LATEST ADDITIONS

Following an initial showing at CES in January, Dolby Laboratories and SIM2 demonstrated their latest prototype LCD flat-screen display in New York on Monday. The panel utilizes Dolby's LED backlighting with local dimming, which the company calls HDR (high dynamic range). This moniker is highly appropriate, since the LEDs behind dark portions of the image can be dimmed or even turned off completely for black areas, resulting in a literally infinite contrast ratio!

Excuses, excuses. Television executives like to say that upgrading certain shows to high-def not only costs mountains of cash, but would be inconvenient for certain types of programming. Such as shows, where, you know, a behemoth high-def camera...

Those spoiled TiVo-owners always seem to get what they want. Unlike the poor slobs who get by with poorly-designed and slow-as-molasses DVRs from the cable company, TiVo customers will soon get an upgrade that improves response times and processing...

Flat-panel TVs, DVD players, computers, mopeds, and kitchen appliances were among the goods that went on sale in Cuba this week. Incredibly, the old Fidel Castro regime had forbidden sales of these items till just this Tuesday. The new regime is a tad more reasonable about what Raul Castro calls "excessive prohibitions." But there's just one catch.