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So you bit the high-def bullet and popped for a Blu-ray player--or an HD DVD player. Either way, it's time to start building your movie library.

Best Buy is currently offering buy-one-get-one-free deals on both Blu-ray and HD DVD movies. Free shipping, too!

What's the selection like? Better than you might expect. Available titles include 300, The Departed, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Ocean's Thirteen. (There are a couple turkeys, of course, like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Are We Done Yet?.) Interestingly, all the Blu-ray flicks sell for $29.… Read more

Slowly but surely, prices are inching down on Blu-ray and HD DVD players. Today's deal to beat: Amazon has the Toshiba HD-A3 for $218.60 and the Samsung BD-P1400 for $269.98. The latter entitles you to five free movies, while the Toshiba nets you 10. Both players qualify for free shipping.

For the video purists out there, it's worth noting that the Toshiba player tops out at 1080i, while the Samsung can blast 1080p. My eyes can't tell a difference, but that's just me.

So, back to the big question: Is it time to pull … Read more

As carmakers continue to integrate HD Radio into their models at the factory level, an increasing number of car-stereo makers including JVC, Sony, Dual, and Alpine have brought out HD-compatible aftermarket products over the past few months. Check out our roundup of the latest options for getting HD Radio while on the road.

Update: I clarified the caption of the illustration to better indicate what editing had gone on to produce the side-by-side images.

Microsoft has taken the beta tag off a plug-in to let Photoshop read and write files in the HD Photo format, which Microsoft is standardizing as JPEG XR.

The free plug-in is available for download for Windows and Mac OS X systems. The plug-ins work on Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, and Photoshop CS2 or CS3, Bill Crow, who's overseen the HD Photo and JPEG XR effort, wrote on his blog … Read more

You might remember some time ago that Michael Bay proved he's a Sony fanboy by ranting about how Paramount would never get a Transformers 2 from him, because it had switched to support HD DVD exclusively. Obviously, once the sugar high from his Kool-Aid had worn off, he retracted the statement and said that 300 on HD DVD was pure ownage.

Well, he's at it again. This time in a post on his official Web site he said: "What you don't understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes … Read more

It's safe to say most, I mean like 99 percent, of music buyers don't give a hoot about sound quality. Why else would CD sales continue to plummet and worse than CD quality downloads go up every year?

OK, that's the mainstream, what about the other 1 percent; why have the audiophiles, according to a poll on the Stereophile website, already given up on SACD and DVD-Audio? Before I cite their feedback I'd like to point out that despite the naysayers, the super sound formats are still hanging on. Neil Young's latest release, "Chrome … Read more