Hulu blocks boxee browser entirely, gloves get ripped halfway off

As a wise man once said: "Damn, that's just cold, son." Merely hours after boxee announced its latest alpha build along with RSS feed support for Hulu, said video portal has now blocked off boxee's browser entirely from accessing its content. If you'll recall, boxee saw a huge increase in interest when it first added easy access to Hulu, and once Hulu demanded that it be removed, boxee sadly complied. The latest move just seems "cold blooded," as now boxee users who attempt to surf over via a Hulu RSS feed link will be greeted with an infinite amount of nothing. boxee is quick to point out that its browser doesn't access Hulu content "any differently" than IE, Firefox, Opera or any other browser, which does a good job of explaining just how deliberate this move is. Needless to say, we get the feeling this bout is just getting started.

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40 amazing photos of Microsoft's New American Home

While we were in Vegas earlier this month covering CES, we got a sneak peek at the New American Home, a posh house on town outskirts that Microsoft and a few other select tech companies were involved in designing. Built on the same block where Wayne Newton lives, the half-acre home has tons of whole-house electronics, including 10 Toshiba HDTVs, a 16-zone Nuvo distributed-audio system, and Anthem A/V processors — all controlled by Lifeware software that lets you access it from anywhere. You can start your bathtub (Kohler, of course), pick what music you want to listen to, and fire up the towel warmer… all from your phone.

The most amazing thing about the home is the power bill: $0. Thanks to extensive solar paneling (and the desert sun), the house is completely self-powered. But our favorite feature is the spectacularly chic pool (seen in the gallery below), whose surface is at the same level as the surrounding edge, separated only by a barely noticeable inch-thin drain.

In the market? The house isn't as pricey as you'd think: Tyler Jones of Blue Heron, who built the house, told us it costs somewhere north of $5 million. Though the place we saw is going to stay a show home for a while, it'll be part of a community called Marquis Vegas, which plans to have about 14 of these babies. We'll take three.

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OWC introduces first external Blu-ray drive with quad interface

It's debatable whether or not Apple is losing its touch with FireWire, but you can rest assured that OWC hasn't. Said outfit has just announced the industry's first Blu-ray external drive with a quad interface, meaning you can link it up to your PC or Mac via FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0 or eSATA. The Mercury Pro SW-5583 arrives with the capability to toast BD-Rs at a rate of 4x and includes a pair of 25GB BD-R discs for $499.99; the closely related Mercury Pro SW-5583T throws in a full retail version of Roxio Toast 9 Titanium (OS X) and sells for $579.99. Now, if only we could convince Steve that Blu-ray and Macs could indeed get along together, we'd really be satisfied. Full release after the break.
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The real reason it took so long to crack BD+

Filed under: Blu-ray

When SlySoft announced last week that it'd finally unlocked BD+ content, it got a lot of news coverage -- even some in the mainstream media. But what didn't get discussed was the fact that SlySoft didn't get it done by the end of 2007, as previously promised. Well Ars took the story one step closer and among other things uncovered the real reason -- no it wasn't because it was so 'hard' -- it took so long. Peer van Heuen, SlySoft head of HD technologies said in a post that "it was decided for strategic reasons to wait a bit for the outcome of the 'format war' between HD DVD and Blu-ray." We bet Macrovision wished it'd waited a bit longer before dropping $45 Million purchase on another piece of useless DRM.

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HD DVD Promotion Group officially dissolves in a high-res burst of tears

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Well, it's no surprise that it was going to happen, but the HD DVD Promotion Group officially dissolved today, leaving behind nothing but this terse message directing us to individual "selling agencies." And so, with literally nothing left of HD DVD, we formally close the sad chapter of consumer electronics history known as the HD Format War, remembering those times when HD DVD rode high, with low prices, more features and less restrictive rights management as its rallying cries, and the rantings of Michael Bay still only the delusional fantasies of a fool. May the resistance live on, and our PS3s always be reminded of a time when their ascension was not guaranteed. Red's dead, baby.

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