Pirates of the Caribbean was a surprisingly good movie considering it was based on a ride at Disneyworld. The sequel was good, but not as good, in my mind. The cool thing is that they’re both coming out on Blu-ray Disc, and Disney just announced when - May 22nd. That date is meant to coincide with the release of the third Pirates movie. Which surprised me, because I hadn’t heard anything about the movie before this.

Cars, the Pixar hit about stock car racing with a cameo voice acting appearance by Michael Schumacher, has also been dated. It’ll hits the streets in Blu-ray Disc form on June 5th.

Now the problem is that I have both Cars and Pirates on DVD already. I don’t want to go re-buying my whole DVD collection, but it’s so tempting!

Disney Sets ‘Pirates,’ ‘Cars’ Blu-ray Dates

So watching the State of the Union address last night was a hoot.

There was definitely some major filtering going on to reduce wrinkles, and what was Nancy Pelosi doing back there? Chewing her cud?

Anyway, back to the feeds. All of them looked good, but the overlay graphics were the big problem. I didn’t like CBS taking up the bottom quarter with that huge moving flagish thing. NBC I thought was second with a smaller less intrusive flag and the best was HDNet which just got out of the way and had a small bug in the corner. I didn’t check the ABC feed.

The sound was good on all feeds throughout the speech but what was that noise on HDNet at the end of the speech? It sounded like someone inside tin cans clapping. Very weird.

Anyway, This just goes to show that HD is still being tested and broadcasters still have a thing or two to learn.

The VPL-VW50 projector’s been making waves. Remember that it’s a 1080p SXRD projector that includes a 1080p HDMI input, excellent contrast ratio, great blacks, and it costs only $5k. Remember also that some have complained about a less-than-sharp pictures, while others have pointed out that you need to turn off a certain factory setting to do with overscan to get a sharp image.

S&V Magazine recently took a look at this projector, let’s see what they thought.

All in all they liked it very much. Though they did have problems with less-than-stellar deinterlacing of 1080i imagery and colour uniformity. The latter, though, was fixed by an adjustment in the service menu. That’s nice to see, but I don’t want to enter the service menu.

Sony VPL-VW50 1080p SXRD Front Projector

The State of the Union address here in the US gives those of us with HDTV’s a chance to see which channel has the best picture and sound.

This is because all the networks will be getting a pooled feed from one camera.

So pull up a chair and get that channel surfing remote out. Engadgethd will have a poll tomorrow to find out which is the best.

Why you should check out the State of the Union Address - Engadget HD

Panasonic sells one-third of all plasmas sold in the United States. I didn’t know that. But it was a cool little tidbit of information that I read in Ultimate AV’s review of the Panasonic TH-50PX600U plasma HDTV.

This 50″ plasma HDTV retails for $3,299, and has a resolution of 1366 x 768. (There’s that resolution again, Mole!) It has two HDMI inputs and a VGA input too if you want to hook it up to your PC.

So Ultimate AV put this plasma through its paces and found that it has its share of problems that can’t really be glossed over. (See the review for full details.) But for a street price of less than $3000, it does a lot for that money.

Panasonic TH-50PX600U High-definition Plasma TV

Movies often get more than one trailer released for them, and this is the case with today’s two HD trailers, both of which now have a second trailer for them. First up, some turtles!

After the defeat of their old arch nemesis, The Shredder, the Turtles have grown apart as a family. Struggling to keep them together, their rat sensei, Master Splinter, becomes worried when strange things begin to brew in New York City. Tech-industrialist Max Winters is amassing an army of ancient monsters to apparently take over the world.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Then there are the spartans!

Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite.

300

Bill Livolsi at Projector Central recently got a look at the BenQ W10000 DLP projector. This is a full 1080p DLP projector that uses TI’s DarkChip3 technology. The zoom lens isn’t great a 1.35:1, but its lens shift features are good. It boasts 1200 ANSI lumens of brightness, a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, and one HDMI input.

However, this projector is more expensive than competing LCD 1080p displays (at an MSRP of $7k), requires an ISF calibration to get a decent picture, and doesn’t scale standard-definition sources up to 1080p very well.

Actually, this projector is $2k more than the exemplary VPL-VW50 1080p SXRD projector from Sony, and it also costs more than Panasonic’s LCD 1080p display. Personally, I think that this projector would have to work some real magic on you in order to convince you to buy it.

For some real details, read the review below.

Review: BenQ W10000 1080p DLP Home Theater Projector

LG made waves at CES 2007 by announcing their combo Blu-ray and HD DVD player. Lots of people like the idea of a combo player, thinking that it’s the solution to the format wars. Personally, I don’t think the war will be over until a winner has won. But that’s beside the point.

The LG player was only announced at CES, and already it’s been seen in the wild. Crave/CNET is reporting that the LG player is already available for $1,199 at a few CompUSA locations. One small problem - reports indicate that the player does not support HD DVD’s iHD spec, but it’ll still play the movie itself.

LG’s Super Multi Blue HD Player spotted in CompUSA

[Edit: It looks like the player isn’t supposed to be available however. According to IGN, the official release date is February 4th.]