Did you know you can get a plasma HDTV for $1,800? That's right - TV technology that a few years ago cost more than a Hyundai is now within reach of most middle-class American budgets. Prices for entry-level big-screen HDTVs, including those flat-panel plasmas and LCDs as well as advanced DLP and LCD projectors, are falling at near-terminal velocity and have yet to hit bottom.
There were a lot of announcements at Apple's recent gala press event touting the iPod nano, but conspicuously absent was any news about a video iPod. Apple, it seems, is content to let everybody else fight over the small market for portable video players (PVPs) - at least for now.
On first glance, Slingbox looks more like a giant foil-wrapped candy bar than a piece of sophisticated electronics. But it's actually a new product that lets you watch TV from your cable box or digital video recorder (DVR) on any PC attached to your home network or, for that matter, any PC in the world with a broadband Internet connection.
A flat-panel TV is probably in your future, if not already in your home. But many new owners of big-screen plasma and LCD sets find that their setups need some reconfiguring to accommodate these newest and leanest members of their home-entertainment families. In other words, the big and bulky cabinets designed to accommodate large tube TVs are out and thin is in.
Digital sound from FM and AM? It's here, in the form of HD Radio, which drapes digital data like saddlebags over the existing FM and AM carrier waves. Broadcasters already use that added digital capacity to enhance their signals' sonics, to carry several programs at once, and to tell you what they're transmitting.
