Panasonic Announces Line of 3D Blu-Ray Recorders and Players

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No, the whole 3D thing didn’t go away after CES. It’s still happening, and Panasonic plans to get in on the ground floor. The Japanese electronics maker will be releasing four 3D Blu-Ray recorders/players to compliment the 3D Viera plasmas they intend to sell. The new units will be available first in Japan this spring.

The DMP-BDT900 is just a player, unlike the rest of Panasonic’s new line up. It comes with 4 HDMI ports, an SD card slot, LAN, USB ports, Viera link, and BD-LIVE. It will be available for $1,500. The 3D Blu-Ray recorders come with hard drives in 2TB, 1TB and 750GB sizes. These devices will have two digital and one analog TV tuner, 2 HDMI ports, LAN, USB port, SD card slot, and Viera Link. The three models will go for $3,350 for the 2TB model, $2,200 for the 1TB unit and $1,800 for the 750GB one.

So if you’re the early adopter type, and you’ll be in Japan this Spring, start saving up now.

Netflix Teases Console Owners with 1080p Streaming Announcement, then Pulls the Rug

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Hey, did you hear? Netflix plans to bring 1080p streaming and 5.1 surround sound to its streaming HD video service to later this year. Pretty rad, right?

It would be, except Netflix is taking a mulligan on the recent announcement, and now says that it incorrectly acknowledged 1080p streaming in the company's 2010 roadmap. Boo, hiss! Netflix didn't say why it pulled the about-face, though it probably has to do with bandwidth. While not official, Netflix says the requirement to stream 720p HD content on an HD-compatible box is "typically" 5Mbps. It's a safe bet that 1080p would require more, and maybe Netflix feels there aren't enough streaming subscribers with fast enough broadband speeds.

That means for the foreseeable future, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 owners are stuck with "underwhelming" 720p. That's right, in somewhat related news, Steve Swasey, VP of Corporate Communications for Netflix, downplayed the streaming service when discussing what Wii owners are missing.

"PS3 and Xbox users have 1 in 17 titles available in HD, and it's streamed in 720... it's not in 1080, and it's not in 5.1 surround sound or anything," Swasey said during an interview with The Wire. "So the HD experience at Netflix Instant Watching isn't that overwhelming. It's a little bit underwhelming. So the Wii folks aren't going to miss that much."

What a sales pitch!