Audio Video News

Denon Heos 1 Go Packs are being recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission due to potential fire hazard. If the battery you bought to go with your Heos 1 speaker has a serial number beginning with the number 5, or those between 601G913517 and 601G914004, call (844) 759-1987 or see usa.denon.com/gopackreplace to arrange for a free replacement...

Sharp May Build TVs in the U.S., according to an unidentified source quoted by Reuters. Foxconn, the TV brand’s Chinese owner (and manufacturer of Apple products), may create as many as 700,000 jobs in the States...

Dolby Vision HDR can now run as software on gaming consoles and smart TVs, as the company demonstrated with a souped-up PS4. It can run on HDMI 1.4, which would allow HDR in 1080p (not just UHD)...

Pioneer’s Rayz Plus ($149) are the first earbuds able to charge an iOS device while music plays, thanks to the LightX platform from Avnera, which minimizes power drain. Full-size headphones from Phaz, the P2, also do this trick...

The number of TVs in U.S. Homes dropped from an average of 2.6 in 2009 to 2.3 in 2015, according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy. TVs, cable boxes, DVRs, and video game consoles account for 6 percent of the nation’s energy use...

The Biggest Pay-TV Operators are AT&T/DirecTV (25.3 million), Comcast (22.5 million), Charter (17.2 million), and Dish Network (13.7 million) according to rankings by Multichannel News. In single-digit millions are Verizon, Cox, Altice, and Frontier...

Sound United Bought D+M, putting Denon, Heos, Marantz, and Boston Acoustics under the same ownership as Definitive Technology and Polk. Sound United is owned by a Boston private equity firm...

Dish Network’s Base Camp is a training program for corporate employees who are sent into the field to gain experience with everything from billing inquiries to troubleshooting. They even accompany technicians on home visits...

Gracenote, the Metadata King, is launching Gracenote Global Video Data, Gracenote Global Music Data, and Gracenote Global Sports Data. The databases will include TV schedules, song info, and sports scores and stats to enhance various devices...

Verizon Has Placed Adult content on an opt-in basis following discussions with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. This gets Verizon off the group’s Dirty Dozen list—but Amazon, Comcast, and Roku, among others, are still on it...

Sling’s Cloud DVR is now available in a First Look program at $5 per month for 50 hours of storage to users of certain Amazon, Android, and Roku devices. Current Cloud DVR beta users keep their 100 hours of free storage during the beta period...

The TV Spectrum Auction has ended with broadcasters making billions from one-time sales of their DTV slots to mobile broadband operators. How the spectrum repack will affect the increasing legions of antenna-dependent cord cutters remains to be seen...

Alexa Has First-Amendment rights, Amazon’s attorneys told Arkansas police, after they issued a search warrant to seize information from the voice platform’s servers in a murder case. Alexa, are you a person?...

Yamaha Added Alexa to its MusicCast multi-room system. Alexa support will get into Yamaha products, and MusicCast support will get into Amazon speakers and Fire TV streamers...

Mobile HDR Premium is the UHD Alliance’s new spec and logo for portable devices. Requirements cover resolution, dynamic range, color space, and bit depth...

Sony Added Nine UHDTVs to the line announced earlier in the year. The sets will have HDR10, and a subsequent firmware update will activate Google Assistant voice control...

Trinnov Has Upgraded its Altitude32 surround pre/pro software to add 16 more output channels, bringing the total to 48. That would enable you to cover all 34 channels allowed in the Dolby Atmos specification with room to spare for four-way active front speakers and more subs...

Control4 Bought Triad Speakers. This will enable the smart-home company to “deepen its entertainment offerings and to develop new integrated-audio experiences for the future,” says Control4 CEO Martin Plaehn...