While I wish that they would do more to officially embrace a position in orchestrating the home theater it is still interesting to see how AVR OEMs evolve their products. At least from Onkyo it appears to be the year of integrated Wi-Fi & Bluetooth - which is a nice get. I'm not that interested in their custom integrator (CI) targeted Integra line personally because I don't need the CI features (or the associated price tag), but it is a great signal of where the consumer line will end up so well worth some attention.

Full PR after the click.

Panasonic's ST line of plasma display panels (PDP) usually win the cost/benefit valuation for HDTVs, but it looks like this year they also topped last year's best display. This is great news not just for 2013 ST buyers, but also hints at the good-things-to-come from the VT & ZT models.

Panasonic’s ST60 models fall smack in the middle of their 2013 plasma line. Below it are entry level models and above it, the VT60 and ZT60 lines with a new drive system and every Smart feature Panasonic offers. The ST60 series is packed with the latest Smart apps, streaming services, Skype video (with accessory camera sold separately) a new GUI “home screen”, 3D and oh, the best overall image of any HDTV we’ve ever reviewed.

HD Guru

OK, they didn't really kill any puppies (that I know of), but it certianly feels that way because they won't be building better plasma display panels than the 2013 crop. It's unclear what this means exactly - hopefully we'll still be able to buy them until OLED's production issues are sorted.

Update:

According to the HDGuru (who asked Panasonic), they aren't stopping PDP research. I'm confused.

 The bad news? While Panasonic's plasma manufacturing will continue, The Verge reports VP Kiyoshi Okamoto confirmed at the event that development has ceased on its plasma models, although some engineers have been shifted to work on OLED displays. We'll see if its recovery efforts and technological developments lead to new large-size OLEDs anytime soon, but for now it appears we're seeing the last of its efforts to push plasma technology forward.

Engadget

Today Intel announced at the North American Broadcasters show that they will be releasing a version of the Media SDK (MSDK) for Linux. For those who don't know, the MSDK is the software layer that enables Quick Sync (QS) hardware accelerated video decoding and encoding. Given the location of the announcement Intel is probably targeting MSOs to use this technology in their rendering servers, but it also has potential for applications in STB as well. All that said, I'm much more interested in how it will play in the Linux media server market for applications like XBMC + Plex. The implementation is not limited (like is is on pre-Windows 8) to display device enumeration so it will work headless, and coolest of all should be API compatible with the current Windows SDK - so porting existing apps will be straightforward.

The limited beta starts soon, so if you're interested in having a go make sure to sign up ASAP. I will be :).

Intel announced last March that they were working on developing a "virtual cable provider", offering subscription TV services over broadband to Intel-powered set top boxes. Now, Bloomberg is reporting that Intel is finally close to securing deals with a number of major content providers to help launch the service. Intel's proposed service would roll up live TV offerings, online DVR funtionality, and on-demand content in a manner in which traditional cable and satellite subscription services could never match. It's not impossible to imagine that content providers might see such a service as an antidote to growing discontent with rising subscription TV rates, but it's also difficult to imagine networks such as CNN and NBC that are owned by companies that also own cable service providers rushing toward an Intel backed a la carte future.

Intel is betting it can create a more flexible service, delivered through consumers’ broadband accounts, that gives subscribers more choices over the channels they receive and offers an easier-to-use electronic programming guide, Huggers said. The service would offer live channels and on-demand programming.

Bloomberg

It seems like just yesterday that the OpenElec team announced that they were hard at work on OpenELEC 3.0 and were ready for people to begin beta testing. The final release of OpenELEC 3.0 is now available. OpenELEC 3.0 is based on the ambitious "Frodo" release of XBMC and actually ships with the recently released 12.1 version of XBMC which rolled in a number of improvements and bug fixes submitted by the OpenELEC team, particualrly for XBMC's new AudioEngine. With version 3.0, OpenELEC becomes the first XBMC distro with full XVBA support for AMD GPUs and with dedicated builds for Intel, Nvidia ION, AMD Fusion, Raspeberry Pi, Apple TV, Xtreamer, and the Arctic MC001 that the OpenELEC team recently partnered on, OpenELEC 3.0 is the most versatile release of the XBMC distro to date. Unfortuantley, for some of us, the release of OpenELEC 3.0 will also be somewhat bittersweet as the team has announced that this will be the penultimate release for 32-bit ION and Intel systems. My first generation ION nettop gained a new lease on life with OpenELEC, but its days may finally be numbered.

The OpenELEC team is proud to release OpenELEC 3.0.0

OpenELEC 3.0 is built to support XBMC Frodo 12.1 and almost every part of the core OS has been updated and improved since the 2.0 release. The project now supports a broader range of mediacentre hardware than ever before, including dedicated OS images for the budget friendly Arctic MC001 and ultra-low-cost Raspberry Pi systems.

OpenELEC