JVC Japan announced the XV-BP1 today [JP], a new Blu-ray player that comes with two interesting features and a fair price. The player supports DivX/MPEG-4/MKV/AVCHD files and sports a USB port at the front so you can plug in a USB stick with your DivX-movies (you know, the ones you downloaded legally earlier) into the device and directly start watching.

Vizio just took the wraps off of its hot Internet-connected HDTVs the other day, but the company has a new Blu-ray player coming soon too. The $188 MSRP will probably get price cuts and sales to bring it down to a more “Walmart” level seeing as Blu-ray players have breached the $100 mark. But even around the starting price, this player might not disappoint.

Remember HD DVD? The video format developed by Toshiba that lost the format war against Blu-ray? Today Toshiba held a pretty interesting annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo during which president Atsutoshi Nishida didn’t say they will revive HD DVD but that his company thinks about producing Blu-ray products.

Blu-ray was declared the winning format last year when HD DVD threw in the towel. This victory came after major studios left the HD DVD camp and joined up with Blu-ray. But just because a victory was celebrated, that doesn’t mean the format is successful. In fact, a recent Harris Interactive poll shows that many purchased an HD DVD player last year and most don’t plan on buying a Blu-ray player anytime soon.

This poll’s results might be shocking to some outside the tech community, but it clearly shows that consumers are ready to move past physical media and onto the digital downloads. In fact, secondary polls were conducted as well and found that an overwhelming number of people are “not at all likely” to purchase a Blu-ray device within the next year and many will buy fewer DVDs within six months.

Maybe you’re not game on buying a refrub Magnivox Blu-ray player even if it’s only $99.99. Meijers has the answer in the form of a Curtis Mathes Blu-ray player for the same price.

Disclaimer: This player is refurbished and it’s a Magnavox. However, it still plays Blu-ray discs and can be had for slightly less than a 100 bones.

Fellow citizens! Please be advised that BARNES & NOBLE has a Blu-ray and DVD sale that might interest you. It follows: if you buy TWO Blu-ray discs or TWO DVDs, you will receive a THIRD ONE for free. This sale covers every single title you can find in the brick-and-mortar store, which works out to some 35,000 online.

We’ve got good news and bad news. Soon you’ll be able copy your Blu-ray discs. Only once though and that’s not the bad news.

Just in case you have some DVDs or Blu-ray discs laying around, Amazon wants ‘em and is willing to give you a gift card for ‘em. All you have to do is head over to Amazon and print out a shipping label. The discs do have to be worth more than $10 and in good condition. They don’t want your nasty-ass used discs.

Contrary to popular belief, I was not a big fan of the movie adaption of the Watchmen, but I didn’t think it was terrible. Anyway, the Blu-ray Director’s Cut will include the The End is Nigh PS3 game, Parts 1 and 2 of Watchmen: The End is Nigh film hybrid as well as the Director’s Cut that includes 25 minutes of extra footage.

Both Sharp and Mitsubishi have announced new LCD TVs for the Japanese market, and both devices seem to be pretty interesting. They will be available over here as early as next month, with neither Sharp nor Mitsubishi having said anything about an international release yet.

If you’ve been on the fence about getting behind Blu-ray, Amazon has a pretty enticing deal going that may very well push you off the aforementioned fence and into Blu-ray’s well-manicured back yard.

How many Blu-ray discs do you own? 10? 12? You need to step up your game, buddy. The Sony Blu-ray Mega Changers we spied at CEDIA is coming soon and will be able to store a crapton of the Blu-ray discs. This changer will come in two different flavors: one will be the standard model with a 200 disc capacity and the other in the high-end ES line with a whopping 400 disc capacity. Are there really that many Blu-ray titles available?

One of Peter Ha’s favorite movies of the past few months, Watchmen, comes out on Blu-ray and DVD in late July. Maybe the 21st, maybe the 28th; who knows. What we do know is that the Blu-ray version of the movie will have some sort of viewing party mode that one dude already called “stupid,” an opinion I disagree with

H/K is finally getting into the Blu-ray game with the BDP 10. The Profile 2.0 player comes with the standard fare of Blu-ray capabailites of BD-Live, 1080/24p, advance audio codexs and a front mounted USB port for playback of DivX and JPEGs off of a FAT32 volume. The back panel is equipped with HDMI, Ethernet, optical, and coaxial audio outputs. Interestingly, the high-end Blu-ray player doesn’t have multichannel analog audio outputs. Guess you can’t have it all.

A report by NPD Group founds that Blu-ray players sold over 400,000 units, an increase of 72 percent over 2008 while sales increased 14 percent. Also, folks are more likely to get a Blu-ray player sooner than later.

Steve Jobs previously stated the Blu-ray was “a big bag of hurt,” but the new iTunes 8.2 splash screen mentions the format nevertheless. This, of course, could mean two things. One, Apple is about to support Blu-ray in it’s media organization software and disc info will be provided by Gracenote. Or two, it’s just something the lawyers wanted to included within the legalese of iTunes as some sort of future proofing.

Just as the technology world is on the verge of bucking physical media for digital storage, G.E. might have extended its life with a laboratory breakthrough. A G.E. lab has been working since 2003 to find materials and techniques to increase the reflectiveness of the holograms so they are actually readable by optical lasers. The breakthrough involved a 200-fold increase in the reflective power of the holograms, which puts the optical media nearly in the range of Blu-ray drives and one step closer to holding a crapton of data.

Gamers! Target has a pretty decent promotion that kicks off this Sunday. The store will give you two (out of a total selection of four: Casino Royale, Hancock, Step Brothers and Resident Evil: Degenration) free Blu-ray movies when you buy the $399 80GB PS3. (The PS3 includes Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm includes in the box.) Not too shabby if you’re in the mood for some PS3.