I realize this makes back-to-back Amazon Blu-ray sale posts, sorry about that, I just caught this deal. Through February 9th there is a buy two, get one free deal on 29 titles. There are some good (IMHO) titles in there - Underworld, The Fifth Element, Black Hawk Down, Hellboy, and more, as well as a number of music titles from David Gilmour, Foo Fighters, and others.

Amazon is running another Blu-ray sale with some good deals. With 18 titles to choose from eleven are $11.99 each while the remaining seven are only $9.99 each.

Today’s Amazon Gold Box Deal of the Day is the complete Band of Brothers series on Blu-ray for $34.99. That’s 65% off the $99.98 MSRP.

Amazon is running a Gold Box Deal of the Day on Blu-ray 3-packs, 65% off. There are three collections to select from and all three are $34.45 today:
- British Action 3-pack Bundle (Casino Royale, Layer Cake, A Knight’s Tale)
- War and Politics 3-pack Action Bundle (Vantage Point, Black Hawk Down, The Patriot)
- Sci-Fi Superheroes 3-pack bundle (Ghost Rider, Underworld, Resident Evil)

Amazon is running a huge Blu-ray sale - Buy Two, Get One Free with 247 titles to select from! That’s one of their largest sales in a while, so if you we lucky enough to get a Blu-ray player for the holidays, this is a good opportunity to pick up some content.

A year ago LG Electronics announced a deal to bring Netflix streaming content to their set-top boxes, which materialized on the BD300 Blu-ray deck. Now LG and Netflix are taking it one step further, by enabling streaming right to new LG HDTV models.

The new ‘Broadband HDTVs’ will support HD Netflix streaming directly over their built-in Ethernet connections. These new LCD and plasma HDTVs, along with five new Blu-ray players and home theater systems, will join the BD300 in LG’s Netflix-enabled lineup.

The press release is below:
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One of today’s Amazon Gold Box specials is 64% off the Die Hard Collection on Blu-ray. That’s Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Die Hard with a Vengence, and Live Free or Die Hard on Blu-ray for just $46.95 - MSRP is $129.98. That’s roughly $11.74 per film, a good deal.

LG Electronics announced they’d be bringing Netflix to their Blu-ray players just in time for CES 2008. That support shipped in the form of the BD300, announced in July and shipped in the fall. Now, just in time for CES 2009, LG is announcing their next additions - CinemaNow and YouTube. YouTube seems like an obvious move, it is showing up on just about every connected device out there. Pretty soon I think YouTube will just be a default feature on any networked device, which should make Google happy.

But the real interesting addition here is CinemaNow, and not so much that it is being added but how it is being added. CinemaNow will be streaming to the Blu-ray players. That’s very interesting - as far as I’m aware this is the first indication we’ve had that CinemaNow was adding streaming support to their content. To date CinemaNow has been all download-based, not streaming, including on TiVo. Right now on TiVo only Disney content is available from CinemaNow, but it has been stated that additional content would be added. Since TiVo supports streaming, as used by YouTube and Netflix, I have to wonder if CinemaNow content will also be available via streaming on TiVo.

In general we’re certainly going to be seeing more of this kind of thing, adding content sources to devices to make them multi-function. Just to support Blu-ray content and to comply with the BD-Live specification a Blu-ray player has to be capable of decoding MPEG-2, H.264, and VC-1 video in high definition, as well as handing a number of audio formats. The hardware used to do this is more than capable of handling most online video formats. BD-Live requires an Ethernet connection and 1GB of local storage, which is plenty to handle streaming buffers. And the BD-J programming environment allows for complex applications. It makes a lot of sense for Blu-ray players to pick up additional features like streaming video to make them more competitive and appealing to consumers.

Press release:

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Through January 15, buy a qualifying PS3 game and Sony Blu-ray movie and receive a PS3 Blu-ray Remote Free. There are eight games listed: LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, MotorStorm Pacific Rift, Buzz! Quiz TV Bundle, SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation (bundled with Bluetooth Headset), SingStar Vol. 2 (with microphone), and NBA ‘09 The Inside are all $59.99 while Resistance 2 Collector’s Edition is $69.99. And there are 108 movies to choose from with prices starting at $14.99. The remote normally sells for $19.99 with a $24.99 MSRP.

According to the terms an individual can receive up to 20 free remotes. I’m tempted to buy a couple of these games, and there are movies I was thinking of getting anyway, and using the remotes as giveaways. I’ve been hearing lots of good things about LittleBigPlanet. And maybe Resistance 2 or SOCOM - the free headset would be useful too.

It looks like a last stake my be driven through the decaying heart of HD DVD. The last gasp for HD DVD was the China-specific variant CH-DVD, renamed CBHD (China Blue High-definition Disc) in July. While it was reported at the time that Shanghai United Optical Disc was setting up a disc production line and preparing players for market, it seems that has not yet come to pass.

And now DIGITIMES is reporting that China Hualu Panasonic AVC Networks, a joint venture between China-based China Hualu Group and Panasonic, has launched three Blu-ray player models for the domestic Chinese market. The three models are the BDP0801, BDP0810 and BDP0821, with retail prices of 1,999 yuan (US$292), 2,299 yuan and 2,499 yuan respectively. The BDP0801 is an entry-level BonusView/Profile 1.1 model, as is the BDP0810. The BDP0821 is a full-featured BD-Live/Profile 2.0 player.

The article says the CBHD camp still plans to launch players around the end of the year. But seeing as the article is from 12/29 they don’t have much time left to pull that off. And, of course, no western studios have pledged to support CBHD even if it does launch.

Picked up from Blu-ray.com.