SIGNALS

Quick. What's the company everyone loves to hate? The cable company, of course. The aggravating installation, the inexplicable outtages, the maddening programming bundles, and the fees. Oh yes, the fees. But there's hope, and possibly change. President Obama has endorsed a proposal that would eliminate perhaps the most annoying cable TV fee. That's good, right?

Vizio recently unveiled its new P-series models. And they are pretty impressive, featuring 4K UHD and the very cool SmartCast app that essentially builds in all the capabilities of Google Cast. Since they are Vizios, they are very competitively priced. Very nice. The problem is, if you want to be a stickler for details, these devices aren't actually TVs.

Depending on how long you keep your cars, it's entirely possible that your next car will drive itself. Even if you're two years into a three-year lease, given the furious development of autonomous technology, self-driving cars are a fait accompli. But more to the point, given the interests of this site's readers, self-driving cars open the door to entirely new kinds of vehicle entertainment systems. Case in point: this patent recently issued to Ford.

I'm on record (ha!) stating my opinion that the vinyl resurgence is socially and morally significant. Interest in vinyl is up, vinyl sales are up. Are downloads and streaming in trouble? Well, of course not. Still....

When's the last time that Circuit City crossed your mind? It's probably been so long that you can't even remember the last time you thought about it. And yet, the name Circuit City is instantly familiar to you. That's called name recognition. And clearly, rather than starting from scratch to build name recognition, you'd prefer to start with something well known. That is why Circuit City is being resurrected.

What do Hunter S. Thomson, Philip K. Dick, and L. Ron Hubbard all have in common? For starters, they all use an initial in their names, and anyone who does that is obviously trying hard to appear to be intellectual. More important, I think they would all have enjoyed attending this year's CES.