New Blu-ray player Ratings: Movie-streaming grows, prices to plummet?

Vizio’s VBR100 Blu-ray player will be $100 on Black Friday.

If you’re on the hunt for a high-def Blu-ray player to go with your new flat-panel HDTV, here’s some good news: Our latest Blu-ray player Ratings, available to ConsumerReports.org subscribers, show that prices continue to fall, even as more players add BD-Live, a feature that can provide access to Internet-based content, including streaming movies from several online services.

In fact, the Ratings include several full-featured models that cost $200 or less, as well as more-basic models (without the BD-Live feature) for as little as $130. We expect prices to fall even more sharply as we near Black Friday weekend, the traditional kickoff for holiday-season buying. For example, Best Buy recently offered a BD-Live Insignia-brand player for $100, and Vizio just announced it will drop the price of its VBR100 model—a tested BD-Live model included in our Ratings, now regularly priced at $150 to $180—to just $100 at Costco and Costco.com on Black Friday, at least while supplies last. And the company is throwing in an HDMI cable to boot.

All BD-Live models can access extra content, such as out-takes, deleted scenes or even games, from a movie studio’s servers. In and of itself, this feature is less than compelling, in our view. But many of these Internet-enabled models, from companies such as LG, Panasonic, and Samsung, also offer what we believe is a more engaging extra: the ability to instantly stream movies from services such as Amazon Video On Demand, Netflix, and Vudu.

Daily electronics deals

Today's deals, courtesy of The Consumerist:

• Amazon: Palm Pre Phone (with new service plan from Sprint) for $79.99 w/ Free shipping
• Walmart: Virgin Mobile Slash Prepaid Camera Cell Phone with Bluetooth, VMM310SMKIT190 for $20 + $0.97 Shipping
• BestBuy: Dynex - 32" Class / 720p / 60Hz / LCD w/ Built-in HDTV tuner for $299.99 + $44.23 Shipping
• Microsoft: Zune HD 16 GB for $197.99 w/ coupon MSSTORE10%OFF w/ Free shipping
• B&H Photo: Samsung PN42B430 42-inch 720p Plasma HDTV $649 + free shipping
• onSale: Toshiba REGZA 37CV510U 37-inch 720p LCD HDTV $500 + free shipping

Warner Bros. turns old DVDs Blu

First it was exchanging old HD DVD discs for Blu-ray versions. Now Warner’s at it again with a “DVD2Blu” program that let’s you swap old DVDs for new Blu-ray versions of the same movie—for a price.

Just go to Warner Bros.' DVD2Blu website and select the movies you want to trade in. You can only get a Blu-ray version of the same movie you own on DVD, and there's a limit of 25 titles per household that can be exchanged. Once you’ve selected the titles, click on “checkout” and pay a fee, typically $7.95 or $9.95 per disc, plus $4.95 shipping. (You get free shipping on orders of $25 or more.)

You can then print out a prepaid label, which includes a barcode for delivery tracking, and mail the old DVDs, without their cases, to a processing center, where the titles are compared to those listed on your order. Once the discs are received you’ll receive an email letting you know when the Blu-ray discs are shipping along with tracking info. It takes about four to five weeks for the whole transaction, and the Blu-ray package you'll receive is the same as the ones sold in stores, with all the accompanying materials.

The exchange program is limited to the DVDs listed on the DVD2Blu.com website, and you can only exchange one copy of each movie. If you’d like more info, visit this DVD2Blu FAQ, or visit the Warner Bros. Shop for more details about the movies.

Daily Dispatch: "Nervous system" planned for Earth; Pre-paid Blackberrys

The Daily Dispatch is a collection of interesting news about computing, consumer electronics, and other technology gathered from around the Web by Dirk Klingner, our technology-trend watcher, and other staffers. If you have a tip on news you want to share, leave a comment below.

A Central Nervous System for Earth: HP's Ambitious Sensor Network (ReadWriteWeb)

HP Labs has joined the race to build an infrastructure for the emerging Internet of Things. The giant computing and IT services company has announced a project that aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth" (CeNSE). It's a research and development program to build a planet-wide sensing network, using billions of "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors."

T-Mobile launches pre-paid BlackBerry (Chicago Tribune)
One of the first smart phones available without a contract or credit check, opening up smart phones to a new market.

Automatic captions in YouTube (Official Google Blog)
Leveraging the voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice has allowed Google to begin automatic captioning (auto-caps) of YouTube videos. They have also launched an automatic caption timing feature which allows the user to submit a text file containing the text of the video and Google will do the rest, automatically applying the correct placement and timing to the text.

On Black Friday, plenty of "self-gifting": Consumer Reports poll

A new Consumer Reports poll has exposed the secret, selfish underbelly of electronics shopping on Black Friday weekend: It isn’t all about buying for friends and family. A lot of consumers plan to buy gear for themselves.

In the nationally representative telephone poll of 1,000 adults, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center in early November, some 70 percent of those who planned to shop on Black Friday weekend said they would be looking for electronics. While 78 percent of those gear buyers will be gift shopping, 55 percent will be shopping for themselves. That was among the highest percentages of “self-gifting” for any category.

However, buyers in the leading product category that electronics buyers will be seeking over the Black Friday weekend, video games and accessories, are much less selfish than electronics shoppers overall; only 21 percent say they’ll be shopping for themselves. —Paul Reynolds

Daily electronics deals

Today's deals, courtesy of The Consumerist:

• Sixth Avenue: Sharp AQUOS 46" 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV for $834.72 w/ coupon BONUSBUY w/ Free shipping
• B&HPhoto: Samsung PN50B430 50-inch 720p PLASMA HDTV $799 + free shipping
• NewEgg: Samsung DualView TL220 12MP Digital Camera (Blue or Red) $224 + free shipping
• HandHelditems: iPhone Back up Battery, HHI 1900mAh for $9.99 w/ coupon 1900mahbatt + $5.95 Shipping
• BuyDig.com: Fujifilm FinePix S200EXR 12MP Digital Camera $430 + free shipping
• Costco: $15 Gift Card 6-pack ($90 total) for $75 + free shipping, non-members pay an extra $3.75 
• Amazon: Scene It? The Simpsons Special Edition Game $25

The scary side of "free" TV

The ability to watch TV programs on the Web for free, to download cheap or free programming to your iPod, and to stream video as part of your Netflix subscription is great news—or is it?

That’s the question raised by a thought-provoking article in the New York Times this week. The author, Nicholas Carr, says: “The more I play movies and TV shows from the Web, the less I use my cable TV service.” He’s cut down on pay-per-view movies, canceled Showtime because he can stream movies and programs like Dexter through Nextflix, download programs from Apple’s iTunes store, and watch full TV episodes on sites like Hulu, CNN.com, PBS.org and more.

What’s not to like? Carr and viewers like him can obviously save a bundle while still enjoying lots of TV shows and movies.

The problem, says Carr, is that this is eating into revenues for the companies that produce the programs we love to watch (especially when they’re free). He observes: “If the changes in our viewing habits stanch the flow of money back to studios, producing [the smartest, most creative] programs may no longer be possible. In their place, we’ll get more junk: dopey reality shows, cookie-cutter police dramas, inane gab fests. The vast wasteland will become even vaster. Even ‘free’ has a price.”

I love free as much as anyone and have taken some of these steps to trim my own entertainment costs. We’ve also talked here at Consumer Reports about the notion that consumers might want to ditch their pay-TV service, get free off-air HD, and use these other venues to get premium programming for much less than they’re paying now.

Still, I see Carr’s point, and friends of mine in the TV business are very worried about the future. Which worries me.

What’s your take? —Eileen McCooey

Poll: Video games & accessories top choices for Black Friday

Consumer Reports Black Friday shopping poll results. (Click to enlarge.)

A new Consumer Reports poll finds video games and accessories top the list of electronics products consumers will be shopping for over the Black Friday weekend.

Forty-six percent of electronics shoppers said they’d be looking for items in the category, which also ranked high on the list of popular gifts from our October poll. The next-most-popular electronics items people plan to shop for over the Black Friday weekend are MP3 players, video-game systems, and laptop and netbook computers; all were mentioned by about one in five shoppers. Other choices high on the list: digital cameras (16 percent), flat-panel TVs (13 percent), and GPS units (12 percent).

About 70 percent of shoppers plan to buy electronics over the Black Friday weekend, with men a little more likely (at 73 percent) to seek out gear than women (at 68 percent). For the most part, interest in particular product categories is fairly comparable by gender. The biggest differences: Men are more likely than women to be shopping for headphones, and women are more likely to be shopping for a digital photo frame.

Overall, about a quarter of people plan to brave stores on Black Friday, about the same percentage who planned to do so in the past two holiday seasons. It’s perhaps surprising that the trend held this year, given that most consumers are cutting back, according to the October poll, and that the electronics deals started early this season, with the likes of Sears offering deals since Halloween.

We’ll have more on the what stores will be offering on Black Friday in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. –Paul Reynolds

Some surprises as California adopts new TV power standards

The controversial regulations by the California Energy Commission (CEC), requiring all TVs sold in the state to meet new energy-efficiency standards, have mostly drawn the expected reactions, with energy-conservation advocates generally lining up behind the proposal and manufacturers opposing it. But the measure has also drawn some reactions that aren't necessarily predictable, and may point to an interesting and nuanced debate to come as the impact of the regulations, for California and the country, are assessed.

The CEC estimates the new energy-consumption threshold, set to go in effect in 2011, will save $8.1 million over 10 years.“The real winners of these new TV energy efficiencies are California consumers who will be saving billions of dollars and conserving energy while preserving their choice to buy any size or type of TV. Californians buy four million televisions each year and they deserve the most energy efficient models available," said Energy Commission Chairman Karen Douglas.”

On the whole, as expected, the Consumer Electronics Association, one of several industry groups which opposed the regulatory proposals, criticized the CEC’s actions:

Microsoft announces development of Internet Explorer 9

Developers have long complained about Internet Explorer's lack of adherence to Web standards as the below Google Sidewiki entry from the Microsoft home page details.

This lack of standardization has affected consumer experiences as sites are forced to either dumb down their web sites to work adequately on all browsers or develop a separately designed site to work just with Internet Explorer.

Today, Microsoft announced that they had begun development on IE9 and they promised that this version would take steps toward compatibility with standards that matter most to web developers.

The work we do here, both in the product and on test suites, is a means to an end: a rich interoperable platform that developers can rely on.

Microsoft is also promising to improve the speed of JavaScript execution in the browser as IE has lagged behind its competitors in this area. This JavaScript speed improvement has the potential to make for faster and smoother web experiences for IE users when IE9 is released.

No release date has been set for IE9, but Microsoft's dedication to improving IE ensures continued competition and innovation, as browser producers fight to be your first choice when you access the Internet.

An Early Look At IE9 for Developers [IEBLog]