Audio Video News

  Who knows what the future may bring? Pioneer has announced its plans for the beloved Kuro line of plasma televisions, but those plans still seem so...unpredictable. Will Panasonic really incorporate enough of Pioneer's tech innards to make...

T<I>oshiro Mifune, Kyoko Kagawa, Tatsuya Nakadai, Tatsuya Mihashi, Takashi Shimura. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (letterbox). Mono. 143 minutes. 1963. The Criterion Collection 24. NR. $39.95.</I>

You've heard all the buzz about OLED displays, but there's another way cool technology that's aiming to knock LCD displays for a loop. This technology is already aiming to replace the common lightbulb, and now it's looking to get entrench itself...

Video enthusiasts both amateur and professional will be able to hone their editing and production skills through a series of classes to take place at Creative Computers, 1505 Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica, CA, during the months of February, March, and April.

Hosted by DVDcreators.net, all courses will be taught by Larry Jordan, a well-known Final Cut Pro (FCP) expert and one of only a few instructors in the world certified by Apple to teach advanced FCP classes. All workshops (except the free preview) are completely hands-on, according to an announcement released in mid-February. All students will have their own Power Macintosh G5 workstations for the duration of the workshop.

Several major labels have sued Pandora for streaming pre-1972 music without paying for it. Why would Pandora even attempt such a thing? Well, federal copyright law extends only that far back. However, copyrights can still be protected at the state level, so Vivendi, Sony, Warner, and ABKCO are suing in New York state courts. They point out that their music enables Pandora to rake in subscription fees and ad revenues, yet “it refuses to obtain required licenses or pay for its commercial and profitable exploitation of plaintiffs’ valuable property.” Pandora retorts that “the time, effort, and cost of securing such licenses could be significant,” while removing the pre-1972 music “could harm our ability to attract and retain users.”

Digital television sets are interesting, but not compelling, because there's not much to watch on them. That seems to be the consensus among Japanese consumers, who are giving the new sets the cold shoulder, according to a May 25 report from the Japanese news agency Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc.