LATEST ADDITIONS

Mark Fleischmann | Apr 02, 2007 | 0 comments

The news that EMI will sell no-DRM downloads through iTunes couldn't have come at a better time. Music downloads are growing but not fast enough to offset sinking CD sales. Electronic libertarians assert that digital rights management is a big part of the problem, because it balkanizes the music-player world, preventing iTunes purchases from playing on non-iPods. Steve Jobs flew to London especially to join EMI in announcing that the big label's entire catalogue will become available in AAC, the iPod's favored file format, without DRM, and at 256 kilobits per second, which should provide higher quality than either MP3 at the same data rate or standard iTunes downloads at 128kbps. You'll have to pay a premium price of $1.29 per track. And if your music player doesn't do AAC, you're out of luck. However, EMI will cover those bases by selling through other download services in MP3 and WMA. For law-abiding music lovers, this is great news. Note, however, that this move is more a breakthrough in marketing than in law. EMI and Apple aren't saying you can copy anything anywhere. But it would be fair to interpret this as tacit recognition of reality--the beginning of the end of the criminalizing of fair use. It has been at least several months in the making, following the anti-DRM manifesto of Jobs and small-scale experimentation by EMI. No word on when the Beatles catalogue will become legally downloadable. Yet.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Reference DVD: Flags of Our Fathers

Josef Krebs | Apr 01, 2007 | 0 comments

(Paramount) Clint Eastwood's cinematic debunking of wartime heroism makes for a terrific home theater experience. The clear, crisp, and bright DVD picture has depth and detail to burn, even in the many nighttime scenes. Although the combat images are tinted like old photographs, bursts of orange flames cut through the sea of green and brown when the big guns blast.

Audio Video News

Another HD Milestone For Blu-ray

| Apr 01, 2007 | 0 comments

Sony issued a press release last week announcing that the latest James Bond film, <I>Casino Royale</I>, has hit another milestone, surpassing 100,000 units shipped to retailers. This follows that same title's debut in the top ten in DVD sales at Amazon, and both feats are firsts for either HD format. In addition, according to Sony this early success also puts BD ahead of where DVD was at its inception.

Tower Speaker Reviews

PSB VisionSound Series VS400/VS300 Surround Speaker System

Thomas J. Norton | Apr 01, 2007 | 0 comments

We haven't spent a lot of review time here at <I>Ultimate AV</I> on two major trends in speaker design. One of them is euphemistically referred to in the industry as "architectural speakers." That is, speakers designed to be mounted either in or on a wall. The other, an outgrowth of the on-wall category, is the tall, slender column speaker that takes up little floor space.

Fear And Loathing Over Comcast All For Naught.

| Mar 31, 2007 | 16 comments

Comcast came in on Tuesday and while I haven't been able to bury myself in my theater room as much as I'd like I've seen enough to know that my fear and loathing regarding Comcast's HD image quality was for naught. I'm not 100% clear on where Comcast stacks up with DirecTV in HD image quality yet in absolute terms, but I've seen enough to know that it's far from the disaster I'd feared. But, that's with me going into the set-top box's service menu and double-checking the settings to get them right. Lemme explain.

Ears On

Legalese Spares Home Network Device

Mark Fleischmann | Mar 30, 2007 | 4 comments

A California superior court ruling saved Kaleidescape from extinction yesterday. The decision is good news for what is arguably the best-designed home networking system for movies and music. But it is bad news for similar products, and those who might want to market or buy them, because it spares Kaleidescape only on a technicality, and does not necessarily set a precedent that would protect similar devices. The plaintiff was the DVD Copy Control Association, which argued that Kaleidescape illegally de-encrypted its Content Scramble System in copying DVDs (including potentially rented or borrowed ones) to the system's hard drive. Kaleidescape argued that the material remained secure on the hard drive and was distributed throughout the home via protected interfaces such as HDMI. Judge Leslie C. Nichols ruled against CCA, saying that the CSS spec was not legally part of the licensing agreement, which he characterized as "a product of a committee of lawyers." You can't make this stuff up. He also faulted CCA for failing to provide guidance when Kaleidescape solicited it: "I saw this as a case where no one sat down to talk." Kaleidescape feels "vindicated"; CCA may appeal. CCA's lawsuit against Molino Networks, whose $2000 system cost far less than Kaleidescape's, killed that company in 2004 by starving it of venture capital. The Motion Picture Association of America has "warned" about 80 chip makers about CSS and obtained three out-of-court settlements. Your right to store DVD content on a home network remains ambiguous at best. See EETimes and ArsTechnica coverage.

Audio Video News

An Xbox For The Elite

| Mar 29, 2007 | First Published: Mar 30, 2007 | 0 comments

Microsoft is going up-market with its Xbox 360 gaming console, unveiling the Xbox 360 Elite. At $479 the Elite is clad in black, which undoubtedly looks trick, adds an HDMI interface, and sticks a thumb in Sony's eye with a 120GB removable hard drive. The $299 Xbox 360 basic (like the $499 Sony PS3) features a 20GB hard drive. There is no integrated HD DVD drive, which means that having an Xbox 360 Elite and HD DVD playback is now $679, just about 80 bucks more than the $599 Sony PS3, which is a full-on Blu-ray Disc player. And even more curiously, Microsoft isn't including integrated Wi-Fi, which is a huge plus for the $599 (60GB hard drive) version of the PS3.

Blu-ray Player Reviews

Sony PlayStation 3

Chris Chiarella | Mar 29, 2007 | 1 comments

Shoot the robot dog. This is an HT gamer's new best friend.

It's just so beautiful. I realize that's a pretty shallow initial evaluation of Sony's much-hyped super-fun-happy-smile machine, the PlayStation 3. But the lines are so bold, the shape is so commanding, and it's all just so. . .shiny. Of course, it's what's inside that counts, and, in this case, that would be the imposing new Cell Broadband Engine, which Sony developed in collaboration with IBM and Toshiba. The Cell engine features a mind-blowing eight processors working in parallel—a main CPU, plus seven Synergistic Processing Units. It's 40 times as powerful as the PlayStation 2's processor, performing 208 billion floating-point calculations per second. This translates to highly detailed, highly interactive environments, complex effects, and bigger battles with a greater number of enemies. Backing this is the RSX graphics-processing unit, which is capable of 4X antialiasing. This can be a real boon in the large-format high-definition universe. The games themselves spin on the PS3's Blu-ray drive and arrive on high-capacity BD-ROM discs.

Ears On

Verizon Ahead in Telco-TV Race

Mark Fleischmann | Mar 29, 2007 | 1 comments

Arguably one of the biggest tech stories of our lifetimes is the transformation of telephone companies into full-service providers of television, internet, and phone service. The latest news is that Verizon is making this transformation much faster than AT&T. Verizon has signed up 207,000 subscribers for its FiOS service while AT&T's U-verse lags behind at 10,000 (a figure the company is actually bragging about!). This isn't a direct competition because their service areas don't overlap. Verizon serves northeastern and mid-Atlantic states while AT&T dominates the south, the midwest, and part of the west coast. There is, however, a struggle between two visions: Verizon's, which brings fiber right to your doorstep, and AT&T's, a hybrid that uses old copper wiring for the last mile. Verizon is pressing its point with the announcement that FiOS network speeds will multiply by four to eight times with the implementation of GPON (gigabyte passive optical network) technology from Alcatel-Lucent. When I visited Verizon last year, I was told GPON would enable delivery of as many as three simultaneous HD signals by 2007-08.

Ears On

Will Satellite Merger Lower Prices?

Mark Fleischmann | Mar 28, 2007 | 1 comments

Soon after announcing their hoped-for merger, Sirius and XM told an investor conference call they planned to raise rates. They're beaming a different tune now. If the merger goes through, they promise to allow subscribers to block adult channels, pay a la carte, and save an unspecified amount off the current minimum of $12.95/month. The climate surrounding the merger has been chillier than expected. FCC chair Kevin Martin has expressed the opinion that the satellite services' federal operational licenses prevent them from being combined into a single company. And Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), chair of the Senate Antitrust Committee, has referred to the proposed merger as "a real bad deal for consumers."

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