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Despite the fact that competing DVRs from cable and satellite companies have made great headway in the past few years, we're still fans of TiVo's intuitive interface and constantly improving feature set. However, the knock against TiVo is that it's expensive--you have to buy the box and pay a $13 monthly fee, while a DVR from your cable company usually costs less than $10 a month with no up-front cost.

As of late, TiVo has been offering a lifetime subscription plan as a promotion that was slated to end in February, but the eagle-eyed TiVo fans over at Gizmo Lovers noticed that the offer has been extended to July 2, and Dave Zatz writes that he's received word that the lifetime subscription deal is here to stay. The lifetime subscription plan costs $400, plus the cost of the TiVo box itself.

The real question is whether the lifetime plan is a good deal. The key thing to remember is that TiVo's lifetime subscription plans are for the lifetime of the box, so if your TiVo dies or you want to upgrade to a new model, your lifetime subscription is tied to the device. (In some cases, TiVo has allowed customers to transfer their lifetime subscriptions for an additional fee.)

Acting as a new subscriber, we were able to get a TiVo HD plus a lifetime subscription for $700, and a TiVo HD plus a three-year subscription for $600 from the TiVo Web site. So unless you plan on using your TiVo HD box for more than three years you're probably better off skipping the lifetime subscription plan.

With switched digital video on the horizon and the possibility that TiVo will release a newer, SDV-compatible (without the dongle) DVR in the future, chances are you might feel some upgrade-itis around the three-year mark and won't want to feel obligated to stick to your old TiVo box. Still, the lifetime plan seems to be popular with TiVo fans and it's only giving buyers another option, so it's good news for TiVo lovers who want to lock into their service.

Looks like it wasn't the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle that was keeping potential customers away from high-definition video players after all.

The NPD Group released some of its retail sales tracking data Wednesday that showed sales of Blu-ray standalone players (not a PlayStation 3, combo player, or PC with Blu-ray drive) had mostly decreased since the beginning of the year.

Standalone Blu-ray player unit sales in the U.S. decreased 40 percent from January to February and saw a very slight increase (2 percent) between February and March, according to NPD.

HD DVD players fared even worse--player unit sales dropped 13 percent from January to February, and 65 percent from February to March--which was expected. Toshiba stopped production of HD DVD units in February, and the format's promotional group disbanded in March.

So what does this mean for Blu-ray player vendors? Why haven't sales experienced any sort of substantial uptick without a competitor? Prices offer one clue. Blu-ray player prices were at their peak for the year in mid-March, around $400. During the holiday shopping season the average price had been closer to $300.

But more likely is what NPD's high-def video analysts have been harping on for a while: that DVD is "good enough" for most consumers. And that the picture offered by a Blu-ray Disc and accompanying player doesn't appear so overwhelmingly better than a standard DVD and an upconverting player that many consumers can't justify the dramatically increased cost.

To that point, sales of significantly less expensive upconverting DVD players have actually increased 5 percent over the first quarter of 2008, compared with the same quarter a year ago. Standard DVD player sales dropped 39 percent over the same period.

Blu-ray player prices are going to have to drop dramatically, to around $200 probably, to make themselves more attractive to consumers outside of the early adopter/home theater enthusiast crowd. Sony, one of the largest producers of Blu-ray players, says $200 players aren't likely until next year at the earliest.

Belkin FlyWire: A wireless HDMI product that's due later in 2008.

(Credit: Belkin)

HDMI has certainly had its growing pains, but the connection is finally beginning to deliver on its original promise: a single-cable solution for delivering high-bandwidth, all-digital HD video and multichannel audio. HDMI is nearly universal in the home video market, present on all current HDTVs and Blu-ray players, as well as nearly all HD-capable cable and satellite set-top boxes; DVRs; game consoles; AV receivers; upscaling DVD players and recorders; and network video streamers such as the Apple TV. In fact, you realize just how convenient HDMI is when you come across a product without it--I'm looking at you, Nintendo Wii--and then have five cables (three component video wires plus two-channel stereo) instead of one crowding the back of your home entertainment system.

But one aspect of the HDMI promise remains unfulfilled: wireless HDMI. It's an attractive idea, especially for anybody with a wall-mounted flat-panel TV or a ceiling-mounted projector: have all of your HDMI-capable gear running into an AV receiver or HDMI switcher with a wireless HDMI transmitter, and have the TV equipped with a matching receiver--thus allowing you to have all your AV sources across the room from the actual display. We've been hearing about it for years, but to date, there are few--if any--products that you can actually buy. Here's a quick update on the wireless HDMI products we've heard about to date--including when (or whether) we can expect to see them:

Radio scientists at IBM Research and MediaTek are teaming up to develop a wireless transmission protocol that will deliver files more than 100 times faster than Wi-Fi.

A prototype millimeter wave chip

(Credit: IBM)

The idea is to take advantage of the 60GHz spectrum, according to Mehmet Soyuer, the lead researcher on the project, who is based in IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. These chips will be able to transfer files at around 2.5 gigabits per second, compared with the 11 to 54 megabits of Wi-Fi. Hence the 100 times faster calculation, Soyuer said.

Put another way, these chips could transfer a 10 gigabyte file wirelessly in five seconds or so, something that would take several minutes on a Wi-Fi network.

The 60GHz spectrum is part of the millimeter wave spectrum, which runs from 30GHz to 300GHz. SiBeam, which is the driving force behind the WirelessHD consortium, has been showing off 60GHz chips in TVs and will make a big push for them at CES. Other companies are also coming out with high-end wireless video and audio chips.

IBM brings the radio expertise to the project while MediaTek will work on the digital signal processing.

IBM and MediaTek want to have something out in three years.

Is this old tech worth $1,900 to you?

DVD-recorders with hard drives may be old technology, but they're commanding astronomical prices on the free market these days. Case in point: We reviewed the Panasonic DMR-EH75V about a year and half ago when it had a list price of $500. If you search for the DMR-EH75H on Amazon, you'll see three resellers (all with reputable ratings) selling them for insane prices:

New DMR-EH75V: $1,895
New DMR-EH75V: $1,899
Used DMR-EH75V: $1,498

Is it just a glitch with Amazon? You might think so, but that's pretty clearly not the case. Jumping over to eBay, we found some recent auctions for the same product.

New Panasonic DMR-EH75V: $750
Refurbished DMR-EH75V: $675
Used DMR-EH75V: $760

Sure, that's less than half of the Amazon prices, but they're still very high. How often does the price of electronics increase after being used for a few years? What's going on here?

The answer is pretty simple--if you know the gritty details of consumer electronics and a little economics. ... Read more

Will this cheap HD DVD player change the format war?

(Credit: Venturer Electronics)

The format war is far from over, but HD DVD is on a roll--at least as far as PR is concerned. Last week the big news was both Paramount and DreamWorks becoming HD DVD-exclusive studios, and now Venturer Electronics has announced it will release a budget HD DVD player--the SHD7000--by the 2007 holiday season. There have been several reports indicating that cheaper, off-brand HD DVD players were on their way, but Venturer is the first company to make a formal announcement.

Details are a little slim at the moment, but here's what we know. The SHD7000 has an HDMI port capable of outputting video at 1080i. That's comparable to Toshiba's HD-A2, and as long as your HDTV has decent 1080i deinterlacing, you should still get very good image quality with a 1080i signal (assuming it is of comparable quality to the HD-A2). According to the press release, the SHD7000 also has onboard Dolby TrueHD decoding. The HD DVD spec only requires players to be able to decode two channels of Dolby TrueHD, so we don't know for sure if the SHD7000 will be able to decode multichannel Dolby TrueHD soundtracks (to date, all HD DVD players have handled 5.1 TrueHD decoding.) Like all other HD DVD players, the SHD7000 also has an Ethernet port, so it should be capable of playing networked enabled special features, as seen on titles like Blood Diamond. The press release also states that it will be able to upconvert regular DVDs and play standard audio CDs.

The press release doesn't mention a price yet, but VideoBusiness is reporting a $199 MSRP. On the other hand, poster Robert Spalding over at AVS Forum claims to have received an e-mail indicating the street price will be closer to $150. We certainly can't vouch for that street price--it remains firmly in the rumor mill for now--but a $150 HD DVD player could have a big effect on the format war, especially with the cheapest Blu-ray players still around the $500 mark. We've contacted Venturer for more information on the pricing of the SHD7000 and will update this post accordingly.