Fear not, HD DVD owners.  Showing a surprising bit of corporate kindness (and no doubt knowing you'll use the card on a new Blu-Ray player), Best Buy has announced that if you bought your system before February 23, 2008, you're should expect a $50 gift card to arrive to your doorstep sometime before May 1.  The best part of this whole arrangement is that, not only will you get the gift card, you won't have to do anything to get it!  Using their computer records, website information, warranty cards, and all that stuff, they'll automatically reimburse the appropriate folks (and if they don't, just call 1-888-BEST-BUY).

After you get your gift card, if you really want to get rid of your HD DVD player, there's even a trade-in depot Best Buy has set up to swap out your losing player and the movies you bought for it for store credit!  They'll even take in more stuff not HD DVD players, if you're so inclined.  I had no idea it actually existed, but it looks pretty good. 

You'd probably do better selling most of the stuff on eBay, but for a dead format player?  Anything is good.  If you're not going to keep it around to play your normal DVDs in HD quality, then you might want to consider cashing in.   

Well, one of the things I expected as a result of Toshiba throwing in the HD DVD towel is that Blu-ray player prices would rise, and guess what?  Blu-ray player prices are on the rise again as lack of competition either A) fuels demand or B) the various production companies can stop slashing prices to spur unit sales.  Either way, prices are up for the winning format.

Still, if you're looking for an upconverting DVD player, Toshiba's A3 HD DVD player is now below $80 on Amazon, and HD DVDs are dirt cheap too.  High definiton is high definition, and you probably can't find a cheaper upconverting DVD player than the A3, and I know you can't find a cheaper copy of Planet Earth, Blade Runner's 5-disc boxed set, or the complete Matrix Trilogy.  These prices are cheaper than comparable DVDs! 

Bargains abound, ladies and gentleman.  You'd be crazy not to take advantage of the fire sale.  Dead format or not, the player's going to work for quite some time on its own.  If you can save $10 or more on a high definition versus standard definition movie, and you have a HD TV, this is a great deal.   

No, Hulu isn't a Hawaiian dance.  Hulu is the new product from NBC, Fox, Warner Brothers Television, Lionsgate, and several major sports organizations (NCAA, NHL, and the NBA) that seeks to make money off of television programs rebroadcast on the Internet.  NBC's done this on a limited basis with shows like The Office, and Fox has done it with shows like Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but this is the first serious, corporate-backed challenge to YouTube's online TV distribution stranglehold, and it comes out of beta testing tomorrow.

I just... is there that much of a demand for watching TV shows online?  I mean, I do it all the time (I watch more TV online or recorded on my computer via the magic of Windows Media Center than I do on that glowing box that sits across the room from me, but will the end user be clamoring for a little Hulu action?  I think that, given the limitations on the service as detailed in this article, it's going to turn a lot of people off who aren't American.  Then again, I can't get the BBC's Internet video service because I'm not British, and I love me some Dr. Who, so everyone's always got something to complain about. 

Do you think you guys will make use of Hulu, or will it still remain second place to Youtube and other streaming video services?  I don't know how much of a splash it will make, unless of course the existing 'watch TV on our website' shows suddenly redirect you to Hulu for your watching.  Then it'd get plenty of eyeballs.  But, if I want to watch Sarah Connor or The Office, I'll probably still head over to their respective official websites.

Well, despite my best efforts to sway everyone away from Blu-ray to HD DVD, Sony’s big money has seemingly won the day.  Netflix, which rented both HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs since the competing formats came on the market, has announced that as of now they’d no longer support the HD DVD format.  That’s right, the only high definition DVD content you can get from Netflix now is Blu-ray.  Sigh. 

I have to think that the major reason for this, besides the rumored heavy bribes Sony paid for exclusivity, is the install base of the PlayStation 3 and the lack of integrated HD DVD player in the Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii.  Even though I don’t know anyone who watches Blu-ray discs on their PS3 (or at all), the fact that Sony can point to their millions of consoles sold and say, “Here’s your install base, just waiting to pay too much money for movies they already own!” has to have swayed the market.

H/T:  Engadget

Here’s a little bit of great news for movie nerds like myself, who’ve been looking all over for that one last existing copy of “The Gong Show Movie” or “White Line Fever.”  Sony and HP are finally making some good use of the massive capabilities of a computer manufacturing company and one of the world’s largest movie catalogues by enabling, finally, on-demand DVD burning and purchase!

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has become the first major studio to license niche and older DVD titles for production and distribution through HP's year-old DVD manufactured-on-demand service, the two companies said on Thursday.

The MOD service allows Sony to offer a wider choice of catalog titles to consumers because HP can press and ship single discs as they are ordered through affiliated Web sites.

Sony has not released some of the content—including classic television shows, foreign and independent movies, specialty programming such as religious or food shows, and local sporting events—because of the cost of maintaining inventory and the difficulties of gauging demand, said David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

"We know there is strong consumer demand for these titles, and by working with HP we can monetize our deep product library and help give retailers the means to bring a wider offering of Sony Pictures products to consumers without a significant investment in inventory," Bishop said in a statement. 

As a serious movie buff, a lot of my favorite movies haven’t been put out on DVD, or were only released for one pressing and then disappeared off the face of the earth before I even knew they were released, let alone before I had the chance to buy them.  It’ll be nice to finally have the shot to be able to own, say, a pressing of the 1986 Fred Dekker classic “Night of the Creeps” or an 18-DVD collection of The Best of The Maury Show:  World’s Fattest Babies for my very own.

In the never-ending war on piracy, the MPAA, RIAA, and other industry lobbying arms have done some pretty heinous things, so lying about numbers... excuse me, incorrectly deducing statistics that just so happened to force colleges and universities into adopting industry-supported anti-piracy measures... is the least of the things they've done.  I'd rather the MPAA spread propaganda rather than illegal rootkits like Sony included on CDs, simply because propaganda is more effective and less damaging in a monetary sense.

But just how off were the numbers?  From the IMDB: 

The Motion Picture Association of America has acknowledged that a study that it commissioned in 2005 -- that concluded that widespread illegal downloading of movies on college campuses was responsible for billions of dollars in losses -- was wrong. The study had claimed that students with access to high-speed Internet connections in college dorms were to blame for 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses from online pirating. However, on Tuesday, the MPAA admitted that it got the figure wrong because of "human error" and that it was more like 15 percent. But Mark Luker, vice president of Educause, told the Associated Press Tuesday that the study did not take into account the fact that 80 percent of college students live off campus. He figured that campus networks may be responsible for only 3 percent of illegal downloads. The industry's earlier figure, he maintained, was intended to show that if college campuses got tough on the issue of illegal downloads, "it would make a tremendous difference in the business of the motion picture industry." He said that the new figures show that campus action would "have only a small impact." For its part, the MPAA said Tuesday, "We take this error very seriously and have taken strong and immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report."

Fool me once, shame on you, MPAA.  Excuse me if I don't buy any of your anti-piracy arguments ever again.  As we all know, statistics are the third type of lies, and I've always been more than a little suspicious that piracy is always blamed for flagging sales, rather than industry bloat, a constant rehashing of older/better films, lousy conditions in theaters, and the economy. 

DVD sales certainly haven't slowed down, and people have been bootlegging movies for 30 years.  At least with a fake DVD you don't have to watch annoying anti-piracy adverts, and you can be sure it'll play on whatever DVD player you have.

My husband is a big Star Trek fan and I am so not one. If he wanted to build a home theater in our home in the theme of Star Trek, I would have a fit. That is until I saw the one that he emailed me from /Film today.....

"Someone thought it would be a good idea to model their home theater after the Enterprise NCC-1701D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The result is super geeky, but actually rather cool. Named the best theme theater installation at CEDIA 2007, this Palm Beach County, FL home features motion-activated air-lock doors with series sound effects, and a “Red Alert” button on the Crestron TPMC-10 controller to turn all of the LEDs bright red and flashing. The system also features “one of the largest Kaleidescape hard-drive based storage systems” ever created, amassing eight servers with 3,816 DVDs. Check out more photos after the jump."

Make sure to go on over to /Film at check out all of the pictures.

There are so many good ideas for home theaters that you would never think of. I know that one modeled after Star Trek would not have been my first choice, but I think that this one is really cool.

Do you have a home theater in your home? If so, we would like to see it. Tell us a little bit about it and send pictures to my email at kathylynn@shakadoo.com and we will feature it on Shaktronics.

Create You Squidoo Lens On A Shak Subject And You Could Be Featured On Shakadoo! Once you have built your lens, submit it to the group HERE.

Tips on Choosing a Flat Screen TV by thefluffanutta

Flatpanel TV Screens

Having a flat screen television is the ultimate gadget to have in your living room. You get a large picture, but it doesn't take up a whole lot of room. You can even hang it on the wall.

For any home cinema fanatic, having a large flat screen for watching movies on can only increase the enjoyment of the experience.

To learn everything you ever wanted to know about pumpkins, visit the entire lens by clicking: Tips on Choosing a Flat Screen TV

Found via Ozymandias, Evil Avatar has the goods on a sweet deal for those of you with/wanting to buy an Xbox 360 or an Xbox 360 HD DVD Player. It’s actually tempting enough to make me part with money, so you know it’s a good deal!

As most of you already know Best Buy had an awesome promotion this week. With the purchase of a Xbox 360 HD DVD drive you would also recieve Heroes Season 1 for free (a $99 value!). Yes, great deal, but was that not enough for you?

In this same ad there was another HD DVD deal which allowed you to pick two free HD DVD movies with the purchase of any HD DVD player. Originally Best Buy intended this deal to only apply to Toshiba set top boxes, but due to poor word choice they have chosen to honor the promotion for the Xbox 360 HD DVD player due to being overwhelmed with complaints.

Now with the purchase of the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player you receive:

• King Kong (packed in with the      drive itself)
• Heroes Season 1
• 2 Free HD DVDs of your choice      priced $34.99 or below
• 5 Additional free HD DVDs      (via mail in rebate)

That is 9 Free HD DVDs with the purchase of the drive. If you've already purchased the drive just take in your receipt to receive the two additional free movies.

Thank goodness for poor proofreading, huh?

My desk is a mess, and I'm sick and tired of all the cords! Everything on my desk plugs into something else, or multiple somethings else.  My monitor has two cords.  My keyboard and mouse? Cords.  My external hard drive?  Cords.  Printer/scanner?  Cords.  TV tuner and remote control sensor?  Cords.  My telephone?  Two cords. Cable modem and router?  Cords aplenty.

The only good thing about having all those cords around is if I ever need to lasso a runaway steer, I can just use some of my many power cables.  Other than that, all my many electronic umbilici do is get tangled up, make it impossible to move anything around, ensnare those trying to walk by, and collect a ton of dust because I can't get around to the back of the desk where they are to properly clean.  I, for one, am tired of living in a tangled-up pit of allergens, so I'm going to ask you, the readers of Shaktronics, to do me a favor.

Buy me a couple of CordHogs.

It's either that or I might make a noose out of my thousands of feet of extraneous wires and hang myself if I can't get organized.  I'm quite possibly the least anal retentive person on the planet, and even I'm going mad because when I slide my feet under my desk I feel like I'm stepping on a gaggle of octopi fighting over a pot of spaghetti, and I'm tired of accidentally unplugging things with my big dumb clodhoppers.

Image Credit:  Create Digital Motion

So you’ve found yourself a special lady and you want to get your romance on. Good for you! That’s why I’m here; not only am I an expert on electronics and zombie movies, I’m also a personal trainer at The Lovenasium, and I’m going to help you get that 25-35 year old woman of your dreams to fall in love with you.

I know you could do things the old-fashioned way, and woo your lady fair with the traditional methods: dinner, movies, your personal charm, good looks, roofies. Those all work, but they also take time, and require you to have, you know… good looks, charm, and money. If you had that stuff, you wouldn’t need my advice picking up women.

So we’re going to cheat. Just you and me, a little technology, and some inspiration from your friend and mine, Lloyd Dobler. Grab yourself a Hits of the 80’s collection (all the best music of the 80’s in one fabulous collection!), ‘cause you’re going to need it.

Your first step is to rip your Hits of the 80’s collection to your hard drive using iTunes, Windows Media, or the ripping software of your choice. Then you have a choice, and the way you go depends on just how authentic you want your “Say Anything” romance festival to be.  You could always just upload the tunes to your iPod, stick your iPod in an iPod boombox, like Harman Kardon's Go and Play, and go stand in her yard blasting Peter Gabriel.

But that’s cheating, and I want you to do this right. But who in the hell owns a tape deck anymore? You can’t use a mix CD, because if you hold that over your head, it’ll probably skip. Plus CDs are lame and emo, and nobody wants to be emo.

That’s where Ion Audio’s TAPE2PC USB tape deck comes in. It works with both metal and CrO2 tapes (if you can find tape at your local store). It’s expected to retail for £100 (or $204) and should be available in time for the holiday shopping frenzy. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.

You plug that bad boy into a computer, stick a tape in, and make your very own mix of just the right amount of The Cure, Depeche Mode, and Bananarama to win Ione Skye’s heart but good.

I am the proud owner of a plasma screen TV.  Well, actually this is really my husband's toy but we all use it.  Anyway, we were so excited to have the high definition, flat screen and thin body that we decided to hang it above the fireplace.  It looks beautiful.  The only problem is, where do I put the cable box, the DVD player, video player, and Tivo?

Dave, our home theater technician, designed a way for all the wires and cable to somehow come out of the wall on the side of the fireplace so all my devices can be set up on a separate shelving system. But if I had only known about Evo's Wall Panel System, things might not have gotten so complicated.

The Vantage Point Frame and Panel system is a complete solution for mounting flat panel televisions and electronics making all wires and cables virtually unseen. This multiple frame and real wood veneer allows for customization to match your decor as well as shelving for other components.

The bloggers at Luxurious Housing Trends, really like the idea of a flat panel television against the wood veneer panels, "it looks pretty darn good". The shelves just increase the use of space and keep extra equipment off the floor.