Audio Video News

In installment <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?42">one</A> and <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?48">two</A> of this series, we presaged the crawl of HDTV, the rise of the flat-panel TV, and the demise of Divx. For our final set of guesses---er, prescient opinions, we tackle four more topics.

In what must be considered a major victory for consumers, on May 6, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the American Library Association and others who filed suit against the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to block implementation of the so-called "broadcast flag," a digital signature that would have severely limited the circumstances under which consumers could copy DTV programs. As a result, over-the-air DTV signals may be freely recorded and copied for personal, non-commercial purposes as outlined by the principles of fair use (as unclear as those principles may be).

15 Minutes with Cleerline President Robert D’Addario

Fiber optics has been around in audio gear for years. Verizon’s Fiber Optic Service, better known as FiOS, has 7 million Internet subscribers in nine states with plenty of expansion potential. Google, too, has been rolling out its Google fiber service in recent years, though on a much smaller scale with limited service in seven states. Meanwhile, copper is still far and away king of signal transmission both inside and outside of the home. But for how long? To get a sense of what role fiber will play in the future, we sat down with Robert D’ Addario, president of Montana-based Cleerline Technology Group, an innovator in optical cable.

To celebrate the release of the Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures on Blu-ray on September 18th, the good people at Paramount and Lucasfilm were kind enough to invite us to a once-in-a-lifetime press shindig at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California and what an experience it was.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.2netFX.com">2netFX</A> reported that its ThunderCastIP technology was used successfully in a recent HDTV-over-IP live demonstration conducted by the government's NASA Research and Education Network (NREN). ThunderCastIP is a multicast server for high-definition video streaming over ordinary IP-based networks; it was also <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/shownews.cgi?968">used last March</A> to send HDTV from Hawaii to California.