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The home-theater-in-a-box systems (HTIBs) I reviewed 10 years ago were pretty lame, but I've been amazed by the progress of these systems over the years. The best of the breed, like the Onkyo HT-S990THX and the Samsung HT-BD1250, produce astonishing sound quality for not a lot of money.

But the market appears to be moving away from HTIBs, as more and more of today's buyers are opting for easier-to-install sound bar speakers. I can understand why; HTIBs may be one-box solutions, but they still require extensive setup routines, and you have to run wires to five or more … Read more

The clock is now ticking for consumers to file claims against Nvidia for defective graphics processors. As a result of a class action settlement, consumers were allowed to begin filing their claims related to the cost of repairing laptops that contained the defective chips on Thursday and have until March 14 to file a claim. But this settlement shouldn't be confused with a series of large payouts by Nvidia to PC makers dating back to July 2008.

Nvidia's problems began back in 2007, as CNET has reported, when defective Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) began showing up in laptops from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell--among others.

Nvidia responded for the first time officially in July 2008. At that time, Nvidia took a charge of $196 million. The company took additional charges over the next two years, which, in total, were close to half a billion dollars.

No small part of this money has been allocated for PC makers (also referred to as original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs) that, over the last few years, have been making repairs to laptops from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell. Most laptops affected are older models shipped in 2008.

So, then, what is the class action about? This is settling consumer claims, which Nvidia describes as a "group of customers who wanted remedy [because they] didn't get a repair from their OEM, or they didn't know to get a repair from their OEM, or they felt that their repair wasn't satisfactory," according to a statement from an Nvidia spokesman. (A list of the affected models is here.)

Symptoms are described as (PDF) "distorted or scrambled video on the notebook computer screen...No video on the notebook computer screen even when the notebook computer is on...Random characters, lines or garbled images on the notebook computer screen," among other issues.

In response to the settlement dated August 12, 2010, Nvidia issued this statement.… Read more

Europeans will soon be able to throw their candy wrappers into the composting bin.

U.S.-based bioplastics producer Cereplast announced Wednesday that its patented bioresin will soon be used to make food packaging for a variety of foods in Europe.

The company signed a multimillion-dollar deal to supply its Cereplast Compostables 7003 bioresin to Sezersan Ambalaj, one of the leading producers of food packaging for Europe. Sezersan, which is based in Turkey, will use the resin to produce completely biodegradable food-packaging.

The bioresin is starch-based and can be created from corn, wheat, tapioca, or potato starches, making it 100 … Read more

The cat's reducing its carbon paw print with a shoebox that's more bag than cardboard. Showcased recently at the Design Museum in London, the new packaging will supposedly help the lifestyle apparel company reduce paper use by 65 percent and carbon emissions by 10,000 tons every year.

The Clever Little Bag, designed by Yves Behar of fuseproject, reduces cardboard use and does away with the need for a plastic carrier bag. Instead, the package features a reusable shoebag with an attached loop that goes through a cutout to double as a carrying handle.

According to Puma, the … Read more

This may very well be the beginning of the end for the paper game manuals found in console games. Game publisher and developer Ubisoft on Monday announced that it would no longer be shipping them in its future console titles on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

In their place will be an in-game manual that provides the same types of information about controls, game credits, and other legal information. This is the same kind of offering Ubisoft's been doing with its PC games since last month. According to the company, the first console title to feature such a … Read more

This week on preGAME, hosts Jeff Bakalar and Mark Licea welcome special guest Russ Frushtick (MTV Multiplayer) as they take a first look at the Nintendo DSi XL! We have two units in the studio today and give a ton of comparisons, first impressions, and take live questions from our chat room. We'll also talk about the odd timing of  Nintendo's 3DS announcement.

Also on today's show is a live demo of Just Cause 2, the open-world go-anywhere blow-up-anything action-adventure title. We'll chat with George Wright, the game's associate producer, about how the sequel … Read more

Recently, I outlined my thoughts around simplifying application delivery into cloud-computing environments. At the time, I thought what was needed was a way to package applications in a universal format, whether targeted for infrastructure or platform services, Java or Ubuntu, VMs or disk drives.

The core concept was to define this format so that it combines the actual bits being delivered with the deployment logic and run-time service level parameters required to successfully make the application work in a cloud. I wasn't very clear initially about the core motivation for this proposal, but I will make them explicitly clear … Read more

A few weeks ago I completed a series of posts describing the ways that cloud computing will change the way we utilize virtual machines and operating systems. The very heart and soul of software systems design is being challenged by the decoupling of infrastructure architectures from the software architectures that run on them.

Over the last few weeks, I've been slowly trying to get a grip on what the state of the union is with respect to software "packaging" architectures in cloud computing environments. Specifically, I've been focusing on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings, and … Read more

Believe it or not, the fourth host on today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast is the Nook, Barnes & Noble's e-book reader with a color touch screen and Wi-Fi. The device is currently sold out and on back order throughout B&N, so it wasn't easy to obtain. We had to walk 500 miles and battle a Nazgul to get it, but the in-studio demo was worth the wait. If you haven't seen a Nook up close, you're in for a treat.

Speaking of treats, the holidays come early for The 404 this year! Today's episode starts off normal enough, with another story about a crazed girlfriend who destroys her boyfriend's precious PS3 and a couple making their own paranormal activity to fund their wedding, but the real story is the package we receive halfway through the live show from dedicated 404 listener Cori (Sadacori in the chat room). We've received care packages before, but this one is definitely the best. Just check out the picture up top! Thanks a million Cori, we really appreciate all the Yuletide pounds! :)

Our ill-deserved holiday break is coming up in two weeks, and we get awfully lonely if we don't hear from you, so won't you leave us a voice mail at 1-866-404-CNET and let us know how your holiday season is going? We'd love to hear your voices, but you can also e-mail us at the404(at)cnet[dot]com or add us on Twitter and Facebook as well!