With few exceptions, multiroom audio systems still distribute music the same way they did 20 years ago: Central stacks of source components and amplifiers route signals to speakers around the home over hundreds of feet of speaker cabling. But this approach has its drawbacks. Resistance, capacitance and inductance build up over long wires, adding up to signal losses and compromised performance.
Samsung has its hands in so many different TV categories - front- and rear-projection DLP TVs, flat-panel plasma and LCD sets, even old-school cathode-ray tube models - that it's hard to keep track of all the stuff they sell.
Blockbuster, Netflix, and on-demand cable are among the expanding number of ways to rent movies. One of the latest is MovieBeam, a jukebox for your home theater that self-stocks via an off-air antenna.
Taking the Big View The ceiling-mounted Yamaha DPX-1300 DLP projector (foreground) beams its image onto a custom-made 140-inch diagonal Stewart FireHawk screen.
Did you hear that just now...? No, you didn't. You were talking on your cellphone, probably while listening to your iPod. This morning I saw a guy talking on his cellphone, listening to his iPod, and eating a cheeseburger - all at once. I just prayed that he wasn't going to get behind the wheel. But I digress.
What's wrong with this picture? Right this moment, you can whip out your cellphone and call Directory Assistance in Sri Lanka, halfway around the world. On the other hand, you need wires (probably poorly concealed under the carpet) to run audio from your home theater to your home office.
Old joke: Heaven is the place where the police are British, the cooks are French, the lovers Italian, bureaucrats Swiss, and the engineers German. Hell is the place where the cooks are British, the engineers Italian, bureaucrats French, lovers Swiss, and the police German.
Back in high school, I had to write an essay on "the more things change, the more they stay the same." (I'm sure the teacher enjoyed reading it about as much as I enjoyed writing it.) While that might hold true for many things, it couldn't be more off base when describing the constantly evolving world of technology.
Explay, a company focused on developing "nano-projector engines" to be used in a variety of consumer electronics products", says it has tested its nano-projector technology with several mobile devices (things like cell phones, digital camcorders, and portable media players) and successfully produced "eye-safe, always focused images".
If I hear one more old fart who grew up separating seeds from stems in the middle of a gatefold cover say we've got to save the album, my head is gonna EXPLODE!