I recently had the opportunity to sample the latest and greatest in in-flight movies aboard a Boeing 757, operated by Delta. From what I understand, 767s and 777s should operate similarly.
For the coach cabin, the price appeared to be $6.00 to watch a movie on the screens. The LCD screens were built into the backs of the seats in front of you, were (roughly) 5″ across the diagonal, and had a resolution appeared to be around 640×480-ish, and in an “almost” widescreen display (I think all of the content was encoded for 4×3, so I mostly had black …read more

With DirecTV’s DirecTV 11 satellite now up in orbit around the planet and Dish Network’s bird… Well, in a state of shock, it’s time for a little “Haha!” from DirecTV. DirecTV’s new satellite will allow them to have up to 150 nationwide HD channels and also allow more local channels provided in HD. Currently, DirecTV has 92 national channels and 77 cities broadcasting HD local channels, while Dish Network only has 70 national HD channels and 34 HD local networks.
“We are well ahead of them now on both counts — national and local HD — and with the successful launch …read more

 
EngadgetHD all day has posted a bunch of galleries of their experiences at CEDIA, the trade show for companies to show off their new HD gadgets off to the world. To say the least, they really spent a lot of time touring and taking pics of all the new shiny TVs, DVRs, and other HD components that could be found on the showroom floor. Here is a round-up of all the links to their tours going from the first to most recent:

FUZE Media System
Sony
LG
Sharp
Toshiba
Philips
JVC
Mitsubishi
Hitachi
Epson
Fujitsu
Panasonic

Hold on, need a breath… And here we go…

Moxi
Sanyo
Dish Network
DirecTV
Logitech
Samsung
Yamaha
Gefen
Monster Cables
Denon
Klipsch
Alienware
And finally, HD-DVD

Phew… Glad that’s over. Although …read more

To complement the release of a new software version for their ViP622 that was released just a few days ago, Dish Network has released a new receiver for those with all black components in their home theater. The innards of the component apparently aren’t that different from its older brother, but still has a 500GB hard drive which can record 55 hours of HD content, 350 hours of SD content, or a mix of each.  New customers can get the receiver free while existing customer pricing has not been released.
Via [EngadgetHD]
Read [DBSTalk]

For those of you out there with Dish Network’s ViP622 HD DVRs, you have a little surprise waiting for you, albeit with a catch. Dish Network has sent out a software update to your receivers that has enabled the Ethernet port as well as the USB 2.0 port. While the Ethernet port has no use as of right now, video-on-demand is rumored to be coming soon for it. The USB port on the other hand has a use right now. You are able to connect an external hard drive to it and back the content up to the disc, although …read more