We've heard for some time that Samsung planned to have two Blu-ray players in its lineup, but it's been well over a year since there's even been a peep about the BD-P2400, now out of nowhere the BD-P2550 shows up at Best Buy stores all over the country for the premium price of $499. According to Best Buy's website, the new model has many of the missing features from Sammy's latest BD-P1500, like 7.1 analog outputs and the sought after Silicon Optix HQV video processing. What does appear to be missing though, is the elusive BD-Live, but with the included network connection and USB port, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine that either Best Buy failed to mention it, or it's coming in a firmware update. Although $500 Blu-ray players aren't for everyone, it's good to see Blu-ray manufacturers offering multiple models for those in need of premium features.

[Via Format War Central]

We had a feeling that August was going to be a rough month for Blu-ray, but we had no idea the Nielsen VideoScan numbers courtesy of Home Media Magazine would be this bad. If you think that being down 26.88 percent over last week is bad, have a look at the revenue, at only 6.89 million we had to go back over three months to fine Blu revenues that low. The obvious reason is that the releases have been weak, but DVD didn't do as badly because of Nim's Island. In a movie you'd expect to see from Disney, Fox's kid title was easily the number one DVD, beating the two week old comedy in second by two to one. Meanwhile, the very same title only mustered 2 percent of DVDs sales and couldn't even sell half as many copies as a much older Batman Begins on Blu-ray. Although we doubt next week will be as bad as this one, we don't expect things to get much better until the fourth quarter, which is when the studios finally start to let some of their big titles out.

We live in an ever changing world of electronics -- which is the way we like it -- but sometimes we try to hold on to the past. It's not that we don't like progress or change, but it's just that we feel that for us to throw out all of our old stuff and replace it with new stuff, that the new stuff had better be an improvement. Recently we started playing with Vudu again, and one thing we realized we missed in our review was the fact that HDMI is required for HD viewing. We find this new trend to kill component video a real drag, but wonder is it time to let go? We know that custom integrators don't like HDMI, but other than that, are we the only ones holding on to the ability to use existing custom cables that don't fall out on their own?

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Blu-ray

• Camp Rock (Walt Disney)
• Hannah Montana And Miley Cyrus: Best Of Both Worlds Concert Tour (Walt Disney)
• Justice League: Season One (Warner)
• The Life Before Her Eyes (Magnolia)
• Nixon: Director's Cut (Walt Disney)
• Prom Night (2008) (Sony)
• The Proposition (First Look)
• The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (Universal)
• Street Kings (Fox)
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season (Warner)

When the dream of interactive television was sold to us, it was envisioned that it would be in the form of something on the TV, but honestly we really like HD video on our TV set and definitely don't want some generic looking graphics gumming it up. Luckily the trends have been more up our alley and fit perfect into our lifestyle -- which is having a coffee tables laptop instead of some cheesy book. In order to access the new features like; multiple camera angles (or all four at the same time), live chat room, on demand replays, and the usual live stats and drive charts, during games on the NFL Network, you'll need to be a Verizon customer (Internet, TV, or DirecTV via Vz). So even if the Pats v' Bucs match up wasn't enough to draw you in this Sunday, these new features alone may make it worth your while to check out.

File this under one of those announcements that brings more disappointed than anything else. Sure, we can't wait to enjoy the latest installment of the Indiana Jones franchise in HD. But the fact that a DVD box set was also announced, and there's no word on the availability of a Blu-ray box set has us worried. You see the first three movies have a special place in our hearts, and as much as we'd love to buy the forth, the fact that we know there will eventually be a box set that includes all four movies in HD has us in a holding pattern. This is especially true when you consider that some of the recent famous franchisees like The Matrix, aren't available individually. So, just to be on the safe side, you'd better believe we'll just be renting this one.

When DirecTV recently promised it'd have 130 HD channels on August 14th, we have to say this isn't exactly what we had in mind. What we expected was 31 new HD channels that would match the lineup that Dish recently revealed, but what we got was 4 real HD channels (Planet Green HD, ABC Family, Showtime Showcase HD, Showtime Extreme HD), 12 HD regional sports networks and 18 HD PPV channels. Sure, technically this is 31 new HD channels, but what about; Travel Channel HD, Outdoor Channel 2 HD, a whole slew of HBO and Cinemax HD channels, and finally all the Starz and Encore channels? According to DirecTV, all the HD PPV channels are simply place holders until the rest are brought online, but even with that excuse, this is just yet another reason why we take DirecTV's press releases with a grain of salt.

At just over the two year mark since the first Blu-ray players hit the streets, Sony releases its third-generation player, one that some would argue isn't even a fully featured unit. But aside from how important you think BD-Live is, Sony's latest BDP-S350 has a lot more to offer than its predecessor (the BDP-S300); in fact, it addresses most of our complaints, but unfortunately our favorite feature also got the axe (source direct). The biggest difference you'll notice right off the bat is the size, as it's about half as deep as the 300. While this really doesn't make much difference when enjoying Blu-ray movies, it does show how much more mature the HD chipsets have become in two years. The speed improvement of the player on the other hand will make a difference. While the 300 took 45 seconds just to eject when powered off, the 350 can do it in 6. This puts it in a two way tie with the fastest player we've tested.

When DISH Network and EchoStar split, it really had us scratching our head, but more recently the plan has started to become apparent to us. The latest revelation is that EchoStar has signed on to produce tru2way boxes. Evidently it hopes to steal away some of the business away from Cisco and Motorola. Although many seem to really like the DISH DVR, we're not sure what additional value EchoStar intends to bring to the tru2way scene since the magic of the DISH DVR is in the software. We suppose EchoStar could be offering a package deal that includes the software as well, but really who knows. One thing that does seem apparent -- and a trend -- is that there aren't intentions to sell the box directly to customers, which to us, kinda defeats the entire purpose of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Both DVD and Blu-ray are up on this week's Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of our friends at Home Media Magazine. The interesting thing this week is that Blu-ray managed a 10 percent share against the top 20 DVDs, but the two biggest titles on both formats Blu-ray didn't fair as well. The comedy Harold & Kumar was number one on the DVD charts, but the HD version only managed to steal about 7 percent away from DVD. Meanwhile the latest Stargate, was easily the number one title on Blu-ray -- and was barely surpassed on DVD -- but the HD version still didn't manage 10% of the market. This of course means that a few catalog titles made up the difference for 'ol Blu, and most of that money went to Paramount. In fact four Paramount catalog titles made the Blu-ray top 20, including Top Gun which was at number six and our personal favorite, The Hunt for Red October at nine. No way can either format see another increase next week though, as the slate of titles was anything but impressive. But if you look much further in the future into October and beyond, we really can't wait to see how Blu-ray sells through this holiday season when the true market indicators are exposed.

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Blu-ray

• 7 Seconds (Sony)
• Beat the Devil (Blu-ray Only)
• Belly (Lionsgate)
• CJ7 (Sony)
• The Doors (Lionsgate)
• Elvis: Viva Las Vegas (CMT)
• Felon (Sony)
• Half Past Dead (Sony)
• Kiss of the Spider Woman (City Lights)
• Last Time I Saw Paris (Blu-ray Only)
• Maximum Risk (Sony)
• Prison Break: Season Three (Fox)
• The Secret (2008) (Image)
• Smart People (Walt Disney)
• xXx: State of the Union (Sony)

With all the sources for digital downloads these days, it can be hard to keep track of what platforms have which movies. We noticed a few weeks ago that our friends over at Format War Central have taken on the tedious task of summing up all the sources of HD content each week on a single post. All the legit sources of HD downloads are included like Vudu, Xbox Live, PS3, and the Apple TV. From a purely selection standpoint -- this week at least -- it appears that while the Xbox Live Market Place has the most HD TV shows, while the Apple TV has the most HD movies (12 vs. 4) -- oddly enough though, Vudu only has one this week, but we doubt that is the norm. So if digital downloads are you thing, be sure to head on over each week to find out what's new and in HD.

Although we've known all about the TV Pack (code named Fiji) for some time, Microsoft's Ben Reed posted the official details about it today over at The Green Button. As expected, most of the new stuff is for other international markets, but the few new features for the US have been long awaited. Unfortunately the one detail about the TV Pack that we most wanted to be wrong about is true, the it'll only be available on new PCs from OEMs -- lucky for us you can find it elsewhere. Ben says the OEM requirement was necessary because of the complexity of supporting the new features, but as an enthusiast, we still can't help but feel a little slighted by our friends at Redmond. The most interesting quote in the announcement is the words that were chosen to explain that the TV Pack is indeed missing native DirecTV tuner support which describes it as "subscription-based satellite tuners." This of course make us all the more confident that both DirecTV and Dish support are on their radar -- but who knows, maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Gallery: Hands-on with the Vista Media Center TV Pack

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When we finally got the Vista Media Center TV Pack in our hands we were so excited about the new found features, that we didn't even get around to trying our favorite plug-ins until later. But after trying our favorite commercial skipping utility, DVRMSToolBox, some of our enthusiasm died. At first we figured, oh we probably need an update, but instead of finding the latest update on the developer's site, we found this interesting post with a inconvenient work around. The wording of the post only prompted us to ask even more questions, and our friends in the beta group had a few things to say. Evidently the developer of DVRMSToolBox was in the beta as well and has been voicing his concerns to Microsoft ever since RC0 was released, and based on the comments in the beta tester's forum, we have reason to believe that Microsoft may have "broken" it on purpose. Regardless of the actual intent though, it seems that Microsoft has no intention of fixing it the SDK in a way that would once again make commercial skipping possible. And in case you're wondering, this affects all the various commercial skipping plug-ins for Media Center, not just DVRMSToolBox.

The Microsoft eHome team's favorite beta tester is at it again, and this time they went as far as to share the RTM build of the Vista Media Center TV Pack (aka Fiji) with us -- lucky for us the update isn't language specific. We're not sure why Microsoft is officially holding back the details of this update until CEDIA, but either way all the previous details we shared with you are true. Although there is no H.264 support or DirecTV tuner information to be found, the new stuff we did find we really liked. We really had no idea how great native QAM support could be and this heterogeneous tuner support is much cooler than it sounds.