Stop staring at the plastic wrapped photos from our pre-CES tour and have a look at Samsung's totally uncovered 1.5-inch thick Blu-ray player. The BDP4600 is sure to kick off an all new battle of "thin for thin's sake" amongst CE manufacturers, but honestly, given the emphasis on design or complete lack thereof on most Blu-ray hardware so far, this can't come a moment too soon. What does it do? Your guess is as good as ours, until Samsung decides to let loose with the specifications.

Here we are in the first week of the so called "5th quarter" and Hollywood is obviously trying to get your gift cards out of your pocket with a few day-and-date releases. The funniest of the lot is also the one we picked as the title of the week as the hilarious combo of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen once again come together, but this time to bring us Pineapple Express. The other day-and-date releases to pay attention to are The Wackness, Righteous Kill, Babylon A.D. and finally Banqkok Dangerous. None of these are anything spectacular, but most definitely worth a browse over to IMDB to see if one of 'em is up your alley. Also this week is a few box sets TV fans will appreciate, the first season of Dexter and Atmospheres - Earth Air Water from NatGeo. Next week looks to be really slow though, as there are only two titles worth mentioning and one is Appaloosa, which was supposed to be out this week.

• Pineapple Express (Sony)
• The Wackness (Sony)
• Righteous Kill (Starz/Anchor)
• Babylon A.D. (Fox)
• Bangkok Dangerous (Lionsgate)
• Dexter: The Complete First Season (Paramount)
• Disaster Movie (Lionsgate)
• Friday Night Lights (Universal)
• The Last Emperor (Criterion)
• National Geographic: Atmospheres - Earth Air Water (NatGeo)
• The Absolute Best of Ghost Hunters (Image)

We don't have any hard details yet, but word on the street is that Samsung is planning on pairing up its 6.5mm (.2-inch) thick LCD HDTV with an equally svelte Blu-ray deck just 39mm (1.5 inches) thick. We'll find out more during Wednesday's press event, we're sure -- any bets on whether "thin BD players" will be this year's "thin displays?"

When Sony unleashed its BRAVIA BDV-IT1000 Blu-ray HTIB back in August, we were given no indication of a price or release date. Clearly the time has (almost) come for prospective buyers to buy in, as Home Cinema Choice has procured the bundle and posted up a thorough preview. Upon testing, the crew found that it performed much better with movies than with music, and given that a BD deck comes packaged in, we suppose that's the point. The surround experience was also dubbed satisfactory, with "perfect channel separation" and a subwoofer with plenty of oomph. Hit the read link for the hands-on writeup, and get ready to pony up a staggering £1,500 ($2,168) when it ships in the UK this Spring.

Is it any wonder that Blu-ray Disc buyers are taking advantage of Digital Copy more frequently than ever? According to a recent writeup at TWICE, it's becoming even easier to find 'em. Today, a grand total of 52 BDs, practically all from seven major studios, are available with Digital Copy versions of the movie for playback on portable media players and computers. Unfortunately, the total of Digital Copy-enabled DVDs wasn't available to compare, but we are told that Warner Home Video is leading the charge on the Blu side with 19 Digital Copy-equipped Blu-ray Discs. As for the other guys, Lionsgate and Universal offer eight apiece, while Disney offers up three with a fourth coming in February. So, have you taken advantage of Digital Copy on the BD flicks that you've purchased?

Redbox -- the outfit that makes its ends by offering consumers $1 DVD / Blu-ray rentals in kiosk stations positioned at grocery stores, Walmarts and other retail outlets -- has let its CEO out of the corner office long enough to speak with VideoBusiness. With B&M rental outlets feeling the pain from by-mail / online alternatives, VB questioned whether Redbox's business model was viable. Gregg Kaplan noted that the model was indeed viable and profitable, harping on the fact that many families are redirecting out-of-home entertainment dollars to at-home entertainment. He's also publicly confident that the business will continue growing "at a brisk pace," and given that its market share currently sits at just 5% to 10%, it definitely has the room to grow. We have to say, Redbox has it pretty good. While many are too lazy to make a trip to the video store, it's actually convenient to grab a flick while you're out grabbing produce; hit the read link for the full interview.

We've already polled the audience this year to see if you all still visited the tried-and-true rental store on any sort of regular basis, and most everyone made clear that the act of driving out to rent a movie was simply old hat. A new writeup over at the Press of Atlantic City takes a look at how close these establishments are to caving to alternate forms of renting. These days, consumers have a copious amount of options: VOD via their pay-TV provider, Netflix (by mail and online streaming), Hulu, VUDU and tons more internet-based alternatives. It doesn't take long to realize that driving out to get a movie isn't required anymore. Interestingly enough, not everyone expects the mom 'n pop rental shops to close up in the coming years, with an increasingly aging population still sticking to their roots and doing things the ways they always have. What say you? How long does the B&M rental outlet model have before it's overtaken by newer methods?

If you were hoping that another no-name company would release a $400 Blu-ray player, then today is your lucky day as ezGear is very proud to share the details of its BluCobra Blu-ray Disc Player. The BluCobra -- love the name btw -- features 7.1 analog outputs, SACD, TrueHD, DTS-HD HR&MA and the cutting edge profile 1.1, otherwise known as Bonus View. Luckily Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic can rest easy until at least March when this beast is scheduled hits the streets. Oh, and just a little prediction, no way the BluCobra will sell for its MSRP.

Blu-ray sales in the UK didn't keep up their mind melting increases from earlier in the year, but considering the economic slowdown worldwide, a 378% jump from 2007 doesn't seem too disappointing. The British Video Association and Official Charts Company numbers point out a 1.9% lift in DVD sales as a whole in 2008, including 3.7 million on Blu-ray. The Dark Knight finished the year moving 281,000 Blu-ray copies as the UK's best selling HD release. We'll see how things proceed in '09, hopefully with cheaper players on the way.

Ever wondered if anyone ever bothered to utilize that Digital Copy that so many films are shipping with these days? Warner Home Video did, so it engaged in a bit of research to find out who exactly was tapping in. In short, BD movie buyers accessed Digital Copy around twice as much as did DVD buyers, and it was found that the uptake rate is "measurably growing among Blu-ray consumers with successive Warner releases." Still, data shows that Digital Copy usage across the industry is still relatively rare, with title uptake across studio titles ranging between 5% and 13%. We found it particularly interesting that adding a copy of the film to a disc carried with it a substantial expense -- around $1.15 per unit -- so we wouldn't be surprised to see studios refine their strategies to ensure that consumers appreciate the addition.

If Sherwood's BDP-5003 were a buck fifty or so, this thing may actually be worth buying. After all, critics loved the quick start-up and disc load time, appreciated the "very good" image quality and stellar audio performance and bowed to the easy-to-use onscreen menu system. So, what's the problem, you ask? For starters, there's no internal decoding of high-resolution formats nor a 5.1 analog output, so unless you've got a receiver that'll decode for you over HDMI, we wish you the best of luck squeezing any surround out. Furthermore, it's not upgradeable to Profile 2.0, the remote wasn't backlit, DVD upscaling was just so-so and the reds and blues were "slightly oversaturated." In other words, this here player does a decent job with the basics, but for $299 (list), it's about time we started demanding more from our BD decks.

It's always fun to look back and see which predictions were spot on and which were utter failures, so it's with that same fervor and excitement that we present our top ten predictions for the HD arena in 2009. We'll go ahead and warn you that some of these aren't entirely -- how do you say? -- serious, but surely your deductive reasoning skills aren't that badly hampered after last night's romp.

1) Blu-ray player prices will reach $79 before the year's end.
2) First medium-to-large OLED TV will ship to consumers.
3) SED will still be spinning its wheels.
4) HTPCs will become all but forgotten as media streamers and BD decks gain functionality.
5) Wireless HD will still remain insignificant to the general populace.
6) A consumer-level 2K flat-panel will see development.
7) Mayhem will ensue on or around February 17, 2009.
8) 3D HDTVs will reach critical mass at the consumer level, material will still be tough to acquire.
9) 720p video recording will appear on several cellphones.
10) Blu-ray players will be able to effectively replace HD streamers / HTPCs by having access to networked media, Hulu, Netflix Watch Instantly and the entire world of internet-based content.

We can't possibly explain how difficult it was to narrow this down to ten, so do us a favor and mention the predictions we couldn't in comments below. Here's hoping '09 is a banner year for high-def.

Our friends over at Home Media Magazine like to enjoy some time off during the holidays, so once again the Nielsen VideoScan numbers are a little later than we'd like. But late is better than never and the third week of December was pretty good to Blu-ray. Sure it was down over 23 percent from the week The Dark Night was released, but at $46 Million the Blu disc still managed to rake in more revenue then it used to during an entire month not that long ago, and about twice as much as it did the week Iron Man was released. The latest in the Mummy franchise did pretty well its first week out, all things considered, but it was no match for The Dark Knight's sophomore week, which outsold it by over three to one. Mamma Mia was the only other new release that week that manged to even come close, which kinda bucks the PS3 demographic theory. The Blu-ray share chart is once again useless this week, as we wish HMM would filter it down to only show Blu-ray titles that were released day-and-date with DVD. Looking forward there No way Blu-ray can keep up these numbers though, because at this point just about everyone must already own a copy of TDK, but it will be interesting to follow the revenues post Christmas to see if all those Blu-ray players that flew off the shelf have the affect that Hollywood is hoping for.

In a recent report by the NPD group, it is revealed that on average consumers pay $10 more for a Blu-ray Disc then for a DVD. The real interesting part is that evidently that is still to much for some titles. The report goes on to say that while consumers have no problem paying $10 more for titles like The Dark Knight, other movies just aren't worth it. Of course this points to the obvious fact that if Blu-ray Discs cost less more people would 'em. We can't blame Hollywood for trying to get the best price they can for their wares, but at the same time we can understanding waiting for the prices to come down before buying. The other interesting part of the report is how many more men are into Blu-ray then women. We won't even begin to try to understand this one though.