Home prices are plummeting, people are maxing out their credit cards, the stock market is in convulsions, health care costs are out of control, and the economy is rocketing into recession. America needs a morale booster. What better time to raise cable television rates?
Two up-and-coming DTV makers are in the doghouse. The Federal Communications Commission has fined them for failing to build digital tuners into their flat-panel sets
The world's largest music label has become the first to potentially break with the world's largest online music retailer. Vivendi's Universal Music Group declined to renew its annual agreement with iTunes, selling content only "at will."
Sharp is finally ready to begin selling - in Japan, at first, and then in the U.S. later in the year - the LC-65GE1, a jumbo 65V-inch1 LCD flat-panel HDTV, touted by Sharp as "the world's largest LCD model". The new giant HDTV uses a full-spec high-definition low reflection Advanced Super View LCD panel with 1,920 by 1,080 pixels (1080i). Sharp says that high-speed full-motion video artifacts are significantly reduced as a result of Sharp's QS (Quick Shoot) technology. In the new model, crimson has been added to the standard red, green, and blue backlighting in order to recreate previously unreproduceable colors such as "the deep red of aged wine". (No mention was made of the set's ability to accurately reproduce the color of the $3.99 bottle of cheap rose I bought last week, but I guess that's to be expected.) The TV's audio package includes Sharp's 1-Bit Digital Amplifier and bottom-mounted High-Aperture Speaker System.