Lets continue on with more HD loving tonight. After all, the Super Bowl is just around the corner :). Home Theater Blog has a press release/detail blurb about the upcoming BenQ W10000 1080p projector. You can expect this feature rich projector to sell around $6000 or $7000. However, don't be fooled by the 1080p label, it appears this simply means it will upconvert to this resolution rather then accept 1080p signals. I would guess this is the reason why this projector is coming in a few thousand lower then the other brands.

From the article:

The W10000 features:
• 0.8” 1080p DarkChip3 DMD by Texas Instruments
• Native 16:9 1080p resolution (1920x1080)
• 10,000:1 Contrast Ratio
• 1100 ANSI lumens (High Brightness Mode)
• HDMI, S-Video and Component inputs
• Powered Lens Shift
• Powered Focus
• Powered Zoom
• Faroudja DCDi processing
• 8-segment Color Wheel
• Electronic IRIS control

UK Sky subscribers will be very to know that Santa is bringing them boatloads of HD delight this holiday season. You can expect great movies like X Men: The Last Stand, The Da Vinci Code, Narnia, and the ENTIRE six episodes of Star Wars.

From the article:

A further eight live Barclays Premiership games are live in HD on PREMPLUS. The Sky-owned Artsworld HD will show the history of the Ballet Russes dance company on Christmas Day and the Rossini’s The Barber of Seville on 29 December. Other HD channel highlights include: Eye of the Leopard made by husband and wife filmmakers Derek and Beverly Joubert (on National Geographic HD) and Lost Worlds Rameses’ Egyptian Empire on Christmas Eve and a two hour special Houdini: Unlocking The Mystery (both on The History Channel HD).

Chris Lanier has ventured beyond the PVR world and into the Home Automation end of things. He takes you a few of the options that are available and a quick overview of the advantages and disadvantages of each. In the end, he went with an INSTEON setup combined with the MCE software mcontrol.

From the article:

Next, you will want to pick up some switches or dimmers.  One of the cheapest ways to get started with INSTEON is to either purchase the Plug-In Dimmer INSTEON Starter Kit for $99 or Dimmer Switch INSTEON Starter Kit for $129 (includes v2 SwitchLinc’s, not ICON’s).  Both of these Starter Kits include two Signal Enhancers I talked about above (SignaLinc RF’s) and also include either two v2 SwitchLinc’s Dimmers or two plug-in dimmers.  They also include a Tabletop Controller which you don’t have to use since your Media Center PC w/ mControl will be the center of control.  It’s cheaper to buy a Starter Kit in most cases, so get one even if you don’t need to Tabletop Controller.

I had the opportunity to do a few HA/MCE reviews while at HTPCnews but could never get the time. You can guarantee I will be doing something like this with missingremote.com. That is, as soon as I figure out my Media Center setup. 

Nothing like a little How To action to brighten up your weekend. PVRWire has a few tips to help you get the most out of your TiVo. One way for me to get more out of your TiVo experience is if I could stop typing the captial V in the middle of the name. He even has a few suggestions on how to TiVo can improve their product line. By far the best, QWERTY keyboard flip out in the remote. I have wanted this for years!!

From the article:

Because with services like Verizon's FiOS TV poised to gobble up this market, TiVo needs to better position themselves to duplicate the service without requiring too big a dip into consumer's wallets (i.e. multiple subscriptions and multiple TiVos).

I'm telling you now, this is a killer application and every hardware PVR solution will be doing it in some capacity in the coming years.

How about a secondary hard drive less TiVo box - call it TiVo Lite - whose sole function is to play back and schedule content from a main TiVo hub in another room. It could be made out of Playdoh for all I care as long as it costs considerably less and works.

In around a month, Universal Studios will be releasing the first film to HD DVD that was shot in HD instead of being converted from film to HD. As the article says, the resolution of film is beyond what current HDTV can even resolve so there maybe no clear advantage to either format. I will be interested to see a review and see how the colors, sharpness and clarity look. My guess is that picture will look sharper and clearer but lose the natural colors that film offers. A bit too much starch so to speak.

From the article:

However, films shot before the digital age had resolutions of around 5000 x 5000 pixels, significantly higher than any HDTV is actually capable of displaying. So, even though the movie was filmed with the latest digital equipment, in terms of resolution, there may be no clear advantage in the final display.

Universal was not immediately available for comment to clarify the technical specifications of the Miami Vice HD DVD release.

Another feather in the hat for IPTV viewers, Akimbo will now be hosting Digital Trend videos for Akimbo subscribers. Does anyone subscribe to exclusive internet TV? Not IPTV for your Teleco, but true TV from the 'net like Akimbo. I don't think the selection is quite there yet, but it certainly is fun to browse through Google Videos on my HTPC.

From the article:

For $9.99 a month, Akimbo offers its subscribers on-demand access to more than 13,000 videos, including a mainstream movies, TV programs, and series, as well as niche programming and videos spanning roughly 100 categories. Akimbo is currently available via the RCA Akimbo set-top box (which retails for about $200)—but that's not the only way to go. Folks with Windows Media Center 2005 PCs can find Akimbo in the Online Spotlight area, and folks with AT&T's Homezone service will soon be able to access Akimbo content.

Ok, so not exactly the look of a Series 3, but you can at least show off with the Series 3 remote which does look mighty snazzy. At $50 though, it's definitely cutting close to Logitech's sexy universal offerings, just won't say TIVO on it :-)

TiVo’s remote control designer points out enhancements versus the standard Series2 model:

Read the rest here.