Anyone else remember that scene from Get Smart where Max Smart has to walk through a series of corridors and passageways before finally being able to access the phone booth that provides access to CONTROL?  Well, today’s sweet home theater setup is a lot like that, except not quite so convoluted.

Today’s sweet home theater setup owner, you see, installed–get this!–a FINGERPRINT LOCK on his home theater.  You literally cannot get in without the man’s fingerprint or the willingness to tear hell out of locked doors.

And it’s probably a good idea he’s got that lock on there, because there’s a panoply of high-powered hardware in there.  Just for example, he’s got a homemade hundred and ten inch screen, a Panasonic projector, Polk speakers, Denon receiver and an Xbox 360 with HD DVD add on.  In retrospect, the owner jokes, it was a bad move.  He’s actually planning to bring in a PS3 for the Blu-ray capabilities.

But between the lock and the choice gear, it’s definitely a sweet home theater setup.

Okay, so on the surface, five thousand bucks sounds like a lot of cash.  But if you break it down over the course of a year, you’re actually only talking about a hundred bucks a week.  And if you’re willing to put aside that kind of cash for that whole year, then you too can have a home theater setup like Mark Wiener’s.

When I read about this one I was pretty well surprised.  He mostly paid for electronics and furnishings, doing most of the construction work between himself and his father in law, which was probably a good bonding experience for the duo.

But that five grand went a pretty long way, putting up a Toshiba DVD, VCR and HD DVD player (though that one probably doesn’t see much use any more), a Panasonic Blu-ray player and 720p projector, KLH speakers and a B-tech ninety inch screen, and plenty else.

With some careful planning, you too can put in a really awesome home theater setup and without breaking the bank to do it.  That makes it, especially these days, doubly sweet.

Steve Mize is a man who feels much the same way I do about the movies.  Growing up, we both regarded them the same way, as a special treat.  See, we didn’t have Netflix back when I was a kid.  We didn’t have hundreds of cable channels.  We had some, yeah, but not that many. Cartoon Network was still a gleam in Ted Turner’s eye.  One of my earliest movie memories is my father packing me in his old pickup truck and the two of us driving a town over to catch Robocop 2 at the local small movie house while my mother was at bingo.  Needless to say, I went to bed late that night, and it was fantastic.

Steve Mize brought this same kind of emotion into his home theater setup.  He built his theater around a ticket stand, concession area (I love theaters that remember the concession stand) and a “walk of fame” featuring stars of the past, like Hepburn and Bacall.

But it’s not all about the nostalgia, no sir.  There’s also some prime hardware in here too, like a JVC projector, Pioneer blu-ray player, Screen Research hundred and ten inch screen, and the ability to play almost every format ever released.  He’s got an HD DVD and a VCR in there, as well as a straight Denon DVD.

Steve Mize’s home theater setup brings the best of the past and present together, and must therefore always be called sweet.

You’ve got to hand it to anyone who wants to go with a regional theme for their home theatre setup, and for Marc McManus, all it took was one year and sixty grand to recreate a little bit of Ireland in what once was his basement.

Naturally, he’s got an amazing array of equipment here, a list of which he’s actually provided.  Check this setup out: a Panasonic AE-2000U projector, Denon AVR-3808CI home theater receiver, a DaLite 100” Cinema Vision screen, a Klipsch RF-82 left/right speaker, a Klipsch RC-62 center speaker,  Klipsch RS-42 side surrounds, Speakercraft AIM7 back surrounds, two Velodyne DLS-4000R 12” powered subwoofers, and plenty more besides.

Oh, and did I mention the attached bar?  Yeah…he’s also got a pocket Irish pub wedged in there.  To prove how far he went with this, he actually planned it out with AutoCAD before he built it.  Between the sheer depth of detail in the surroundings, and the sheer magnitude of hardware he’s got running in there, it’s got to be called a sweet home theatre setup.

There’s just nothing else it can be called.

Sharp has recently showcased the above Blu-ray player at their year’s CEDIA entitled the BD-UP52U. This particular Blu-ray player is to feature BD-Live, an Ethernet port and a plethora of audio codecs.

Unfortunately, there is no Netflix support out of the box but EngadgetHD reports that the service will be made available for the player at some point in the near future.

You’ll be able to pick up Sharp’s BD-UP52U next month for $379.99.

I spotted this one out at the Home Theatre Forum and read all about Matt Tucker’s experiences trying to set up a home theatre.  First, let me pause and give a special note of thanks to all the various spouses and girlfriends out there (and sometimes even boyfriends) who don’t really understand why we so desperately want a specific room to watch movies in and do horrendous things to in the process of making it ready, but are willing to accommodate anyway, just like Matt’s spouse.

Matt took a fairly normal room, even with a window, and uses some heavy red drapes and matching red valences to block off most of the light and cancel out the various light reflection problems.  He set up a projector and screen, along with a whole array of well set up, modular components, and he’s discovered some of the things we’ve already been talking about.  He’s discovered the importance of the chocolate brown finish as well as the importance of modular systems so he can upgrade later.

When he started, he had a Toshiba HD DVD player.  Ouch.

But he’s got a pretty sweet setup, as you can see from the pic above, and since he managed to do it on a budget it’s doubly worth our time to notice. Nice job, Matt–that’s one sweet home theatre setup.

After the death of HD DVD, Toshiba pretty much remained in limbo, focusing their efforts on upconverting DVD players rather than making the Blu-ray jump. They even recently announced their intentions to debut their BD-18 Blu-ray player early next year.

Well today we have word that Toshiba has officially joined the Blu-ray Disc Association which means we should see a plethora of Blu-ray touting hardware from them in the future.

Below is a statement from Toshiba themselves discussing their Blu-ray affiliaton:

“In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA. Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year. Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration. We will make announcements in due course.”

Read (Toshiba)

Mitsubishi has recently announced that starting on July 16th they will begin offering customers a Vudu HD movie player and $50 worth of credits for use with the service when they buy one of the company’s HDTVs.

HomeMediaMagazine has taken the time to confirm that this promotion does in fact exist and will run through August 10th. For those who don’t know, the Vudu HD set top box allows for the on-demand delivery of over 16,000 movies and TV episodes with most rentals start at just 99 cents.

If your on the market for a new TV, definitely check out Mitsubishi’s offerings as this promotion is too good to be passed up.

LG has a new LCD TV for you and it’s a LED-backlit HDTV. The W2286L is only 22-inch big and it can be used both as a regular HDTV or a PC monitor. If you happen to work at home a lot it’s definitely a display worth considering for your home office. The display will offer you a 2,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ration, a 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, an automatic brightness sensor, two HDMI sockets and a DVI port. The TV is eco-friendly too as it uses 40% less power than its counterparts and it’s only 20 mm-thick. Are you convinced yet? Well hang on to your Benjamins since we have no official launch dates just yet!

via AkihabaraNews

Remember that HTPC from Kinetic we told you about earlier this month? The one that gives users the option of an HD DVD entitled the HD:Hub? Yeah well Kinetic has released some more details on the regarding the PC that is now available from retailers.

Kinetic’s HD:Hub will give users the option of a Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, or Core i7 processor, HD DVD or Blu-ray playback and up to 6TB of storage space. This is all added onto the WiFi, Creative X-Fi Titanium Sound Card and up to 4 TV tuners that we already told you about.

Anyways, you’re going to be looking at prices ranging from around $1,300 for the lower end Mini HD:Hub all the way up to around $2,500 for the higher end X HD:Hub.

Read (EngadgetHD)

Sportsbuffs who love to spend countless times waiting and watching their favorite team play via television are now given an easier time to tune in thanks to DirectTVs ScoreGuide. Scoreguide is a new on-screen feature of DIRECTV’s industry-leading program guide. Launched today, ScoreGuide enables fans to easily track scores and start times of major sporting events, see a list of channels carrying each event and tune directly to those channels.

Viewers will be alerted to ScoreGuide by a small on-screen icon and have access to the new feature on more than 200 DIRECTV sports channels, including regional sports networks, DIRECTV sports subscription channels (channels 700-799), and national cable networks that primarily cover sports.

ScoreGuide, offered compliments of DIRECTV, displays a lineup of sporting events in progress, as well as upcoming daily and weekly events. ScoreGuide also provides DIRECTV channel numbers associated with each of the events and allows customers to tune to those specific channels with the push of a button on their remote control.

Sports on ScoreGuide will include: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, top 25 college football and basketball, tennis (men’s and women’s Grand Slam event quarterfinals and later rounds), golf (PGA Tour majors) and next season, NASCAR.

(Source) Press

If you thought the format war was over, boy were you wrong. Players for the up and coming China Blue HD format has recently been revealed and they aren’t looking too shabby.

For those who don’t know China Blue HD is China’s answer to the Blu-ray format and, according to EngadgetHD, are 40% cheaper than Blu-ray.

Even better for CBHD, Warner Bros. is set to release 100 of their movies on the format by the end of the year.

I wonder if this format will put up a better fight for Blu-ray than HD DVD did, what do you think?

Now here’s showing an initiative — It was recently announced that Warner Bros. is set to begin a program that will help remedy the woes felt by early HD-DVD adopters.

Apparently, if you have an HD-DVD that was put out by Warner Bros. you can send it in to them and for just $4.95 get a Blu-ray version sent back within 5 weeks.

5 weeks, huh? Oh well, at least they’re doing something to help those who got screwed by the format war.

LG Electronics is in the news again and this time around, they have announced their new line of digital TVs is the world’s first device series capable of playing back full DivX HD 1080p videos. More than 200 models of LG digital TVs have been DivX Certified, including the LH50, LH70, LH85, PS70 and PS80 series.

In addition, a wider variety of innovative LG TVs are now DivX Certified for playback of full DivX HD. Over 100 million DivX Certified devices have shipped worldwide from major manufacturers, and more than 400 digital TV models from leading consumer electronics manufacturers have been DivX Certified to date.

Available in the United States and Europe in late May and late April respectively, the LG digital TVs will enable consumers to easily playback DivX HD videos from the PC or the Internet through the USB slot. Typical HD video requires a considerable amount of digital storage space, but DivX HD video provides a superior media experience by maintaining the highest visual quality while significantly reducing the video file size. Using DivX technology, users can fit approximately two hours of high-quality DivX HD video on an 8GB media card.

(Source) Press

Need a new HD:Hub from Kinetic? Well then you should take advantage of this one here. It comes with a Core i7 processor, up to four TV tuners, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, a Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card, a Blu-ray/HD DVD combo and Windows Vista in the background. We have no idea when the new Kinetics are coming so we don’t have any prices either.

Pioneer is another victim of the financial crisis. The company has decided to terminate its TV business. TV development and production will be entirely stopped. The DVD business will be kept and Pioneer will join Sharp in order to be able to lay off a few thousand employees in 2009 and close down the Shizuoka plant in Japan and other plants in U.S. and Europe. Will that save Pioneer on the long run? Will it survive the crisis? I guess we won’t see any cool Pioneer products soon, will we?

Marantz has just launched a new Blu-ray player. The BD8002 is going to offer you that “ultimate-quality, reference standard High Definition source component”. Marantz will sell the BD8002 for £1,799. Here’s what it will feature:

• Full HD resolution at 1080p
• 24 frames per second
• Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding
• DVD upscaling
• HDMI 1.3a
• 12-bit/297MHz video chipset
• 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta processor
• SD memory card slot
• Supports VCDs, SVCDs, MP3s, WMA and DivX video files, display JPEG images

In case you like it, remember that it comes with Profile 1.1 only. You might not want to pay that much for it.

via pocket-link

Guess what Sony did this year? Well it’s the first loss in 14 years and it’s a really big one. Sony announced it lost $3 billion last year so the company is looking to do some restructuring to cut their loses. The company plans to close one of its two TV plants in Japan and fire 2,000 people. So who’s going to make all those new big TVs Sony? Other companies?

On the other hand loosing $3 billion in a year is a hard pill to swallow. Anyone should be doing a little restructuring with that kind of a loss.

via Press

Have you decided to buy a Blu-ray player yet. Hopefully I caught you right in time to show you the Memorex MVBD-2520 which is a new Blu-ray player. And it’s also a simple Blu-ray player therefore a cheap and very accessible one. It costs just $200, a price which will suit most budgets. The player is Profile 2.0 compatible and it comes with onboard Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD High Resolution decoding. It also offers USB connectivity and there’s an SD card reader if you need one. Unfortunately you won’t be able to get one just yet. You will have to wait until early summer.

That’s right people. Someone managed to create a disc that’s both a Blu-ray and a DVD, depending on what you need it to be. Japanese Infinity Storage Media is the company that has revealed the hybrid disc.

How does it work? Well it has a single-layer of Blu-ray which will get you 25GB of storage and a dual-layer DVD which will get you 8.5GB of space. The company will also release a future version that will contain a dual layer Blu-ray disc and a single layer DVD for a total available space of 54.7GB.

The first title to be released on a hybrid is Code Blue, a TV series. It will arrive on 4 hybrid discs and it will be priced at $400 for 534 minutes of content. If you want the series on DVD only you will have to pay $260 for 7 DVDs. Those opting for the hybrid version will watch the series on a DVD player or on a Blu-ray player, depending what they choose.

via Infinity