LATEST ADDITIONS

Possibly the hottest story in home theater is the rollout of video-delivery services from the telcos. AT&T is just getting started while Verizon is going strong. Verizon has just announced that its bleeding-edge FiOS TV service will make its debut in Massapequa, New York and Woburn, Massachusetts. It's already available in parts of Texas, Florida, and Virginia. Eventually it will reach half the states in Verizon's service area with the addition of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington. FiOS TV is 100 percent fiber, piped right into your home, and it's just one facet of Verizon's longterm plan to upgrade all its copper lines (someday) to fiber optics. The cost is $34.95 per month for 180 channels. If you want to receive 20 HD channels, add $9.95 for the HD set-top box, bringing the total to $44.90. The triple-play package with TV, net access, and phone service comes to $104.85 (again, add $9.95 for HD). Keep a vigil at the external link below for availability in your area.

Panasonic was in town showing off some of their newest goodies. I was lured out of the HT Lab/Batcave with the promise of pie and punch. There was neither. They did have a cool demo of what they call HDAVI. This allows you, if you have all Panasonic gear with HDAVI hooked up with HDMI, to turn on all your components (DVD player, receiver, plasma), switch to the right inputs, and start a movie, just by pressing one button. Sounds cool eh? What would be really great is that if all consumer electronics companies adopted the same standard so that this would work with every component. Come on, a boy can dream can’t he?

Guitarist Robert Fripp recently visited Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Washington to record sounds for Vista, formerly Longhorn, the next-generation PC operating system. The occasion is commemorated by a 25-minute video on a Microsoft website. Fripp was told to generate sounds for a "clean, connected, confident" operating system with emphasis on the colors blue and green (which he translated as the keys of D and E). The musician’s recent switch from an IBM ThinkPad to a Mac goes unmentioned during the session.