Considering the rapid way A/V technology evolves, I'll bet Charles Darwin would have been a Sound & Vision subscriber. And survival of the fittest and natural selection are definitely alive and well in my equipment rack. In fact, all you have to do is look at it to see the history of recorded video at a glance.
Speaker maker JBL is just one part of the Harman International family, but for a brand that makes up only a single slice of a large pie, it has an incredibly diverse product mix. Along with home theater speakers, JBL makes systems for music-recording and film sound-mixing studios, movie theaters, concert halls, computers, and cars.
Computer companies have been trying to get off your desktop and into your entertainment rack for a decade. Ever since the invention of tuner cards for PCs and giant computer monitors that doubled as TVs, they've been pushing the "convergence" of entertainment and computing on a wary public. The reception from A/V enthusiasts has been, to put it politely, less than enthusiastic.
To quote Janet Jackson (Ms. Jackson if you're nasty), "This is a story about control." And whether your lifestyle is Joe Schmo, Average Joe, or Joe Millionaire, control is something we can all use a little more of in our lives. Fortunately, achieving some level of control over our A/V systems is easily done.
