The holidays are coming early for Nook tablet fans. Barnes & Noble's newest Nook tablets will start shipping this week.
The 7-inch Nook HD and its bigger brother, the 9-inch Nook HD+, should make their way to customers who pre-ordered the devices sometime next week.
Both HD Nooks will also roll out to brick and mortar Barnes & Nobles as well as 15,000 additional stores such as Target, Walmart and Best Buy.
'No shortage of new tablets'
"Our two new tablets offer the best quality reading and entertainment experiences, at the best price," William Lynch, Barnes & Noble CEO, said in a statement about the launch.
"There's no shortage of new tablets in the market, but with Nook HD and Nook HD+, every book read, every movie watched, every game played is rendered in a digital quality never before seen and unmatched by those other tablets."
Lynch is right about the increasingly crowded tablet market. In the 7-inch tablet field alone there is Google's Nexus 7, Amazon's Kindle Fire HD and the newly announced iPad mini (thought it stretches closer to eight inches).
With the holiday shopping season still a month out, the early start should help the Nook HD get a foothold in the market before the Black Friday rush.
More videos for the HD
Just in time for the release of those new HD media devices, Barnes & Noble also announced it's beefing up its video offerings.
The bookseller struck deals with NBC Universal, 20 Century Fox and others studios to get tons of TV shows and movies for its customers to buy and rent.
But Nook users don't have to buy the new HD devices to benefit from the expanding library. The bookseller will release the free Nook Video app so users can access their libraries on a variety of platforms.
Users will also be able to watch UltraViolet videos on the HD and HD+, meaning folks will be able to enjoy the digital copies that come with physical movie discs on their new Nooks.
U.S. customers will reap the benefits of the new video offerings this fall, and UK viewers will have to wait until the holiday season draws nearer.
Those new 7-inch Nook HDs start at $199 (UK£123 /AUD$191) for 8GB of space, and $229 (UK£142 /AUD$220) for 16GB.
The 9-inch HD+ will run $269 (UK£167 /AUD$259) for 16GB and $299 (UK£185 /AUD$288) for 32GB.
Via HotHardWare, Engadget
