LATEST ADDITIONS

Geoffrey Morrison | Feb 07, 2006 | 1 comments

Am I the only one who saw similarities between Jerome Bettis and The Rolling Stones? How often do you see 34-year-old running backs, whose job it is to get hit on every play? By the same line, how often do you see 60+ year-old rock stars? Granted, I think Keith Richards has been dead since the 80s, and I think it’s debatable if Charlie Watts was ever alive, but still. Forty-two years and still going strong, that’s 15 years longer than most famous rock stars are alive.

The S&V Interview

HT Talks To . . . Phil Ramone

Steve Guttenberg | Feb 07, 2006 | 0 comments

I could easily fill pages of this magazine with a complete list of Phil Ramone's credits and achievements, but I'll stick with this condensed rundown. He's won 12 Grammy Awards and one Emmy, and he's worked with a virtual who's who of music: Burt Bacharach, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Chicago, Gloria Estefan, Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Elton John, Quincy Jones, B.B. King, Madonna, Luciano Pavarotti, Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra, the Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, James Taylor—and those are just the highlights. Ramone is chairman emeritus of the board of trustees of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He is also a trustee of the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.

HDTV Tech

Video Measurements

Geoffrey Morrison | Feb 07, 2006 | 0 comments

The details on all things video.

I'm sure many of you read over the measurement boxes in our video reviews, take what you need from them, and move on. But what does it all mean, really? Why do we do it the way we do? For those of you new to the magazine or video displays in general, what does any of it mean? These are excellent questions.

Ears On

Goliath Tunes

Mark Fleischmann | Feb 07, 2006 | 2 comments

What major U.S. retailer is offering free streaming music videos recorded in its own studios? Nope, I'm not going to make it easy for you by running the company logo as artwork of the day. Hint: It's the same company that's forced the music industry to market censored versions of hit CDs. Still in the dark? It's also the same retailer that accounts for two percent of the U.S. economy, according to NPR Marketplace. I'm talking about Wal-Mart, of course. Check out Soundcheck on the company's homepage. The young and photogenic artist currently featured is Yellowcard (yup, that's them in the pic). Switchfoot has already been featured and Miranda Lambert is coming up. It's all a come-on for Wal-Mart's download service which offers WMA files at 128kbps (with DRM, of course) at a competitive 88 cents per track. iPod owners should note that while iTunes will convert WMA files to AAC, it will not convert WMA-DRM. Oh, and you Firefox and Safari users will have to swallow your pride for a few minutes and use Internet Explorer. That's what you get for making deals with the devil.

New Products

New Products: Artison LRS-IW Speaker In-Wall Surround Speaker

Peter Pachal | Feb 06, 2006 | 0 comments

Artison is all about melding speakers with home

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décor. No surprise, then, that it's now offering an in-wall surround speaker, the LRS-IW ($700 a pair). But this model has a couple of notable twists. First, it has a speaker enclosure that mounts inside the wall, so the wall cavity won't screw up its sound.

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Ears On

The SunnComm Also Sets Mark Fleischmann | Feb 06, 2006 | 1 comments

I love Leo Kottke's virtuoso guitar playing. Still, I hesitated to buy his album Sixty Six Steps, with bassist Mike Gordon, when Amazon specifically warned: "This Sony CD includes SunnComm MediaMax Version 5 content protection software that may expose security vulnerability when played on PCs." I don't love anyone quite enough to put a MediaMax-tainted CD into my PC. And when I rip a new CD for use in my iPod, I prefer a nice clean MP3 to the WMA-DRM format dictated by MediaMax. The iPod doesn't accept WMA files with DRM.

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New Products

New Product: Vizio 37-inch LCD TV Peter Pachal | Feb 05, 2006 | 0 comments

Good size, good price - what more could you ask for in a TV? Okay, yeah, high-definition would be nice, and Vizio's 37-inch L37 LCD set ($1,500) has that covered, too, sporting a screen with 1,366 x 768-pixel resolution.

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New Products

New Product: Outlaw Audio 7.1-Channel Receiver Peter Pachal | Feb 05, 2006 | 0 comments

There's something for everybody in Outlaw Audio's 7.1-channel Model 1070 receiver ($899 via Web only): Video fans will like its DVI connectors (compatible with HDMI jacks using optional adapters) that keep HDTV signals in digital form all the way to your TV.

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New Products

New Product: Kensington SX 2000 iPod Speaker Peter Pachal | Feb 05, 2006 | 0 comments

Even if you don't see the dock connector on the side, one look at the gloss-white finish of Kensington's SX 2000 speaker ($160) will tell you that it has to be an iPod something or other. Fitting any iPod with a dock connector, the 16-inch-wide transportable speaker uses NXT SurfaceSound technology, which produces sound by vibrating a flat panel.

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Other Tech

Worse and Worser Ken C. Pohlmann | Feb 05, 2006 | 0 comments

From the vantage point of Sony BMG'S corporate headquarters, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. With music piracy up and profits down, it made complete sense to add some get-tough digital-rights management (DRM) to certain CDs. But what seemed smart in the corporate world led to a royal debacle in the real world.

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