Best Buy's Insignia NS-BRDVD Blu-ray deck falls to $229
[Thanks, Anthony]

We know, you're all politics, sports, tech and other "serious" subjects when it comes to your HDTV programming schedule, it's just you have this...friend who watches daytime syndicated programming. Tell your "friend" that talk show hosts Ellen, Oprah (only a year after initially rumored) and Dr. Phil will all make the jump to glorious high definition. Later in the day, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider make the jump to 720p/1080i (depending on your local station and if they're ready to handle syndicated HD at all), complete with newly built sets and likely a few extra layers of makeup. Anything else your "friend" is still waiting to see get a resolution bump? Check after the break for a video tour of ET's new HDTV-ready digs.
What we're watching tonight:
Cogeco Cable last updated its lineup in a noteworthy way in February, but now customers in Ontario, Canada can feast their eyes on two new high-def channels that are actually worth viewing. Effective immediately, the "majority" of subscribers in Ontario can tune to TSN2 HD for nonstop sports and Super Channel HD for high-definition versions of series, movies, documentaries and music. Check 'em out now (if you haven't already) on slots 729 / 765, respectively.



What we're watching tonight:
We're not quite sure what this means for the immediate future of OTA programming in the UK, but we suppose a "huzzah!" is in order either way. Reportedly, those complicated DVB-T2 Freeview HD trials that were underway have been successful, with Auntie Beeb achieving the "world's first reception of HD pictures over DTT using DVB-T2." If you couldn't guess, DVB-T2 is a successor to the existing DVB-T broadcasting protocol which provides additional bandwidth and more swagger to TV signals. In theory, the switch to DVB-T2 (in conjunction with the move to MPEG-4 from MPEG-2) will enable more high-def content to be available in the UK. Of course, when we say "more," we basically mean "any" -- estimates assert that just three HD stations will be available OTA in the UK by 2009, one of which will be owned by the BBC and the other two by ITV, Channel 4 or Five.




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