Audio Video News

On August 4, 2005, Infinity invited a number of journalists to their home at the Harman International corporate campus in Northridge, California, for a tour of the facilities and a sneak peek at their latest speaker line, dubbed Cascade. Why are you only hearing about it now? Because Infinity embargoed the information until August 25.

At a press event in Pittsburgh, PA, last week, Sony announced two new rear-projection SXRD televisions. Previously available only in the company's upscale Qualia line, SXRD now enters a wider market. The 60-inch KDS-R60XBR1 and 50-inch KDS-R50XBR1 Grand Wega designs, at $5000 and $4000 respectively, are still priced toward the high-end, but they are now in direct competition with top-of-the-line sets using other digital display technologies.

Multiroom audio is not a new idea. Nor are the concepts of digital amplification, touchscreen controllers, and audio distribution over CAT5 wiring. But not everyone has thought to bring all of those ideas together in one particular audio distribution product - and when a relative newcomer to the audio-in-any-room party shows up with an amplified (that's "amplified" as in "watts per channel") touchpanel in his hand, it's time to cock an eyebrow, act like you're not interested, and then try like heck to figure out exactly what's going on and how much it's going to cost.

DVD: Be Cool:
I am a big Get Shorty fan. The dialogue, the acting, and the plot all just exude a coolness that is never struggled for, just achieved. The thought of a sequel seemed a little odd, but knowing that it is based on the Elmore Leonard sequel novel, I had high hopes. The end result was admittedly funny but nowhere near the quality of the original. The story takes place a few years after Get Shorty, and Chili Palmer is deciding to get out of the movie business. After a friend gets murdered, he decides to get into the music business instead. Far too many jokes are rehashed, but that in itself isn't the problem. Whereas the original was an effortless cool, this movie tries too hard to be cool—and rarely succeeds. Far too much time is spent on the (admittedly excellent) secondary characters, with Chili himself just kind of showing up to drive the plot along. The effect, though, highlights two of the best aspects of this movie: the Rock and André 3000. These two absolutely steal the movie, and this disc is worth a rental just for them. There are many musician cameos, but, unlike in Get Shorty, where actor cameos are natural (as in, they can act), the musician cameos are often awkward and distracting.

In a move to protect against illegal copying and large-scale piracy while allowing consumers the flexibility to manage and enjoy copies of their legally purchased content, the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has adopted the most comprehensive content-management system (CMS) ever employed on an optical-disc format. The Blu-ray CMS includes three primary components: Advanced Access Content System (AACS), ROM Mark, and BD+.

Veoh Networks, Inc., the first Internet television peercasting network, last week announced it has completed a Series A round of financing led by Shelter Capital Partners. The company's goal is to create a new category of television networks that take advantage of existing broadband infrastructure to deliver standard-definition, full-screen video programming directly from producers to consumers.

DVD: Essential Steve McQueen Collection—Warner Bros
In the simplest possible terms, Steve McQueen had "It." Truly, women wanted him, and men wanted to be him. Maybe it was the eyes, the sense of intensity he conjured, or the impression that he knew something we didn't. Or perhaps it was his physicality, the grace with which he performed his own stunts, combined with his ease and outright glee with props. Warner has assembled some hard evidence of the actor's elusive mystique in their recent Essential Steve McQueen Collection, a grouping of souped-up reissues and new-to-DVD titles.