Audio Video News

Sort By:  Post Date TitlePublish Date
Audio Video News
Beam Me Up a Movie, Scotty
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Feb 18, 2006  | 
MovieBeam wants a piece of the $10 billion U.S. movie-rental industry, and they think they can do it by charging you $199.99 for the box (after $50 introductory rebate), a one-time service activation fee of $29.99, and between $1.99 and $3.99 per movie (add a $1 surcharge for HD - that's right, HD - titles).
Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
MovieBeam Delivers On-Demand Movies In HD
 |  Feb 16, 2006  | 

Earlier this week the video-on-demand movie service called MovieBeam was reborn, and will offer movies from six major Hollywood studios in standard definition, and high definition movies from Warner Bros. and Disney. According to MovieBeam, Disney, Miramax, and Touchstone titles will be available day and date with the DVD release, while movies from other studios will conform to a 30-45 day window between DVD release and on-demand availability. Although MovieBeam has specified that around 10% of its titles will be in HD, there is no word yet as to whether the day and date titles specifically will be in HD.

Continue Reading »
Other TechAudio Video News
Two-Channel for Beginners
Chris LeGrange  |  Feb 15, 2006  |  First Published: Feb 07, 2006  | 
I love home theater, but can I find room in my heart for stereo?

I recently visited Berkeley, California, to take a tour of Sumiko, the U.S. distributor for many high-end European audio manufacturers, such as Sonus faber, REL, Primare, Pro-ject, SME, CineVERSUM, SEQUENCE, and Vienna Acoustics. They gave us several demonstrations, including a rather moving and educational listening session with their Cremona speaker line in a two-channel setup. They played several types of music for us, and, with every track, I felt myself getting more involved, more entranced, almost emotional. It wasn't unlike the first time I'd attended Carnegie Hall and listened to a symphony. I was enjoying music explicitly, not listening passively while I cooked, cleaned, exercised, and otherwise lived my life.

Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
Industry News
 |  Feb 12, 2006  | 

<B>Marantz Becomes Preferred Brand Of Juilliard</B>
<BR>
Marantz has entered into a strategic marketing relationship with New York's prestigious Juilliard School, and will be recognized as "the preferred audio/video brand of The Juilliard School." Announced in December of 2005, the relationship coincides with Juilliard's yearlong 100th anniversary celebration, and will see Marantz serving as the performing arts conservatory's Official Audio/Visual Sponsor and donating its AV products for educational use and world premier performances at the school throughout the year.

Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
On the Wall We Go
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Feb 12, 2006  | 
Two new wall-mountable LCR systems from Paradigm are now shipping. The company says that, unlike earlier Cinema models that were designed for smaller rooms, the new models were developed for use in larger rooms.
Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
High Praise for High Frequency Inventor
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Feb 12, 2006  | 
Unlike other notable engineers in the industry who've managed to closely associate their names with the products and technologies they've developed, William Hecht, the inventor of the soft-dome tweeter, has had a quite successful career working behind the scenes. Although most of us take the soft-dome tweeter for granted, it's been the most widely used tweeter design worldwide since it was first patented in 1967.
Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
FCC Likes A La Carte
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Feb 10, 2006  | 
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - soon to be known as the Fickle Communications Commission by television programming providers - has had second thoughts about whether or not it's a good thing for you to be able to pick and choose among the TV channels you subscribe to.
Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
Industry News
 |  Feb 09, 2006  | 

<B>Blu-ray Players, Java Interactivity, And1080p</B>
<BR>
At the close of CES 2006 a few stories circulated around the Internet that some of the first Blu-ray players out of the gate would not support the full implementation of Java-based interactivity (dubbed BDJ, for Blu-ray Disc Java) touted as one of the format's chief selling points. These stories expounded that players would be classified as either basic or full profile, with the latter being the only players that would support full BD-J interactivity.

Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
Update On HDMI And the Next-Gen Formats
 |  Feb 05, 2006  | 

If you've been reading <I>UAV's</I> reviews you know that while 1080p displays are proliferating, the ability of these displays to actually accept a 1080p native signal is a rarity. And if you've been following our coverage of the next-gen disc formats you also know that DTS and Dolby have cooked up new audio formats that aren't based on the lossy compression schemes we've been living with on DVD for years. All of these developments are intertwined with the HDMI specs, as HDMI will be the carrier for both 1080p video and the new audio codecs. Here's the latest on what it all means.

Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
HD Flat Panels For 2006 From Syntax-Brillian And V, Inc.
 |  Feb 02, 2006  | 

At CES 2006 the Syntax-Brillian Corp. announced it would be diving into high-end home theater with the "Olevia Signature" line of LCD flat panels. The first two models will be the 42" LT42HVi and 47" LT47HVi. Obviously intending to make a big splash out of the gate, Syntax revealed that both sets will feature full 1920x1080 resolution and Silicon Optix' vaunted Realta video processor with HQV.

Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
One SAD Power Manager
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Feb 01, 2006  | 
Tributaries Cable, guys better known for high-end cables and the like, are introducing their first power-protection component, the TX500 Power Manager. The new unit is man enough to handle up to 10 components with 1,800 watts of combined demand. (That's almost enough juice to power a small, third-world nation.) After a surge of inspiration, Tributaries included protection for two telephone connections and for a pair of fully independent RF signal paths engineered specifically for cable, satellite, or antenna connections. Image quality is protected by an RF circuit design that maintains a consistent 75-ohm impedance with bandwidth capability in excess of 1.5GHz. (That kind of bandwidth capability could most likely carry the entire broadcast TV channel lineup of a small, third-world country.)
Continue Reading »
Other TechAudio Video News
Green Is Good
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Jan 31, 2006  |  First Published: Jan 01, 2006  | 
Save money, or save the planet?

Believe it or not, you can do both.

Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
Blu-ray and HD DVD To Include Down-Conversion Option
 |  Jan 29, 2006  | 

The digital sky has been falling for the last several days with reports that the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) copy protection scheme that will be used by both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD will allow content providers the option of down-converting HD signals from the analog outputs of the players.

Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
HDTV or Giant Not-So-Portable Media Player?
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 28, 2006  | 
After simmering on the back burner for lack of compelling performance and ease-of-use, "convergence" was once again a hot topic at the 2006 CES. Sure, it wasn't as ubiquitous as things designed to work with Apple's iPod (including a toilet paper dispenser/iPod dock combo - hey, I'm not making that up), but convergence wasn't far behind. Some items were just plain bizarre (like that iPod toilet paper thingee). Others made you think, "Hey, that's cool!" And then there were the ones that made you say, "Man, I think I'd actually use that."
Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
Dishing up some HDTV
 |  Jan 26, 2006  | 

In a classic good news/bad news scenario, both DISH Network and DirecTV announced at CES 2006 that the two satellite giants will offer vastly expanded lineups of HD content in 2006. While more HD is always good news, the at least semi-bad news is that MPEG4 compression is being used on the new channels, and that means existing customers who want to watch the new HD channels need to invest in new equipment.

Continue Reading »

Pages

X