LATEST ADDITIONS

Last week the History HD channel broadcast the multi-part documentary </I>World War II in HD<I>. Most of the footage was in color, dredged in an exhaustive two-year search from private collections or the back shelves of dusty museum storerooms. (Rumors to the contrary, it was not found in an Area 51 warehouse next to a crate with an ark in it.)

I've always been a bit bummed that plasma TVs hold such a small market share compared with LCDs. And it doesn't help when companies like Vizio and Pioneer drop out of the plasma business altogether. Yet when I visit my local CostCo, I can see why—the LCDs on display are definitely brighter than the plasmas, which is why they fly off the shelves while the plasmas languish.

In these days of outsourced manufacturing, it's refreshing to find a company that builds its own products right here in the USA. Of course, it helps if those products are high-end, high-cost items with no expectation of high-volume sales. Take, for example, <A href="http://rockporttechnologies.com">Rockport Technologies</A> in Rockport, Maine, whose speakers are hand-built for an exclusive clientele rather than the mass market in a facility that looks more like a house than a factory.