As any real gadget fanatic knows - you’ve got to do your research. To many features, too many brands. How the hell do you know what to buy? Personally I research the hell of everything. Here’s a new site worth hitting the next time you go to buy. TestFreaks.com. They’ve got a ton product categories with scored product reviews, plus user feedback and forums. Pretty awesome for finding out if that new Wii game sucks before you own it.

Design student Joonas Saaranen has created a backpack that is actually a speaker system. The hardshell pack contains both speakers and an amplifier for on the road use. (And I’m assuming a metric ton of batteries as well?). Pretty cool concept though I’m not sure I’d walk my streets rocking one. But bonus points for designing it to look like it came right off the back of a Stormtrooper. Just wonder, is there storage built in for an iPod? Or a six pack?

It sounds too good to be true, but apparently it’s for real. Big box retailer Best Buy Co. is giving away $50 gift cards to the unfortunate customers who ended up on the loosing side of the BluRay vs. HD-DVD format war. Pretty interesting move. Best Buy certainly had no obligation to help out HD-DVD buyers. The cost for the gift cards should be coming out of the pockets of the idiotic studio execs who perpetuated the format war in the first place. They’re ultimately the ones who screwed HD-DVD owners by not agreeing on a format. Kudos to Best Buy - whom I sure will enjoy every bit of their $10 million worth of positive PR.

Details in the press release below, or you can visit bestbuy.com/hddvd.

With Blu-ray declaring victory over HD-DVD in the high definition movie format war, Best Buy, the nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer, is giving $50 gift cards to customers who purchased an HD-DVD player or HD-DVD attachment from its U.S. stores before February 23, 2008. Customers will get a gift card for each player or HD-DVD attachment that they purchased. Through this program, Best Buy will distribute more than $10 million in gift cards to customers across the country.

“The DVD format war has divided our customers in a way we haven’t seen since Betamax took on VHS more than 20 years ago,” said Brian J. Dunn, president and chief operating officer for Best Buy. “At Best Buy, we understood and shared our customers’ frustrations as they were being asked to choose one format or the other. Now that the format war is over, we hope these gift cards will reassure our customers that we will help them make a smooth transition into the right technology for their needs.”

Most Best Buy customers won’t have to do anything to receive their gift card. As a demonstration of its commitment to its customers, Best Buy will proactively mail cards to all customers that the company can identify as having purchased an HD-DVD player. Members of the Best Buy Reward Zone program, customers who purchased Performance Service Plans (PSPs) or who made their purchase on BestBuy.com should look for their gift cards in the mail by May 1. Other customers who may not be easily identified can call (888) BEST BUY to receive their gift cards with proof of purchase through a credit card or their Best Buy receipt.

“The beauty of this offer is that it doesn’t require our customers to give up their HD-DVD player,” said Barry Judge, chief marketing officer for Best Buy. “We know that many people who purchased these players have HD-DVD movies that they would like to continue to watch. We’re telling our customers they can keep their players to play these movies as well as their older DVDs and use the $50 to treat themselves to anything else in our stores.”

Best Buy Press Release

DirecTV, the nations largest satellite TV provider will begin to offer video on-demand (VOD). According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, DirecTV has begun testing the VOD service and will begin a wider roll-out to subscribers in the next couple of months.

DirecTV’s satellites will automatically transmit a limited number of popular movie titles to customers’ digital video recorders, where they will be stored for viewers to order whenever they want. Viewers will be able to order other titles, including TV programs, by streaming them from the Web through a high-speed Internet connection on the DirecTV set-top box. DirecTV says that about half of its customers currently have high-speed Internet connections.

DirecTV has been late to the VOD game, as cable and rival satellite provider Dish already have a video on-demand service up and running since last fall. One aspect to the story that is intriguing is the mention of how DirecTV plans to use the data it gets from subscribers to sell ads.

More than just offering video on demand, this arrangement will let DirecTV tap what some analysts think could be a big growth area for TV providers — selling highly targeted ads.

With a set-top box connected to the Web, DirecTV will be able to track what programs people order through real-time data about a user’s television viewing behavior and allow the company to target ads. Cable operators already have similar plans, using the interactive capability of their set-top boxes.

With the launch of Hulu, and the recent update to Apple TV, 2008 is shaping up to be all about getting content to viewers in as many ways as possible.

[via WSJ]

For a company that continually loses money and is hated by advertisers, why are they the best game in town? For one, they were first to create the “time shifting” concept for digital recorders. Yes, there were others to do this (Replay TV) but TiVo, made it easy to use and locked up their software with a bunch of patents.

That’s not, of course, an earth-shattering idea; VCRs have been doing this for decades. Tivo’s edge is simple but critical: it’s easy to use. As a result, the company is now on the very short list of corporate brand names - like Google, Xerox, FedEx, and Photoshop - that are widely used as verbs.

If you don’t believe patents are worth much, ask Dish Networks. They tried to circumvent TiVo’s patents and lost and will now have to pay to TiVo to keep there DVRs working. DirecTV has paid TiVo for years, first to license the software and then of late to “maintain” those boxes while they put out their own branded DVR.

Rather than risk infringing on Tivo’s strong patents, cable companies will have little choice but to forge agreements with Tivo in order to provide their customers with DVR capabilities.

Says Westerfield: “Pay-TV operators who have not yet properly licensed the right to provide DRV services in the vein set forth by Tivo’s patents might well be at risk of patent infringement claims. Therefore, in due time, we think that nearly all pay-TV operators will review their risks and opt to legitimize their DVR offerings.”

Comcast and Cox have already said they will provide customers with set top boxes using TiVo’s technology, and others seem likely to follow.

TiVo has made up with advertisers and won the battles in court. Maybe now, they will finally get to reap the reward others have made at their expense.

[via Fortune]

Yahoo reports that Toshiba has decided to dump it’s HD DVD players. That pretty much puts the nail in coffin on the ridiculous HD format wars that no doubt slowed the adoption of the players. (Did we learn nothing from the VHS vs. BETA ordeal?). Well, hey, at least the better format won in this time. So now what do you do with your HD discs? Glad you asked. Wired.com has a nice little article to help get you started on the road to conversion. Hit is here.

Blu-ray wins the format war by a forfeit

As if it wasn’t already a foregone conclusion, Toshiba has finally thrown in the the towel and stop production of its HD DVD players by March of this year. The news is not all that shocking given the decision in January by Warner Brothers to drop support for HD DVD and move over to Sony’s Blu-ray. Recently big players like Best Buy, Wal-mart and Netflix moved over to the Blu-ray camp, leaving HD DVD with very little supporters.

What does this mean for HD DVD adopters? There were plenty of home theater buffs that wanted the latest and greatest in HD and bought HD DVD players and movies that are now orphaned. The good news is these movies can live on in combo HD/Blu-ray players, making Toshiba’s decision a little easier for all. But what does this mean for the cost of Blu-ray players and movies? In part, the allure of HD DVD was the price. Toshiba was really first to market and first to slash player costs, in turn driving it’s adoption. And in most scenarios that usually produces a winner, but the consumers weren’t snapping up HD DVDs or the hardware. Most people were waiting to sidle up to a winner to this format war and the movie studios were all to aware of this. Sony can’t be in any hurry to start cutting Blu-ray equipment now that their major competitor has call it quits. I suspect we won’t see any price drop until maybe a Christmas push later this year.