July 8 - 8:20am EDT   Elgato on Tuesday catered to its European audience through the EyeTV DTT Deluxe. The USB tuner gives viewers access to over-the-air digital broadcasts on DVB-T (Freeview in the UK) in as unintrusive a way as possible, according to the company: the thin stick shape can fit into the USB port of even a MacBook Air without crowding out other devices. A detachable antenna gives strong enough reception for a good signal in less than ideal areas. [full story]

April 11 - 8:35am EDT   Shuttle has taken the unusual step of launching a small form factor PC that caters to both current and obsolete HD videos. While the company already sells systems with Blu-ray alone, the XPC G5 6801M Vista incorporates a combo optical drive from LG that allows it to play both Blu-ray titles as well as the now defunct HD DVD format, letting early adopters keep their libraries active. Playback at 1080p is helped along by the use of a Radeon HD 3450 that offloads most of the work from the CPU and also outputs its video to either DVI or HDMI through a bundled adapter. [full story]