A higher court in California just overturned the earlier victory that Kaleidescape had -- yesterday afternoon.

It's a strange decision, in that it says documents other than those that Kaleidescape signed have standing in the case, according to Kaleidescape.

Real would be fine, just like Kaleidescape, if they (Real) had gotten a signed document saying (essentially) it was okay to "rip"/store/backup/encrypt soft copies of movies to a hard drive.

You'll recall that when Kaleidescape was taken to court, the court declined to rule on whether "ripping"/storing/backing up/encrypting soft copies to a hard drive in general was okay. Rather, the court ruled narrowly that Kaleidescape and the DVD Forum (or the holders of the cryptographic rules) had indeed both signed a document that said Kaleidescape could do what they were doing.

Real never got such an agreement in writing -- nor could they at this point, since the DVD Forum (or the holders of the cryptographic rules) is unlikely to ever sign such a document again. One gets the impression they didn't mean to sign the agreement with Kaleidescape in the first place.

If Vudu comes to the HTPC, I will certainly use it for HDX movies when I don't have something sitting here from Netflix (which happens once a week, at least). Especially if that have day and date HDX releases, I'd probably rent one a week, since Netflix still sucks for new release Blu-rays unless you time your return to be perfectly aligned with a one-day shipping window that occurs the day before the street date of new releases -- which is a hassle.

Wow, 1080p at an adaptive bitrate that requires no buffering. I wonder whether one will be able to see the movie through all the macroblocking?

Gotta love them Thiels!

For the budget minded, Audyssey has released a consumer version of this device. Slightly different feature set -- no multi-room capability -- but covers most of the same needs, and at a better price.

http://www.svsound.com/products-parts-subeq.cfm

Anyone got the new TCM HD channel yet? I guess Cablevision is signed on and Charter is in negotiations. I sure hope the satellite providers are going to get it asap as well.

Sign me up! Oh wait, I don't have Comcast or Cablevision. Well, I do have Comcast, but never watch it. It's just for internet. Maybe I should rent an HD box......

Assuming a few of these are things I want to watch, there may be enough coming down the pipe:

"We're going to release four new day-and-date HD titles monthly and at any given time you can select as many as eight to 10 a month."

I think the user intervention for updates is nice. I don't want my machine phoning home without my intervention. Ever.

And if they get a functional player that works, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg (which would differentiate it from my experience with the current offerings), that's great.

I'd love to see in in DLP or Sony 4k, but it's not playing digitally anywhere near Silicon Valley. How is that for ironic!