Auburn Hills (MI) – Minivans may not be able to shed their soccer mom image, but there is apparently still lots of demand for the roomy family haulers. Freshly divorced from Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler has just launched its new 2008 Dodge Caravan and 2008 Chrysler Town&Country, with a boatload of new features, including the industry's first implementation of in-car Sirius TV.    

Chicago (IL) – Fancy new eyewear from Oakley has popped up on the FCC website: The “O Rokr Pro” will be the second generation of Bluetooth sunglasses to result from the cooperation with Motorola and the first to be capable of music streaming.    

Harman/Becker Automotive Systems has launched a new GPS device that will verbally warn drivers when they are in excess of the legal speed limit.

Dedicated plasma TV backer Pioneer will launch its first pair of "full HD" TV sets witha built-in tuner, 1920 x 1080 resolution and its new deeper black technology this October.

Tokyo (Japan) – Hitachi today unveiled the first two Blu-ray-based camcorders – one “simple” version with an integrated Blu-ray drive and one hybrid model with a Blu-ray / hard drive combination.   In Pictures: Hitachi Z-BD7H Blu-ray camcorder ...  

Middlebury (CT) - Timex today announced a new sports watch that can wirelessly communicate with a nearby iPod, allowing remote control of the digital music player. The iControl watch, part of Timex's Ironman line, can be programmed to sync with the user's iPod.  The watch has specific iPod buttons, including play/pause, volume up/down, and skip forward/back.

Sony has announced a recall for as many as 416,000 digital cameras because a defect in the manufacturing could cause injuries.

Lake Success (NY) – Canon will be offering a new camcorder that records video in 1080i and stores them on a 40 GB hard drive.

Ambient Devices has begun selling an umbrella, which indicates to its owner whether it will be a rainy day or not. The device receives weather data from Accuweather.com – and if there is rain expected within the next 12 hours, the umbrella’s handle will illuminate.      

Chicago (IL) – There’s a new toy coming your way: Sony announced its first portable HD video player.    

Pioneer this week began shipping its latest slate of plasma televisions, claiming they have the darkest black levels of any plasma set.

Analyst Opinion - Sure, Blu-ray had lots of good news this week. But the HD DVD camp has been answering the trend with prices that are putting HD DVD players close to what many of us would consider an affordable and, as a result, reasonable HD solution. So, what do you buy? Here is some food for thought from Rob Enderle.

Ridgefield Park (NJ) – Samsung today officially introduced its third generation of high-definition playback devices, including a Blu-ray home theater system as well as the company’s first hybrid player that can play Blu-ray and HD DVD media.      

Super high-end audio/video manufacturer Denon has decided to enter the HD format war with the announcement of a new Blu-ray Disc player for later this year.

Alviso (CA) - TiVo is planning to put out a new addition to its Series 3 brand of high definition DVRs with a model that's less than 50% cheaper than the current one. TiVo launched its Series 3 HD video recorder last September at a staggering price of around $800. With such a high price point and very little marketing of the device, sales have been significantly lower than the DVR maker anticipated.

Netflix has dropped the monthly price on three of its DVD rental plans.

Disney recently launched a new audio CD technology called CDVU+, hoping it can create a stay of execution for the flagging audio format.