Audio Video News

It's incredibly common for Hollywood blockbusters to come in way late and over budget, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised since Sony owns its own movie studio. An industry analysis by Merrill Lynch predicts that Sony's PlayStation3 could not only be delayed 6-12 months, putting off its US launch until late 2006 or early 2007, but also estimates that the gaming consoles are going to cost Sony nearly $900 per unit to build. These predictions started a firestorm across broad segments of the industry, as such delays would not only hurt Sony in the gaming space, but also would undoubtedly cost Blu-ray Disc some critical momentum in the next-gen disc format war. HD DVD players and discs are currently on schedule to hit retail stores next month.

It's 26 percent more compact, packed with easy-to-use features, and more affordable than its predecessor. Oh, yeah, and it lets you record high-definition home videos.

This past week two stories circulated around the Internet that dramatically illustrate the confusion surrounding the next-gen optical disc formats. The first rumor had both formats being delayed due to failure to agree to the finalized standard for the AACS copy protection that will be employed by both formats. The second was that Toshiba will kick off a 40-city promotional tour this coming week to hype HD DVD's March launch. Well, is it on again or off again?!

Earlier this week the video-on-demand movie service called MovieBeam was reborn, and will offer movies from six major Hollywood studios in standard definition, and high definition movies from Warner Bros. and Disney. According to MovieBeam, Disney, Miramax, and Touchstone titles will be available day and date with the DVD release, while movies from other studios will conform to a 30-45 day window between DVD release and on-demand availability. Although MovieBeam has specified that around 10% of its titles will be in HD, there is no word yet as to whether the day and date titles specifically will be in HD.

<B>Marantz Becomes Preferred Brand Of Juilliard</B>
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Marantz has entered into a strategic marketing relationship with New York's prestigious Juilliard School, and will be recognized as "the preferred audio/video brand of The Juilliard School." Announced in December of 2005, the relationship coincides with Juilliard's yearlong 100th anniversary celebration, and will see Marantz serving as the performing arts conservatory's Official Audio/Visual Sponsor and donating its AV products for educational use and world premier performances at the school throughout the year.

Unlike other notable engineers in the industry who've managed to closely associate their names with the products and technologies they've developed, William Hecht, the inventor of the soft-dome tweeter, has had a quite successful career working behind the scenes. Although most of us take the soft-dome tweeter for granted, it's been the most widely used tweeter design worldwide since it was first patented in 1967.

<B>Blu-ray Players, Java Interactivity, And1080p</B>
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At the close of CES 2006 a few stories circulated around the Internet that some of the first Blu-ray players out of the gate would not support the full implementation of Java-based interactivity (dubbed BDJ, for Blu-ray Disc Java) touted as one of the format's chief selling points. These stories expounded that players would be classified as either basic or full profile, with the latter being the only players that would support full BD-J interactivity.