Audio Video News

Oh boy, the times, they are a changin’. With the explosion of integrated soundbar offerings—including some pretentious premium models—it would be easy to dismiss the audio/video receiver, once the great ruler of the home theater world, as an aging relic. Enthusiasts know better...

Dave Rodgers is on a mission to ensure owners of video projection systems, and professionals who set up these systems, get it right. As marketing manager for Garden Grove, California-based Elite Screens, he travels the world promoting the virtues of bringing the movie theater home or, as he likes to say, the larger-than-life experience that only a huge video projection screen can deliver.

Do you find the previews that automatically play when you launch Netflix intrusive and annoying? Good news: Netflix has responded to the outcry of disgruntled users with a fix.

If the advent of Dolby Atmos in home surround gear has pricked up your ears, you may be interested to hear that object-oriented surround will also be part of the forthcoming ATSC 3.0 broadcast TV standard. That doesn’t mean Atmos itself is hitting the airwaves. Instead, other surround encoding systems will be tested this summer from Dolby, DTS, and a consortium of other companies.

Intrigue in the format war continued Wednesday with the Blu-ray Disc group announcing that while it would allow mandatory managed copy, it would not (for now) adopt iHD-based interactivity. Hewlett-Packard (HP) had officially requested that the Blu-ray group incorporate both technologies, which are supported by Toshiba's HD DVD format and are key reasons that Microsoft and Intel have thus far supported HD DVD and not Blu-ray Disc.

Computer giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) made good on its <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/news/111705hpbluray">threat</A>, announcing that it will support HD DVD as well as Blu-ray Disc as the next generation optical disc format. HP had previously supported Sony’s Blu-ray Disc format exclusively, but has apparently jumped ship over the Blu-ray Disc Association’s (BDA) refusal to adopt the iHD interactivity layer into Blu-ray’s standards.

The <A HREF="http://www.hrrc.org">Home Recording Rights Coalition</A> (HRRC) has thrown its support behind a proposal that could extend consumers' rights in the digital age.