Audio Video News

Dolby Atmos holds great promise for taking the home theater experience to new heights but is it audio’s Next Big Thing?

In the wake of announcements that the commercial surround technology is making its way to home gear, we asked readers if they would upgrade to Atmos. Nearly a third (30 percent) said they would have to wait to hear a demo and read reviews before deciding, while one in five indicated that they would upgrade to an Atmos setup but only with properly installed ceiling speakers.

Another third dismissed Atmos as either too much of a hassle to install or too expensive. Only 6 percent of survey respondents said they would upgrade to Atmos with speakers designed to reflect sound off the ceiling—a percentage that we expect to grow once people hear live demonstrations.

Here’s the complete breakdown of the results:

Amazon’s super hyped “Prime Day” sale extravaganza begins today and ends tomorrow (Tuesday, July 16) at midnight. Yep, last year’s event was so successful that the online retail king decided to extend it to a second day this time around.

"RealNetworks' RealDVD should be called StealDVD," asserts the general counsel of the Motion Picture Association of America.

In a curiously ambiguous ruling, a federal court has declared the RealDVD disc copying application illegal. However, the court also left open the possibility that copying DVDs for personal use may be legal in some circumstances under the copyright law's fair use doctrine.

Why is this girl smiling? For heaven's sake, doesn't she know she's just been sued? Well, actually, it's RealNetworks that has entered a new dimension of legal adventure. All because of its RealDVD software. You know, the stuff that lets you rip and...

Nothing less than "a new standard in video quality" was promised this month by <A HREF="http://www.siliconoptix.com">Silicon Optix</A> in announcing its new Realta single-chip video processor.

Back during the analog TV era, a well-regarded manufacturer offered me a rear-projection set—not for review, just for my own use. I turned it down. I didn’t want one of those big, butt-ugly things in my living room. In later years, RPTV went high def, slimmed down, and became the best buy in big-screen TV in terms of inches per dollar. But that wasn’t enough to save it. In the closing jingle-bell months of last year, the one remaining RPTV manufacturer pulled the plug, and the product category quietly passed into history.