In the wake of the Xbox 360 receiving Netflix streaming High Definition, Roku has announced, on their own forums, that they will have HD streaming on Roku boxes before the end of the year. Roku boxes were, in fact, the first devices to offer the Netflix “Watch Now” functionality, straight to your TV.

On the Roku Labs Forums, “RokuTim” (Tim Twerdahl, VP of Consumer Products at Roku) told the masses that “Roku will be delivering Netflix in HD by the end of the year.” This is great news for everybody who hopped on the Roku bandwagon early, however he also mentioned that “Roku will be using Advanced Profile encodes which will deliver HD at substantially lower bit-rates than what Xbox is offering.” Uh oh. Looks like the Xbox 360 has the upper hand here, and that your Roku HD movies may be a tad on the choppy side.

More after the break.

Unlike most product releases today, Western Digital has released their TV HD media player with no extravagant advertising. The tiny device allows you to plug in external USB hard drives, up to two simultaneously, and play any video content stored on them, on your TV. It outputs video to your TV in either plain old more »

Samsung and Netflix have just announced a new partnership that will bring Netflix video streaming to a handful of Blu-ray players. The models that will be compatible are the BD-P2550 and BD-P2500, both of which are currently available and retail for $399.99. It was also stated that in the future they hope to bring Netflix support to a “range of home entertainment products,” of course they did not go into any specifics.

The Netflix support for both players will come courtesy of a free update from Samsung. Both the BD-P2550 and BD-P2500 offer similar functionality and specs, however the BD-P2550 will also be able to use Pandora Radio as part of this free update.

Overall, Netflix seems to be making quite a push into your home entertainment center with these recent “Watch Instantly” additions. In the beginning support was limited to a PC, however we also saw the introduction of the Roku Netflix Player a short time ago, then most recently we saw the LG BD300, which is another Blu-ray player that offers Netflix streaming capabilities.

Vudu first teased us with the announcement a few weeks back that they would soon be offering Blu-ray quality downloadable movies. However, at the time, the details were limited and the service was only available to a limited group of beta testers. Well, flash forward a few weeks and Vudu has officially made the HDX service available for everyone.

The new HDX movie downloads will be the equivalent of Blu-ray quality, meaning they will come in 1080p at 24 frames per second and are optimized for those viewing on a 40-inch or larger HDTV. Currently, Vudu has around 50 titles ready to go in the new HDX format with plans to add any new HD release in the HDX format as well. Additionally, they are also working to bring all the current HD movies into the HDX format; of course, they have not given any timeline as to when that will be completed.

Perhaps the best news is that these 1080p HDX formatted titles will retain the same pricing as the HD movies which range from $4 to $6 each. While the new HDX format sounds great, the one big drawback here is that these movies will require roughly a 4 hour download time prior to watching. That alone could be enough to make this not worthwhile for the average movie viewer.

Continue reading to check out the full press release…

After waiting for the oft-delayed device, Slingbox fans can finally be happy again. The Slingbox PRO–HD has begun shipping. The PRO-HD is the first Slingbox to offer broadcast of digital signals. Previous devices converted HD video to SD standards before sending them out to your laptop or whatever device it was being viewed on. The Slingbox PRO-HD will broadcast up to 1080i. While it isn’t 1080p, it’s still better than SDTV, and unless you own a very large laptop, 720p is probably fine anyway.

Panasonic has really been pulling out all the stops on their HDTV department, releasing 8 new models of plasma and LCD TVs with the ZR900 and PZ800 series.

Samsung released some new additions to their Series 6 lineup of LCD HDTVs. Last week, the company went official with the release of their 2008 Holiday Showcase. Now, counting the latest three models, plus their previously announced Series 9, Series 8 and Series 7 units, Samsung has a total of twelve new HDTV offerings for more »

Although Sony has announced its next generation Blu-ray player, the BDP-S350 as early as February, it is only now that the player has started arriving in US retail stores. For those who have been waiting for the BDP-S350, the wait may well be worth it after all since like we reported before this player is fully compatible with various disc formats including BD-R/RE, DVD+R/+RW, DVD-R/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW and JPEG on DVD or CD recordable media.