Amazon is running a few Blu-ray sales currently.

The Get Three for the Price of Two sale has been extended, with 36 titles to choose from.

Then you can save up to 55% off a selection of 95 titles.

If you have a PS3 but you don’t yet have the DVD/Blu-ray remote to go with it (using the SixAxis to control movies is fairly crappy), buy three Warner Blu-ray movies and get the PS3 remote free.

And last but not least, buy a Blu-ray player and three Warner Blu-ray movies and save $50. It looks like the players on offer include the Sony BDP-S300 Profile 1.0 for $199.98, the Sony BDP-S350 Profile 1.1 for $295.00, the Samsung BD-P1500 Profile 2.0 for $279.99, and the Panasonic DMP-BD30K Profile 1.1 for $274.81. (Personally I’d pick the Samsung.) On the movie side there are 122 titles to select from.

Sony is boosting the capabilities of their PlayStation3 lineup while maintaining their price points. The $399.99 MSRP price point, formerly 40GB, is now an 80GB unit. Previously announced, this is now shipping to retailers.

And today Sony announced a new unit for the $499.99 price point, with 160GB. But more than just a boost in storage capacity, Sony will launch the 160GB unit in November as part of a bundle. The bundle will include the 160GB PS3, a copy of the game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, a voucher for a couple of the game PAIN via the PlayStation Store, and a DUALSHOCK 3 Wireless Controller. All for $499.99. That sounds like a pretty good deal, especially since I my 60GB PS3 cost me the same amount with no bundle back when I got it.

Of course, the PS3 remains one of the best Blu-ray players on the market. But the additional storage space will make a difference now that Sony is offering video downloads, including HD video, via the PlayStation Store, and as they move toward increasing broadband game distribution.

Their press release:
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Web video from Hulu, CBS, ESPN, etc, is great, but it is generally stuck on your PC. Sure, you can hook up a PC to the TV, and some web video is available on set-top boxes, such as YouTube on TiVo, but it is still limited. There are are some devices which allow access to more of the sites, like the D-Link DSM-520, but then you need Yet Another STB in your A/V stack. What to do? Well, PlayOn from MediaMall Technologies can help.

PlayOn installs on your Windows XP or Windows Vista PC, and acts as a kind of transcoding proxy for web video. It retrieves the web video and streams it to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatible devices such as the PlayStation3, Xbox 360, and HP MediaSmart TVs. While those are the officially supported devices, they state that they will work to expand the list, and since they’re using DLNA I’m thinking may work on other DLNA devices even if not officially supported. They currently tout support for Hulu, CBS, YouTube, and ESPN, and promise Netflix support “just down the road”. They’ve also promised playback on the Nintendo Wii “by the end of 2008″. PlayOn is currently in beta, and MediaMall plans to charge $30 for the final product when it is ready for release.

MediaMall also has a blog where you can keep track of their development efforts. In a post there they reiterate that Netflix will be added before GA (that’s general availability, aka the official release for the non-geeks), and also state that CNN will be in before GA. MediaMall also develops the ActiveTV platform that powers the above mentioned DSM-520, which supports a plethora of web video sites, so it seems logical that they’d be bringing that know-how over to PlayOn to add more sites over time. After all, PlayOn was only released to beta on Monday.

Picked up from EngadgetHD.

For a limited time, Amazon is offering a special Blu-ray starter bundle. Buy a Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player for $379.99 or a Sony 40GB PlayStation 3 for $399.99 and get an 8-pack Blu-ray movie starter set for $80 - just $10 a title, a 65% savings. The 8-pack has an MSRP value of $231.60, and an Amazon price of $161.95. The titles in the pack are: Black Hawk Down, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Dogma, A Few Good Men, Gattaca, Life of Brian - Collector’s Edition, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and The Fifth Element.

If you go for the deal I strongly recommend the PS3 over the BDP-S300. The PS3 is a more feature rich Blu-ray player - the BDP-S300 is only a Profile 1.1 / Bonus View player, while the PS3 is Profile 2.0 / BD-Live. And, of course, you get all of the top end gaming features with the PS3.

Picked up from Blu-ray Stats News Log.

Amazon is running a special promotion through 11:59pm PST on Monday, May 26th, 2008, purchase a 40GB Sony PlayStation3 and receive the Sony PS3 Blu-ray remote and the movie The Fifth Element on Blu-ray for free. The 40GB PS3 sells for $399.99, which is a good value for a full-featured Blu-ray player today, let alone one that is also a top-end game system. And it is probably the most future-proof of any BD deck, with an increasing number of online services coming from Sony.

Picked up from Blu-ray Stats.

The previously discussed Sony PS3 DVR add-on, the PlayTV, finally has a European release schedule and pricing.

The PlayTV will be available in Europe in September for €100, or approximately £80/$160. As previously reported, the PlayTV will have dual DVB-T tuners to enable DVR functionality on the PS3, and content can be place-shifted for remote viewing on the Sony PSP. Australia is expected to receive the PlayTV roughly a month after the European release.

Who knows if well ever see something like this in the US. Unlike most of the rest of the world, terrestrial broadcast isn’t very popular in the US. So while an ATSC version of the PlayTV would certainly be possible, I don’t think it would sell well. Sony would really need a CableCARD-enabled tuner as most of the US market uses cable, and/or a partnership with DirecTV or Dish Network. Though the PS3 is certainly capable of handling OCAP/tru2way, and the BD-J standard for Blu-ray is actually part of the same familiar as OCAP (both are based on GEM/MHP), so perhaps some work could be reused.

From Register Hardware.

I post a lot about TiVo in Australia, but they’re not the only game in, or coming to, town. CNET Australia reports that Australia EPG provider IceTV plans to add a feature called ‘IceTV Recommendations’, which is similar to TiVo Suggestions. Since IceTV is just a guide and not a full DVR package, it does not auto-record the programs, but rather presents them as suggestions to the user to decide on. (You can do the same on TiVo by disabling Suggestion auto-recording and then manually checking them in the menus. TiVo+8 is the shortcut.) The feature is currently compatible with Windows Media Center and Mac/EyeTV, but compatibility with additional DVRs which use the IceTV guide will be announced in the coming weeks.

And the previously discussed Sony PlayTV DVR add-on for the PlayStation3 looks to be hitting Australia in 4Q2008, according to Gizmodo Australia who attended a Sony briefing. Australia is getting it roughly a month after the European market, so they have something to look forward to as well. Giz also got more details from the briefing:

Other interesting tidbits include that there’s only an input for your aerial, no output, which means you won’t be able to connect your antenna to your TV through the PlayTV. And while you can only record TV programs to the PS3’s internal hard drive, you can backup the contents to an external drive. It isn’t finalised, but it looks like the EPG will be supplied by the rumoured FreeView collection of free-to-air networks as well

So it looks like the DVR choices for Australians will be expanding soon with TiVo, PlayTV, and possibly a Freeview DVR.