Today, at the Electronic House Expo (EHX) Fall 2006 trade show, Embedded Automation announced its upcoming release of mControl v2 (Home Edition) for Windows Vista. mControl is software for controlling the “digital home” and supports leading home management technologies like Z-Wave and INSTEON. The new release will be previewed within the Windows Media Center Pavilion at EHX (Booth #1317F).

In addition to providing the full functionality found in mControl v1 (Home Edition), mControl v2 (Home Edition) provides a new user interface option which leverages the high-fidelity graphics capabilities of Microsoft Vista’s Media Center. As before, mControl users will also be able to utilize Internet browsers like Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox to monitor and manage their systems outside the Media Center environment. 

Read the rest here. 

Some pretty cool pricing comparisons if you're curious as to why those companies are trying to take so much of your hard earned cash for those gorgeous displays.

The material costs for a 1080p 52-inch DLP (digital light processing) rear-projection TV (RPTV) are about US$807.52, nearly half of that from a 1080p 52-inch LCD TV and a PDP (plasma display panel) TV, according to DisplaySearch. 

Read the rest here. 

Boy, the Blu Ray & HD-DVD guys sure do try to shoot themselves in the foot as much as possible now don't they? This time in the UK, with some not-so-cheerful news.

 Toshiba’s launch of HD DVD in the UK has been delayed. Its entry-level HD-E1 model is now not expected to ship until mid December, a month later than originally planned. The more expensive HD-XE1, with HDMI v1.3, will not appear until January at the earliest.

Read the rest here. 

I will follow this article with a bit more about wireless the wireless HDMI specification sometime tomorrow (check the comments). In the mean time, check out CE Pro's coverage of one of the first multi-cast wireless (and wired) HD distribution system from Avocent. You stream content to 8 devices if need be and it supports 72p/1080i, music and control data.

From the article:

Some good news for you TiVo owners, as they're making some changes to their software which will allow you to view non-copyrighted video on your TiVos, as well as make it easy to share video you make with other TiVo users. Shame that movies you download still won't be able to be streamed, but this is another step for TiVo directly competing with Media Centers.

TiVo's new broadband offering, however, will work only with downloaded videos that are not copy-protected, such as most user-generated clips and many video podcasts. Feature films and videos purchased from online stores like Movielink or Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes will not be supported, though company officials said they are seeking to offer such protected content in the future.

Read the rest here.

Continuing on with our display device coverage is ultimate AV's review of JVC's HD-61FN97 HD-ILA 1080p. This years model is finally able to accept 1080p sources in its HDMI inputs. The whole 1080p fiasco of the last couple of years seems to becoming to a halt, thank goodness. You can expect all your goodies and connections that are present in other quality TVs plus the added bonus of IEEE 1394.

From the article:

A smooth, detailed, noise-free picture was one of the best attributes of last year's JVC 1080p RPTVs. Some of this was undoubtedly due to the 5th generation GENESSA picture processing, which is retained. Also retained are five-point color management and four noise reduction circuits. You'll also still find the V1 Smart Input, which could be incredibly useful if your surround receiver does your video switching and outputs S-video and Component video separately. This set will detect which input is hot and switch between them automatically.

Given the media capabilities of the PS3 and the fun factor of the Wii, I should at least spend a little time posting news about whats going on in the console wars. Ignoring the over hype and nonsense of late, Sci-fi gets some hands on action with the Wii and PS3. Whats the verdict? Same ole same ole... PS3 is great but expensive.. Wii is fun but doesn't have a lot of the extras the other two have.

From the article:

The boys at Sony had said this round of the console war wasn't going to start until they said so. Well, they've spoken. They've come out with a powerful but very expensive console. And they're facing shortages at retail. That could give the holiday season to Microsoft, but time will tell whether Sony has played their best cards too early.

Last week the HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 arrived, and the system's big holiday game, Gears of War, has also made its debut. This one-two punch seems to have taken a bit of steam out of the Sony juggernaut. But we won't rule out Nintendo. Every time it looks like Mario has met his match, he manages to come back one more time!