Audio Video News

Sony is the best brand around - or so say the majority of the 2,351 U.S. adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive between June 7 and 13, 2006. This marks the seventh consecutive year that Sony has made it to the top spot beating out other brands such as Dell, Coca-Cola, Ford, Honda, and Apple.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.timewarnercable.com">Time Warner Cable</A> said that it has successfully tested distribution of a high-definition TV feed from Home Box Office and will soon begin delivering it in the upgraded areas of its Tampa, Florida cable operation using equipment from <A HREF="http://www.sciatl.com">Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.</A> According to Time Warner, this marks the first time HBO's HDTV signal has been made available to cable customers using a form of signal-modulation technology known as QAM, which allows two HDTV channels to be delivered in the same bandwidth needed for one off-air HDTV channel.

How many times has this happened to you? You're in a movie theater or church, and cell phones keep ringing. The girl in seat 36C is surreptitiously talking on her cell phone as the flight takes off. Or, worst of all, you notice that the creepy guy...

Why does the Kindle Fire HDX have that blue tint around the edges of the touchscreen? Amazon says it’s actually to improve overall color: “Most LCD displays use white LEDs, and then apply filters to extract the desired color. The result is oftentimes a compromise to tone and color accuracy, or—if attempting to address these compromises—an increase in battery consumption and, thus, device weight. We’ve taken a different approach. To achieve perfect color accuracy on the Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch at the lowest possible battery consumption and weight, we used blue, not white, LEDs. Blue LEDs allow for a much more accurate and rich representation of color and result in an up to 20 percent improvement in power efficiency.” Amazon was selling the device for $229 at press time.

As competition in the display market intensifies, TV manufacturers are seeking new and emerging technologies to differentiate their offerings from competitors, which is leading to increased production of wide color gamut TVs.

Wi-Fi is certainly one of buzzier hyphenated words I hear each week, and while my experiences have generally been positive, seldom are they jaw-dropping either. That all changed earlier this month when the team from Belkin Corp. demonstrated their newest products, the Wireless Pre-N Router (F5D8230-4, $179.99) and Wireless Pre-N Notebook Network Card (F5D8010, $129.99). "Pre-N" means that these products are arriving in advance of the upcoming 802.11n standard, but are Wi-Fi certified under the 802.11g standard and are intended to perform closer to the theoretical levels promised in Wi-Fi literature.

Nintendo's Wii video game console has become the latest platform to get video streaming service from Netflix.