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Audio Video News
TWC App Loses Old Friends, Makes New Ones
Mark Fleischmann  |  Apr 04, 2011
Time Warner Cable recently introduced an innovative iPad app that allows subscribers to access live TV channels on everyone's favorite tablet. But a hostile response from content owners has forced the cable operator to sharply reduce the number of available channels.

It was (and still is) a beautiful idea. TWC subscribers who buy both TV and internet services get access to the app. It grabs a router wi-fi signal and displays channels without having to record them. Unlike Slingbox, it works only within the home. Not such a threat to Hollywood, right?

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Tron's Screen Gem
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Apr 03, 2011

First with the just-released Diamond Edition of its 1942 classic, Bambi, and now with Tron: Legacy, Disney is including a Blu-ray bonus called Disney Second Screen. After downloading an app to your iPad or laptop computer, you enable the program in the disc's menu. The iPad/laptop now plays special features to coincide with your viewing of the Blu-ray on TV.

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Other Tech
Tron: Re-Entering the Grid Page 4
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Apr 02, 2011

GREETINGS, PROGRAMS!

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Other Tech
Tron: Re-Entering the Grid
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Apr 02, 2011

GREETINGS, PROGRAMS!

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Vote
What Is Your Main Source For Movies?
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 01, 2011
I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of UAV readers use their main home-theater system to watch movies. So what I'd like to know is, where do you mostly get the movies you watch? Of course, most folks get movies from a variety of sources, so select the item that represents where you get the most movies. As always, I'm eager to learn the reason for your choice and any thoughts you have about the various delivery options, so I hope you post a comment after making your selection.

Vote to see the results and leave a comment about your choice.

What Is Your Main Source For Movies?
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Premiere Design
Hypernet
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 01, 2011
Online distribution of video content—especially high-def video—will never float my boat until the bandwidth available to most homes is way faster than it is today. According to Speedtest.net, in 2010, South Korea had the fastest average household bandwidth at 22.46 megabits per second, while the US was 30th in the world at 7.78Mbps—that's less than Latvia (18.02Mbps), Lithuania (15.81Mbps), and Liechtenstein (7.79Mbps). But even in Korea, streaming high-def—not to mention anything with even higher resolution, like 4K or UltraHD—requires some serious compression, which lowers the picture quality dramatically.

An incredible solution to this problem was quietly demonstrated in a hotel suite at CES this year by a company called R2D2 ("Twice the Research, Twice the Development!"). The company's Hypernet technology bypasses the Internet completely, offering nearly unlimited bandwidth and instantaneous transmissions using the principles of quantum physics. Inventor Leia Organic Skydancer, love child of two spaced-out hippies, is a video artist and musician as well as a physicist and computer scientist who created Hypernet so she could effectively market her own material, including her first project, Music From the Hearts of Hyperspace.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Stand By Me (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Apr 01, 2011
During the Labor Day weekend in 1959, a group of friends go in search of a young boy's dead body on the outskirts of a woodsy Oregon town. The two day trek turns into an adventure of self-discovery as Gordy (Wil Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman), and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) must overcome some town bullies and find an inner strength they never knew they possessed.

Based on the Steven King novella "The Body," Stand by Me is one of my favorite films from my high school years. Director Rob Reiner takes you on a wonderful journey and reminds me of some of my own adventures (although I never went looking for a dead body). The performances from the young cast showed each had the talent to become Hollywood stars, but Phoenix threw it all away with a drug overdose in 1993.

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Audio Video News
Tech Trends: Rebirth of the American Loudspeaker?
Brent Butterworth  |  Apr 01, 2011

My greatest CES disappointment led to my greatest discovery. After a cable manufacturer bailed out on the bacchanalian dinner he’d promised me, I ended up at the New York New York hotel nursing a glass of watery house bourbon while dropping quarters into a video poker machine. I soon noticed that the man next to me was sketching electrical circuits on his napkin.

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Audio Video News
Amazon Eyes Next Step for Cloud Service
Mark Fleischmann  |  Apr 01, 2011
Though its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player have just launched this week, allowing customers to store and access content from remote servers, Amazon is already contemplating the next steps. One imperative is to patch things up with the music industry. Another is to make the technology more convenient, replacing the unwieldy upload process with a slicker content-ownership recognition system.

First the record company politics: Amazon rushed the Cloud Drive and Player introduction to steal a march on Apple and Google, which are planning similar moves. In doing so it unnerved the major labels. One of them, Sony Music, has aired its complaint in public, commenting ominously through a spokesperson: "We are keeping our legal options open."

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Test Report: Lirpa Labs Liberty Freedom 1776 A-FY Tower Speakers
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Mar 31, 2011
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