The economic crisis has taken it’s toll on many industries, but not Netflix. Consumers are happy to sit on their butts and escape through a goods movie. The streaming and mailing movie rental company is doing just fine. They closed 2008 with 9.4 million customers and today they announced that they’ve broken the 10 million mark.

The company has added 600,000 net subscribers since January 1st alone. It’s likely only going to go up as customers choose their service over theater tickets or going out on the town to eat.

Some great news for Netflix customers. According the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, they’re starting to test Saturday shipping during the first quarter of 2009, but apparently only in “certain parts of the country.” So, normally if you send back a disc on Friday, you would have to wait for Monday for your next disc to ship.

If Netflix receives it on a Saturday, you could receive your next disc as quickly as Monday. That is, if you live close enough to a distribution center to get one day delivery. That should make a lot of people happy. It’s only one day, but still. We like everything now!

iLuv is known for their various iPod docks and speakers, but now they’re hitting us with the iLuv i1166 PMP that features a 9 inch screen for playback of your DVD’s and movies via your iPod. It has built in stereo speakers and a rechargeable Li-Polymer battery for longer playback.

Some specs include: MPEG-4 Certified to play MPEG-4 Videos, Compact and light-weight portable DVD Player with iPod dock, Play back from DVD or your iPod video through the 9″ widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio) TFT LCD, Watch your favorite video on TV through Video output, Built-in powerful stereo speakers, Enhanced user interface with detailed controls and graphics based display, Supports 3-way power sources,AC Power Adapter, and Car Adapter.

Lancerlink of Japan has introduced its MPJ-101 mini projector that also doubles as a decent portable media player. It doesn’t come cheap though at $1,000. Some features include: 640 × 480 resolution, 10 lumens brightness, 1GB internal flash memory, SD/SDHC/MMC/MS Pro memory card slot, USB connectivity and Two 0.5W speakers.

Supported file formats include MPEG-4 (AVI/ASF/MP4), H.264 (MP4)?MotionJPEG (AVI), MP3 and JPEG. MP4/ASF/AVI. It comes bundled with the ArcSoft Media Converter, so you can carry around your favorite shows and movies on a memory card and watch them whenever you want.

The ASUS F50 and F70 range of notebooks sport features tailored specifically for users who want both high definition audio visual entertainment and extensive multitasking capabilities. Users looking for large screen entertainment and massive storage will want the Asus F70SL, the world’s first 17.3″ notebook with 16:9 golden aspect ratio for cinematic viewing and dual hard disk drives providing up to 1 TB in storage space.

The Asus F50 and F70 range of notebooks come standard with high definition audio quality and a 16:9 Full High Definition display for high contrast rate, brightness and color saturation. An HDMI port allows users to connect their notebooks to larger external LCD displays or other HDMI-capable devices.

The Cinema 21:9 is claiming to be the planet’s first cinema-proportioned LCD TV, so this should be the ultimate LCD to watch movies on. The 56 inch diagonal will also feature Ambilight technology around the borders. I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t real. Some of you will claim photoshop. We were skeptical too, but it turns out that it’s the real deal.

According to Philips, the panel will be shipping this Spring in Germany, Belgium, the UK and France. Their full site will launch on January 29th. Sadly, there are no pricing details and no US release date as of yet.

Last week we told you about some of WowWee’s new products. Much to our surprise that included non-robot items. Like these Cinemin mini-projectors.

They’re all designed to support your iPod or iPhone. The projector product line includes the Cinemin Swivel for $299, which features an adjustable 90-degree hinge for ceiling projection, the Cinemin Stick for handheld projections, for $349, and the Cinemin Station at $399, a base station of sorts that allows you to dock your iPod/iPhone and features embedded speakers. This entire line of projectors connect to all the iPods and most laptops.

Summer may be gone, but you can at least start planning for some fun next summer. Open Air Cinema has just released its new 16-foot inflatable projection screen that folds up easily into a 20-pound bag, making it very portable when traveling.

After the screen is fully inflated, it will remain in place and tethered using straps. Which doesn’t sound all that promising. It’s 220″ of widescreen heaven. So if you somehow survive this economy, why not have some fun next summer and fork over $999. Add some helium and give the whole neighborhood a treat.

This isn’t really a surprise, but if you like you can put your hands on your face and feign shock. Just last week, we were speculating that Blockbuster might launch its video-on-demand (VOD) solution before the holidays. Here it is.

Since the Blockbuster set-top box is official, here are some specs: There are 2000 movies available for a 1.99 rental price. You have 30 days to watch a movie after the order. You have it for 24 hours once the movie has been started. It sports WIFI connectivity and is HD Capable. No word on pricing for the box itself.

Rumor is that Blockbuster could roll out its own set-top box by the time the holidays are fully upon us, which would let users receive Movielink downloads in the comfort of their own living room. There isn’t much info available, but it will be interesting to see whether this rumor pans out or not. Netflix having some competition is probably a good thing, but Blockbuster will have to come up with something really interesting to even compete.

Blu-ray was able to beat HD DVD early this year to become the HD format champion. After it won the format wars many hoped that the price for Blu-ray players would become more affordable. So far that price drop hasn’t really materialized.

According to ABI Research, the Blu-ray price drop may finally be here. ABI says that prices for Blu-ray players this holiday season could be as low as $150 to $200. Amazon has a Samsung Blu-ray player for $200 that includes four Blu-ray movies with it. According to ABI Blu-ray hardware makers need to reduce prices to gain the momentum needed to penetrate the market further.

When customizing your PC at Dell, you can now click on a $19 option called “Iron Man movie with bonus content?” Say what? We love Iron Man, but surely it’s full of evil DRM. It’s what Dell’s Global Consumer Group Director is calling Dell’s “slow immersion into content as a major piece of the puzzle in terms of what consumers want from a PC.”

The flick can be had on the Inspiron, Studio, or XPS laptop or desktop, playable on that machine or your choice of Windows Media Extender. Dell will soon offer more movie preloads and eventually a whole iTunes type of download store. The move is a gutsy one and could let them get to customers first, before Apple. Customers getting movies when they purchase their PC should give them an advantage.

I don’t know how you are, but when I buy something, like say a movie, I like to be able to use it as many times as I see fit. I paid good money for it after all. Apparently, users who purchase movies from the Sony PS3 video store are allowed to download it only one more time. Which sucks. Sony does tell you in their license agreement that “Content cannot be redownloaded once it has been downloaded to either a PLAYSTATION 3 or PSP system.” I guess the moral of the story is to treat digital downloads as rented movies rather then purchases.

Hackers will get a machine to do all kinds of things that it should do, but doesn’t. Correcting the oversights of those damn lazy companies. We want things the way we want them. That’s why some Wii coders have made it so the Wii can have DVD playback.

It’s done by installing a hidden channel on the console, which gives it a DVD access library so you can watch all your favorite dvds with the MPlayer application, an open source media player. The install file works on both modded and unmodded Wiis. They are apparently experimenting with playing media from SD cards as well. Now you’ll be able to watch any DVD you want one last time before Blu-Ray creeps into your life.

Sony has released an update to it’s corporate strategy through 2010. It talks about initiatives to move Sony from recovery to the “leading global provider of networked consumer electronics and entertainment.” The most welcome short term news is that Sony will have a movie download service available to US PlayStation 3 owners this summer.

Japan and Europe will have to wait until later for once. More details should be coming “next month,” probably at E3. As far as Sony’s gaming business, they expect it to be profitable by March 2009, the end of this fiscal year. There you go, summer. You won’t have to wait as long as you thought.