Frances Cripps died yesterday, May 8th 2008, at high-noon in Corvallis, Oregon. She was 93 years old. She had suffered a long illness.

Why is this news in HDTV Magazine, you should rightly ask? Frances was one of many unsung heroes who played key roles in furthering HDTV. Always far-seeing and an engineer by nature, she...

In case you hadn't heard, the HD format war is over. The Blu-ray camp struck a huge win just before CES when Warner Brothers announced they would be moving exclusively to Blu-ray by mid year, tipping the scales majorly in Blu-ray's favor. Then, in February 2008, Toshiba announced it would discontinue the development, manufacturing and marketing of HD DVD, officially ending the format war. They did, however, confirm that they would honor the warranty of all HD DVD players.

The Toshiba HD DVD players featured in this review were the latest (and as it turns out, last) generation to be released. While it may seem an empty effort to review them now since HD DVD has removed itself from the race, these third generation players from Toshiba have a performance response at crazy low prices to be reckoned with and deserve the full story.

It's just a switcher; there is nothing to set up so installation is a newbie breeze. The power supply wall wart is offset to the side to avoid taking up two outlets. That seems like a great feature but that will depend on the orientation of your outlets. Oddly enough for me my outlets and strips made that the most difficult part of this installation. It supports hot plug and play and auto switching as evidenced when I hooked it up. I simply inserted the HM-31 in between a Toshiba HD-A35 HD DVD player and a Denon AVR-3808Ci receiver while in the midst of a movie. I looked up at the screen and within a few moments there was Phantom of the Opera in 1080p24 with sound. A quick look at the receiver confirmed my bitstream DTS True HD was still engaged. From there I connected...

Over the past two years, we have seen a number of video download services hit the market from major players like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Netflix. There have also been some new companies entering this category, such as XStreamHD and VUDU. Some are available only via a software client, meaning a PC (or Mac) would be required to enjoy them, while others work with dedicated hardware connected to your TV. They vary in quality, selection, delivery methods and cost and this article will hit the highlights of what each of the major players are offering their would-be customers in this burgeoning market.

Let's set the stage. This article covers products and services that provide movie downloads via the internet. Specifically...

I guess it's a sign of the times. With TV shows like "Survivor" and "The Bachelor" espousing the virtues of deceitful behavior and getting big ratings, why should I be surprised that specifications from A/V manufacturers occasionally stretch the truth. I'm not, and they do......and they continue to on an ever more frequent basis. Still, one has to draw the line somewhere.

When they sold us "1080p" sets that wouldn't...

Much has been written about wireless component connectivity. The most recent publicity surrounds the "WirelessHD" initiative - an incipient standard for wirelessly interconnecting signal processing components to an HDTV display. This is a great concept except one big cord remains - the power cord.

Wireless power has been a much sought-after technology since Nikola Tesla first demonstrated the possibilities in the early 1900's. Inductive battery recharging technologies have recently been aggressively explored for cordless cell phone applications, but have not been seriously commercialized. However, a recent exciting innovation being developed by...

Well the folks at OPPO Digital are at it again. This time they have released a new high end Up-Converting DVD player. The DV-983H is the new gold standard in up-converting DVD players. It incorporates Video Reference Series processing (VRS by) Anchor Bay. This is the same technology used in video processors costing $3000 or more.

So you want to buy a brand new HDTV, A/V Receiver, Blu Ray player and some of you have an old VCR that you want to incorporate into your home theater experience. There is something that you probably didn't even think about, much less budget for, and that's how you are going to tie it all together. This is the job of the cable. There are many kinds of cables out there all with different uses. Today's column will discuss the various kinds of AV cables on the market and what they are used for.

Before we get started, we want to talk a bit about cost...