD DVD war.

On the other hand, if you're tired of waiting and want to enjoy every pixel of your 1080p TV right now, consider the Toshiba HD-A20 HD DVD player. Circuit City has it on clearance for $249.99--not quite the sub-$200 price point the players need to achieve critical mass, but definitely a price break. (Most vendors are selling the same model for around $400.)

What's your take on the whole Blu-ray/HD DVD debacle? Are you going to wait it out? Wait for lower prices? Or are you already enjoying the high-def goodness?

Anti-piracy pooches are rushing to the MPAA's rescue.

(Credit: MPAA)

Two specially trained Labradors recently uncovered thousands of bootlegged DVDs during police raids in Queens, NY., according to the Motion Picture Assoc. of America. In addition to the scores of bogus films, the raids netted three arrests.

Three-year-olds, Lucky and Flo, are believed to be the first dogs trained to recognize the polycarbonate scent of optical discs, according to the Motion Picture Assoc. of America.

To teach the dogs to track down the discs, the polycarbonate scent was placed on tennis balls, which were then hidden. The dogs were taught to find the balls even when obscured by other smells, according to the MPAA.

Since CDs are also made of polycarbonate, the dogs are unable to distinguish between them and DVDs. Of course, they also can't tell the difference between pirated and legitimate DVDs.

The Queens bust was their first assignment in the U.S. after helping locate more than $3.5 million worth of pirated DVDs in Malaysia and the Philippines earlier this year. The pups were so successful in Malaysia that movie pirates there wanted them dead.

They put a bounty on their heads of 100,000 Malaysian Ringgit or about $30,000.

"Our goals for Lucky and Flo in the future are to continue to introduce them to government and Customs officials around the world in order to garner interest and demand for these amazing pups," the MPAA said in a statement. "We are hoping other officials at airports, borders and ports will look into training more dogs as a powerful tool to keep counterfeited discs from entering their borders."

HP wants to bring you the news, just like Ron Burgundy.

(Credit: DreamWorks)

At this week's Print 2.0 conference in New York, HP's Digital Entertainment Services group announced a new program called NextDayTV, which will make local TV coverage, events, broadcast programs, and televised sports games available on DVD soon after their original air dates. The inaugural partnership for the program is a deal with Major League Baseball, and you can now purchase a DVD of the game in which Barry Bonds hit his legendary 756th home run at San Francisco Giants Dugout stores as well as online at the Wal-Mart, Major League Baseball, FYE, and Suncoast Web sites.

Still to come are more partnerships, so that NextDayTV will be able to create DVDs on demand, as well as offer more "broadcast TV shows and sporting events that have high relevancy in specific geographic markets or with specific consumer segments" within a few days of their original air dates. Many of these, a release from HP stressed, would never make it to DVD for weeks or months (if ever).

This is obviously designed as a competitor to DVR services (some of which can burn programs to DVDs--others, like the one I have, can't) and digital marketplaces like the iTunes Store. But it seems a little bit counterintuitive for a company to be creating a video content program that uses DVDs rather than digital downloads; presumably the NextDayTV market will be those consumers who aren't jumping onto the video-on-demand and digital-download bandwagon. You know, like your mom.

Update: Representatives from Netflix have let us know these lower-priced plans are part of a test for selected Netflix subscribers, and the current prices that were lowered last month remain for new and existing customers.

Netflix is cutting the price of two of its most popular plans by $1 today, less than a month after its last cut in July. The pricing hasn't been changed on Netflix's rates page, but the company has been sending out rounds of e-mails to its customers about the change since last night, and made an announcement about it earlier this morning. The change covers the two- and three-out-at-a-time plans, the latter of which is the most popular and competitively priced.

The move is the latest in a series of aggressive cuts to compete with Blockbuster's popular Total Access service, which exploits Blockbusters brick-and-mortar stores to provide on-the-spot rental exchanges for about the same price as Netflix's offerings. Netflix has since fought back with its video-on-demand Watch Now service, which competes with Amazon's Unbox, and Movielink, which Blockbuster snapped up last week for just under $7 million. Interestingly enough, with this morning's change, Netflix is also slicing an hour of Watch Now usage off each of the plans, cutting them down to 13 and 16 respectively.

The three-at-a-time plan is Netflix's most popular, and started out at a flat $19.99 in late 1999. Both Netflix and Blockbuster have since been fierce competitors, lowering prices and adding new features to their services, despite the increasing costs in gasoline and postage.

Parents feeding their babies a steady media diet of DVDs such as Baby Einstein might want to reconsider. A new study from researchers at the University of Washington reports an unfavorable link between heavy media intake by babies less than two years old and slow language development.

In fact, the study reports that every hour infants and toddlers spend watching DVDs or TV shows such as Barney translates into a weaker score on standardized vocabulary tests than children who don't watch media. Every hour of screen time turns into six to eight words lost on the test, according to a study by Frederick Zimmerman, Dimitri Christakis and Andrew Meltzoff, published this week in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Why is this concerning, given that institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics have previously recommended no screen time for children less than two years? The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a nonprofit, said it's worrisome because several children's DVD makers still say on their packaging that their videos can be helpful to babies' brain development.

"The number one reason parents allow babies to watch television and DVDs is the mistaken belief that the programming is educational and, or good for brain development," Susan Linn of the CCFC said in a statement.

"This important study is the clearest indication yet of potential harm caused by the false and deceptive marketing of television programming and DVDs that target babies," she added.