SHARP DHP20H

IN THE SAME price bracket as Sony’s BDP-S300 (far right ), the Sharp stands out from the crowd with its Quick Start mode, which chops down the time the player takes to get up and running from cold. It cuts the 30-60 second it takes in normal mode down to just 8-10 seconds in Quick start. Much more agreeable.
Elsewhere, you’ve got 108op /24 output, and picture quality is must as peachy as the S300 , PS3 or LG. On planet audio, you get 5.1 analogue output as digital options including bitstream True HD via HDMI. Solid.

Microsoft Shows Off Web Ad Prototypes

microsoft Corp.’s online advertising researchers will spend this year teaching computers to be smart about sticking ads into video clips, and to be even smarter about targeting ads to specific Web surfers.
microsoft showed off a handful of early-stage advertising projects at its headquarters Tuesday that may or may not turn up as part of microsoft’s Web advertising platform.
The demonstrations come just days after microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for yahoo Inc., which, if successful, will boost the software maker’s Web traffic and online ad revenue.