Last year at CEDIA, Sony made a splash with a refrigerator-sized Blu-ray home server with 200-disc changer. This year it's nowhere to be seen, but in its place, Sony is showing a 400-disc changer of a more sensible size. The company isn't saying much, except that it's coming in 2009, it's going to be BD-Live capable, and that it will have RS-232C controls for the home-theatre hardcores. Great! Now all you need are 400 Blu-ray discs worth owning. (It will hold DVDs and CDs, too, of course, but why waste it?)

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Most of us will be happy with consumer-priced stock DVRs or TiVos. But for those who are looking for something better for the ego, Niveus has just revealed their updated media centres, the Rainier, Pro Series and Denali Limited Edition. All three lines support 8 CableCards and 10 Media Centre Extenders. The Rainier is modest, storing 1TB of data with no fans. The rack-mountable Pro Series continues the fanless trend and packs 4TB of storage, 32GB SSD, Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia Series 9 graphics card (for when 1080P video just isn't enough). The Denali Series (pictured) is similar to the Pro Series, but maxes at 2TB of storage to make room for a Blu-ray drive. These monster media centres will be available in Q4 2008.

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A new entrant to the Blu-ray player field, Cambridge Audio's first BD machine is pretty high-end. Apparently the white-painted gizmo is all about matching "the original studio masters" in audio quality with Dolby TrueHD and DTS HR surround, and in video quality with 24 fps progressive scan True Cinema, which "allows films to be watched as the director intended at their original frame rate" if you're into that sort of thing. It also upscales DVD-resolution video to 1080p, and the back of the machine is going to be pretty crowded with analogue video outputs, HDMI 1.3 outputs, ethernet, SPDIF, Toslink and separate 7.1 and stereo analogue outs. There's no word on pricing but it's expected Spring 2009. Press release below.

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Folding screens (that occasionally useful piece of furniture, and classic movie prop) get a dab of 21st Century tech with the DID-FS from Daewoo. The old-fashioned wooden frame is there, but supplemented by four LCD widescreens, mounted vertically. That leaves you free to choose what pictures you're using to break up your living space into themes. It'll probably leave you with an empty wallet too, given current LCD prices for displays that big, but there's no info on pricing or availability. That doesn't stop me from lusting after this though... maybe I can achieve the same effect with some MDF, a Dremel and a couple of cheapo LCD photo frames from the local store? [Born Rich]

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The TiVo HD is a good, cheap alternative to the recently de-listed TiVo Series 3 for people who didn't need all that much storage and all that many fancy features. But what if someone wants even more built-in storage than the 20 hours of HD that the TiVo HD provides? They've now got the TiVo HD XL.

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Sony is trying to bargain with potential buyers of Pioneer's US$2,200 BDP-09FD: For US$200 less, you can get yourself the BDP-S5000ES. Meanwhile, it's equally intended to regain the love of all those home-theatre enthusiasts who bee-lined it for the PS3 (rather than a dedicated BD player) because of its networking and speed.

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LG kicks off the press conferences here at CEDIA in Denver. After teasing the Netflix-streaming LG BD300 Blu-ray player, a double threat if I ever saw one, they finally told us the price today: US$400, well below the US$500 mark LG was aiming to stay under. (Keep in mind, the Netflix box by Roku is, by itself, US$100.) LG says the BD300 will be appearing in stores by end of this month or first week in October.

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TiVo and DirecTV have a chaotic history, but now that it's all straightened out, the two companies can move forward to release new hardware. Now they're planning a follow up to the HD DirecTiVo, the aging, discontinued HD TiVo platform for DirecTV that used inefficient MPEG2 encoding. Expected in the second half of 2009, the new TiVo HD will support MPEG4 recording and newer TiVo features like Swivel Search. As a former TiVo user who's now running an HR21 with a less than optimal interface, I can only see more DVR options as a good thing. [Zatz Not Funny]

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Sony has had a little splurge of Blu-ray action, and come up with six new models of BDR-recorders/players that also sport hard drives which can record HD video. The T-series, BDZ-T55 and BDZ-T75 are the basic models, with 320GB hard drives, BD Live and memory-card ports and DLNA (on the T75). The L-series models BDZ-L55 and BDZ-L95 have 320GB and 500GB drives respectively, and a HDV 1080i/DV input, and 2 USB sockets for connecting digital cams to. The top-end X-series BDZ-X95 and BDZ-X100 models have 500GB and 1TB of drive room, Sony's Cross Media bar GUI and the new Digital Reality Creation - Multi Function version 3 chip. Full specs below.

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Home theatre junkies are now one step closer to a fully THX-certified home thanks to Serious Materials' QuietHome soundproof doors, which joins the company's QuietRock THX-certified drywall. The Serious folks claim an 85% improvement in sound blockage over a standard solid-core door with the 2 1/4-inch thick THX-certified edition, which will set you back US$2,500 when it clears the certification board (and once the first shipment clears to George Lucas's Presidio compount). If you're in the target market for a THX-certified door, US$2,500 probably won't sting too badly. Now, where is my THX-certified easy chair and acoustically neutral Pringles can? Read on for full details.

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