IBM announced today that they are developing a chipset that can beam high definition video from PC to TV through an ultra fast wireless signal. This technology will allow full length HD video or TV to be streamed within seconds between devices, without the use of wires or network cables.

The chip uses millimeter wave radio technology (mmWave) to transmit large amounts of data over the highest frequencies on the radio spectrum. The high radio frequencies can handle data up to 100 times the rate of current Wi-Fi transfers. Full length high definition movies, video, or TV could be transferred and ready for viewing within seconds compared with upwards of 10 minutes over a regular Wi-Fi connection.

Any stationary or handheld electronic device could ultimately contain one of these chips, which means that someday you could download movies to your video iPod or other handheld device as quickly as walking by your computer or a kiosk.

Photo: Dano
Source: CRN

Hitachi’s new DZ-BD7H will record 1920×1080 video to either Blu-ray discs or a built-in 30GB hard drive. That’s about four hours of 1920×1080 video, or eight hours of 1440×1080 footage onto the drive. The dubbing feature will let’s you do internal copying of HD video from the hard drive to a Blu-ray disc at 2X speed. It also doubles as a regular photo camera with a resolution of 4.32-megapixels, and SD card slot for storage. Hitachi

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is forecasting that 16 million HDTVs will be sold in 2007 boosting the total HDTVs to 50 million. This would result in a 36% market share for HDTV in the U.S. by 2008. Also interesting is 66% of people receive HD content through cable, 27% via satellite, and 8% from an HD antenna.

More [TG Daily]

According to DailyTech, “The recent explosion of Blu-ray Disc sales can be attributed to a couple of reasons. The most obvious would be the launch of the PlayStation 3, which rapidly injected the Blu-ray Disc movie market with at least 687,300 players. In contrast, HD DVD backers announced at CES 2007 that some 175,000 HD DVD players were sold in the U.S. since the format’s introduction. The sales numbers of PlayStation 3 alone put Blu-ray players way ahead of HD DVD machines, which is likely a part of Sony’s strategy for its format.”

As Gizmo Blog says “Back in the 1980s, when VHS and Betamax dueled it out over movie lovers’ wallets, the former won out when Beta turned its nose up at porn.” This is comparable to the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray format war of late. But now, since Blu-ray apparently will do porn, it’s becoming even harder to tell which format will prevail. Maybe both? And Sony yesterday said it’s not trying to stop adult studios from releasing their titles on Blu-ray.

Here’s what Sony had to say: “There’s no prohibition against adult content,” Lisa Gephardt, a spokeswoman for Sony Corp. of America, said. “We don’t tell people how they can use the licenses they get from the Blu-ray Disc Association.” Sony still has a long-standing policy not to manufacture DVDs with adult content. “Sony disc manufacturing will not manufacture adult titles,” Gephardt said. “We have never done it, and we have no plans to.”

Yesterday, it was officially announced Vivid Entertainment will be bringing “Debbie Does Dallas…Again” to Blu-ray. Set for release March 28 for about $39.95.