Blu-ray, DVD, HDTV, Video info and more at WesleyTech.com

Vudu cuts player prices

Vudu is maneuvering to take over in 2009. Along with expanding their movie collection, they’ve now cut their player price a whole 50%!

On February 10, Vudu announced their set-top player will sell for $149, down from $299. The company cited market forces for the price move. With more and more set-top options you can see why. Blockbuster’s box sells for $99 and comes with $99 in free rentals (essentially a free box).



Vudu also says more consumers are aware of digital delivery now, increasing the market allowing supply and demand to bring the prices down.

The Vudu player has a critically-praised menu system and unique remote control, and the large library of titles in high-definition may induce consumers to Vudu over the competing boxed. Vudu is the only brand to offer 1080p/24fps video streaming. Vudu also allows standard-definition videos to be purchased and stored on your box while other competing boxes only offer rentals.

YouTube on TV via PS3

YouTube recently announced that they have launched a TV optimized version of their site at YouTube.com/tv. The Sony PS3 system also received a firmware upgrade recently that included Flash support for their internet browser application. Sounds like a match made in heaven, no? (YouTube uses Flash for their video player)

As soon as we heard about the TV optimized YouTube site, we decided to take it for a test drive. Our initial impressions were good. It is pretty cool being able to watch YouTube clips from the comfort of your own couch.

We put together a video of the process, showing you exactly how to access the YouTube TV site from a PS3. Enjoy!

This video was filmed with a Flip Mino HD video camera and edited with Pinnacle Studio 12 on Windows XP. The TV is a 42″ Panasonic TH-42PX60U plasma.

Xbox owners approve of Netflix streaming

Netflix is sitting pretty these days. Microsoft has announced one million Xbox Live subscribers have streamed Netflix content through their Xbox 360. Over 1.5 billion minutes of video have streamed since Netflix and Microsoft collaborated last November.

Netflix “Watch Now” streaming video is available to all Xbox Live Gold subscribers who also subscribe to Netflix at the $8.99 level (one DVD at a time) and up. Downloading and installing the newest Dashboard is also required.

I hope Netflix provides a streaming-only rental service for those who don’t care to receive discs.

Will Pioneer stop selling plasmas?

There is speculation in the media about Pioneer Electronics withdrawing from the flat panel TV business. There are several factors involved in this speculation.

Market share

Even though Pioneer is universally lauded as the leader in plasma technology, their prices have kept them out of reach for most consumers. Pioneer holds a 6% market share for plasma TV sales. The plasma sales leader is Panasonic with 37%, followed by Samsung at 23% and LG Electronics with 16%.

Plasma sales are also a fraction of the overall flat panel market with LCD leading by a wide margin. Part of this is the fact that LCD comes in sizes from 19″ on up (in sizes most people buy). But a portion of this is also the misconception that LCD is a better technology.

Zero profit

We’re all familiar with the colloquialism “don’t throw good money after bad,” and this is generally true of corporate business. Considering investment takes risk they will go years hoping losses will turn around, sooner or later executives will cut their losses and move on.

Pioneer has lost money on their flat panel business five years running. The electronics firm is projecting a net loss of $850 million for the 2008 fiscal year. Sooner or later they will have to profit or cut and run.

As it stands

Currently Pioneer has cut most flat panel production and is sourcing panels from Panasonic. Only their Elite Signature Series panels are built in-house. They have plans to sell LCD panels sourced from Sharp Electronics, but they are only in the European market at this time.

With the current economy, luxury items are not selling as well as they have in years past. I hope Pioneer lives on because of the high quality they allow electronics consumers, but time will tell. For now it’s all speculation.

Flip Mino Review

Pure Digital Technologies Inc was kind enough to send us a review unit of The Flip Mino video camcorder. To prepare for this review, we put the pocket-sized Flip Mino through its’ paces over the last few months.

Pure Digital has seriously revolutionized the home video camcorder market by creating simple to use, compact digital camcorders that anyone can utilize. Over 1 million Flip camcorders have been sold so far and the number grows monthly.

Before we dig in, let’s see what Pure Digital is claiming that the Mino is capable of. Here are the main Flip Mino features as described by the manufacturer.

Features

* Weight: 3.3 oz.
* One-touch recording with 2x digital zoom
* Touch-sensitive buttons for instant recording, playback, fast forward, rewind, pause and delete
* Built-in software compatible with PC or Mac:
o Instant upload to MySpace, YouTube, and AOL Video
o One-click emailing of videos and video greeting cards
o Custom editing of movie mixes, with the option to set them to your own music
o Capture of still photos from video
o Order DVDs online and have them shipped anywhere in the world
* TV connection for instant viewing (cable included)
* Tripod mount

Inside the box

Next, we take a look at what’s inside the box. The Flip Mino comes delivered in a nice looking box that includes the Mino itself, a lanyard, a carrying bag that doubles as a lens cloth, a quick start guide, a warranty insert and a set of standard yellow/red/white audio/video cables.

Notice that we were also able to get our own custom “WesleyTech.com” image imprinted on the front of the Flip Mino. This is a free feature when you order at TheFlip.com. The entire process is quite painless, you simply upload a photo or an image from your PC to TheFlip website, align the image over an outline of the Flip Mino and then save your creation.

Below are two different photos of the Flip Mino itself, with it’s signature flip out USB plug protruding from the top right of the device.

Video examples

For the videos embedded in this review, we used video recorded at two different locations. The first was indoors, at the Speed Street indoor go kart race track in Glendale, AZ. The second was outdoors, at the North Mountain preserve hiking area in Phoenix. These videos can help you get a glimpse into the audio and video quality of the Flip Mino camcorder.

We uploaded the first video to Vimeo. The voice-over segment at the beginning of the video was not recorded on the Flip Mino, all other conversations were.

The second video was sent to YouTube.

The video on Vimeo looks much better as it is a less compressed form of the original video file and has a better resolution.

Drawing from our experience with the Flip Mino over the last few months, we would like to wrap this up with our list of positives, negatives and some final thoughts.

Positives:

Ultra compact size
Simple to use
Good Audio & Video quality
Integrated USB plug removes the need for cables
Tripod compatible
Lens cloth bag included
Simple editing & upload Software included
User customized graphics

Negatives:

No optical zoom
No image stabilization
No card slot for expanded storage
No wide-screen recording (see the Flip Mino HD for that feature)

Final thoughts:

All in all, we simply love the portability, ease of use and quality of the Flip Mino camcorders. They are compact, easy to use and can be added as a supplement to an existing arsenal of camcorders or used as a primary video camera for the casual user. We would not hesitate recommending a Flip video camera to anyone, especially to those who are looking for a camcorder to use for creating videos for the web.

The Flip Mino can be purchased for $159 at Amazon or straight from the manufacturer at TheFlip.com.

Videos were edited using Pinnacle Studio 12 software on Windows XP.

Hulu Super Bowl ad

This was one of my favorite ads during the Super Bowl (I love Alec Baldwin). I also use Hulu for most of my video watching every day. Check it out.

Lite-On DH-401 BD-ROM drive & Memorex BD-R media

I recently received a few products from various companies and I wanted to give them some shout outs. Lite-On sent us their DH-401 BD-ROM drive, which is an internal SATA drive that supports Blu-ray Disc reading at up to 4X speed.

We will be posting a review on the BD-ROM drive as well as using it for creating additional articles, tutorials and other items related to Blu-ray reading and ripping.

Memorex sent us some 25 piece spindles of their BD-R and BD-RE, some DVD+R DL discs and some of their other media. The BD-R media is rated up to 4X, while the BD-RE media is rated at up to 2X (Blu-ray speeds). These discs will be used in some upcoming Blu-ray burning articles that we have planned for the future.

Thank you to both companies for supplying us with these products.