With HD DVD and Blu-ray players costing upwards of $1000 a pop – assuming you can even find one – what’s a home theater aficionado in search of the highest quality video to do?

In a move so un-Microsoft-like that it may trigger identity verification tests throughout the company’s executive ranks, the Redmond, Wash.-based company has delivered a quick, easy and cost-effective way to add HD DVD playback to any home entertainment setup. (more…)

In this final installment of The Geek Beat’s series on Everything HD, we learn that while size matters when picking the best HD display, more often than not, he who lives with the most pixels wins.

So, you’ve got your HD disc player, your high definition cable or satellite service or your ATSC antenna ready to go. Now comes the fun part: picking a screen to see it all on. (more…)

This has been a big year for HD. The first generation of HD DVD players have arrived (with Blu-ray fast on its heels), more channels are offering HD content than ever before and televisions capable of displaying all that content at its eye-searing maximum resolution are finally available.

While HDTV displays have typically only supported images up to 1366 x 768 pixels (sometimes referred to as 720p or 1080i), new sets, like Sony’s recently-released 40-inch KDL-40V2500 Bravia LCD, can go up to 1920 x 1080 pixels (also known as 1080p), the HDTV standard’s maximum resolution. At The Geek Beat we refer to this resolution as “True HD,” because this is how the HDTV standard was meant to be viewed. (more…)

TV capture cards are brilliant. Just slap a card in your PC, hook up an antenna or cable and you’ve got television programming playing on your PC. You can even buy cards that display HDTV if you like. Yep, no doubt about it. The hardware engineers who make these cards are pretty darned brilliant.Which makes you wonder way they choose to work with such total nobs when it comes to software. Someone’s got to say it – the video capture software that comes bundled with capture cards is dreck. No, really. Total, complete, garbage. Which is why it’s so important that there’s an application out there like Beyond TV from SnapStream Media. (more…)

HD – not since compassionate conservatism has a term so overused been so little understood. HD, or High Definition, is the Holy Grail of home entertainment. We all want it, although most of us couldn’t define it beyond “It makes the picture look really sharp.” And so we’re ill-prepared for the onslaught of terminology, claims and battling standards that await us in those neon blue temples of technology. (more…)