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A/V Veteran
Screen Shot
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 01, 2006

There's an interesting story behind the photo of the Samsung rear projection set that appears on the home page and in the product review. As most of you know, such photos are almost never taken directly from a television showing an actual image. Instead, the image is inserted later into a blank screen photo of the set using a computer program, most often Photoshop. This program allows nearly any photo to be resized and reconfigured to fit a television screen originally shot at any angle.

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Ears On
Verizon Makes Chocolate Tastier
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 01, 2006
To whet consumer interest in music downloads, and celebrate the release of the LG chocolate phone, Verizon has eliminated the monthly fee previously levied for its Vcast Music store. When the service made its debut last year, users had to pay a $15/month charge in addition to per-track charges. Now you can buy the hip chocolate phone and pay for songs by the track, period. The chocolate phone costs $150 and another $100 will buy you a 2GB mini-SD memory card to store music and photos. Music costs $1.99 per track, but you're allowed to download each one twice, once on the phone and once on your PC. The $1.99 may seem a little steep compared to iTunes, but Sprint Nextel charges an even stiffer $2.50 per track. Vcast downloads come in the Windows Media Player format, with DRM, of course. Bumping unfettered MP3 files from PC to phone was impossible when V Cast made its debut in January, but Verizon insisted that this was purely a software hurdle, and you're now free to load the phone with MP3s.
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Ears On
Live Nation Brings Concerts Home
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 31, 2006
Live music broadcasts go all the way back to the golden age of radio—to the very first broadcast, in fact, when the first broadcaster played his fiddle. And concert halls are again becoming studios. Live Nation, the world's largest operator of concert venues, has already wired 36 major venues and festival sites and plans to bring the number up to 120 by year-end. The result, for viewers, will be sizzling live music delivered to your TV, PC, cellphone, FM or satellite radio—any program provider willing to do business with Live Nation, a new company spun off from Clear Channel. The project is already pretty busy, having broadcast 250 shows from 50 artists in 2005. Given that LN stages 29,000 events per year, there's plenty of room for growth. What I'm hoping is that LN will discover how dull stadium performances can be, visually and sonically, and concentrate instead on bringing home music from the sweaty little clubs, where the real excitement is. Like, say, the House of Blues, which LN recently acquired. Oh, and please, record in 5.1. (PS: Readers have the right to know that I am a Live Nation stockholder.)
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Audio Video News
Next-Gen Players That (Allegedly) Aren’t Coming This Year
 |  Jul 30, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 31, 2006

Looks like there's no relief from the format war in sight. According to TWICE, LG Electronics has backed off its plan to deliver a <a href="http://ultimateavmag.com/news/031906hddvd/">Blu-ray/HD DVD combi disc player</a> later this year. In addition, a recently published report from Video Business claims that Toshiba has denied that it will ship a second generation HD DVD player in time for the holiday shopping season this year.

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Samsung HL-S5686W 56" DLP Rear-Projection 720p HDTV
Randy Tomlinson  |  Jul 30, 2006

The rear projection big-screen TV market is hot. Consumers are discovering that the latest RPTVs can often beat plasma in picture quality and offer bigger screen sizes for much less money if hanging it on the wall isn't a priority.

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Ears On
Diablog: Snakes! Snakes!
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 28, 2006
Behind the rack again? It worries me when you squat back there for half an hour and your face turns red.
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This Week's Video: Three Mid-Price A/V Receivers
 |  Jul 27, 2006

Report for 7/21/06:

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Audio Video News
More Bang For Your Download Buck (Or Two)
 |  Jul 27, 2006

On July 17th is was announced that Movielink and Sonic Solutions have teamed up to allow users of the <a href="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/news/040606industrynews/index.html">Mo... VOD (Video-On-Demand) service to burn downloaded movies onto DVDs that will playback in standard DVD players when the download has been <I>authorized by for use by content providers</I>. In somewhat related news, Warner Bros agreed (like everyone else) to sell its shows on Apple's iTunes Music Store for $1.99 per episode.

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Ears On
TiVo Rats You Out to the Man
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 27, 2006
Or "tattles," as The New York Times put it. In an effort to mend fences with frazzled advertisers, TiVo's new research division will sell data on its 4.4 million users and their ad-viewing habits or lack thereof. Ad skipping is a hot issue—ABC's ad-sales chief is actually trying to convince cable operators to "disable the fast-forward" on their DVRs! Half of TiVo use is time shifting and 70 percent of that group has a finger on the fast-forward button. But TiVo hopes data on specific commercials will help advertisers design better ones. The researchers will sample 20,000 TiVo users per night, reporting back what was watched and when. More specific details on viewer demographics won't be revealed due to TiVo's privacy policy though the company told the Times that may change by year-end. With the feds demanding logs from the major search engines, TiVo's data mining may be the least of our problems.
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Ears On
Microsoft Exhibits Pod Envy
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 26, 2006
The weeks of carefully orchestrated of leaks and rumors surrounding Microsoft's iPod-like Zune have approached the viral intensity of an Apple product launch. Confirmation finally came in Billboard with the announcement of "a family of hardware and software products" by Chris Stephenson, general manager of marketing for MSN Entertainment Business. As rumored, the product will ape Apple by integrating a music player with software downloads. But it will also one-up the iPod by offering wi-fi for functions that will include downloading, purchasing, and exchanging songs with a limited number of other users. Not an original idea, but maybe a powerful one. Stephenson raised several other possibilities without confirming any of them: "The ability to connect the different devices is a key part of the strategy. Whether it's a portable media device, or a phone, or the Xbox or Media Center PC, the idea is you can access your entertainment from anywhere." The music industry, eager for "flexible" pricing, will be happy to release its foie-gras-engorged gut from the 99-cent corset imposed by Steve Jobs and iTunes. Not so pleased are the manufacturers and download services who have licensed Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM. They are effectively frozen out of the new integrated Zune hardware/software environment. Prospects for Zune's survival? Send me one and I'll get back to you.
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