Sixteen million UK households will have access to Freeview HD by Christmas 2010, according to Freeview managing director Ilse Howling.

Speaking at London's Intellect Consumer Electronics Conference, Howling said the new service, featuring BBC HD, ITV HD, Channel 4 HD and (at some point) Five HD will be available to half of all UK homes in time for the 2010 World Cup. This will rise to 60 per cent by the following Christmas.

Howling also revealed that there are now one million Freeview+ PVRs in use, a figure achieved in just 12 months. '40 per cent of all current Freeview box sales are PVRs. And with 12 million analogue videos, DVD, and other recorders in UK homes we know there is an even bigger market out there,' she declared.

The Freeview chief also confirmed that work was progressing on a next-generation Freeview box, able to offer BBC iPlayer and other VOD services. 'These Freeview services will stand alongside the very best in the market today, and side-by-side with new products as they emerge, such as the proposed Canvas service.'

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JVC's debut Blu-ray disc player, the XV-BP1, looks likely to be the first from a major Japanese brand to offer hi-def MKV file playback support as part of its multimedia functionality.

It joins LG's BD370 (which it appears to be related to), in also offering buyers the ability to play back DivX and MPEG-4 content from USB.

The model is Profile 2.0 compliant, and is compatible with AVCHD encodings, along with a wide range of home-brew media (BD-ROM, BD-R/RE, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD+R DL and CD-R/CD-RW).

Standard Blu-ray specification highlights include1080p24 playback with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream output.

Via Home Cinema Choice

Sony says that it has managed to reduced its global CO2 emissions by approximately 100,000 tons over the last financial year.

The achievement comes on the back of several company-wide environmental initiatives; Sony says 'through continuous energy efficiency efforts, European operations have reduced CO2 emissions by approximately 90 per cent' between 2000 and 2008.

The Studio's disc replication arm, Sony DADC, has announced that it's purchasing more than 83 million kilowatt-hours of green power in the US annually - enough to cover 44 per cent of its purchased electricity use.

Meanwhile, solar photovoltaic cells have been installed on the roof of a building on the Sony Pictures Culver City lot, as part of a pilot solar energy scheme.

Via Home Cinema Choice

Projectiondesign says its eagerly-awaited avielo kroma LED-lit DLP projector will arrive in the UK 'imminently'.

Utilizing ReaLED solid state illumination instead of a traditional lamp, it will take on Vivitek's H9080FD at the high-end of the DLP home cinema market.

The Norwegian brand's Joe Manning, says: 'From an image quality point of view, our ReaLED technology gives us an incredible contrast ratio and an image with a colour spectrum purer than any other technology. Additionally, absence of some of the effects traditionally seen with other projectors produces a picture that is better than anything we've seen before. The kroma produces outstanding imagery.'

Projectiondesign says that the new LED light source provides 'a wider and more consistent colour gamut, with richer and better colour rendition than any competing illumination technology.' It's also expected to run for 100,000 hours without the need for servicing.

All models in the avielo series of projectors are designed and hand-built in Fredrikstad, Norway. The industrial version, the FL32, made it's debut recently at the Infocomm Expo.

According to UK market research outfit Futuresource Consulting, Blu-ray software sales could account for half of all packed video media by 2012, but sales at present are not meeting expectations.

Speaking at the US Entertainment Supply Chain Association Conference, the company said that it was revising its sales expectations for Blu-ray titles downwards this year because of ongoing low attachment rates from PS3 owners.

It seems that owners of the Sony super-console only buy one or two BD movies a year, compared to between five and eight from owners of standalone players.

Futuresource's Alison Casey, who says disc sales will boom when player prices fall, predicts that a $50 BD player will arrive in 2012.

Via Home Cinema Choice