Audio Video News

“I know who I am but I realize that people still think Keith Richards is, you know, smoking a joint, a bottle in his hand, cursing the fact that the liquor store’s closed.”

If you live in or near New York City or happen to be in town, there two home audio/live music events happening in the coming days.

If you've been reading <I>UAV's</I> reviews you know that while 1080p displays are proliferating, the ability of these displays to actually accept a 1080p native signal is a rarity. And if you've been following our coverage of the next-gen disc formats you also know that DTS and Dolby have cooked up new audio formats that aren't based on the lossy compression schemes we've been living with on DVD for years. All of these developments are intertwined with the HDMI specs, as HDMI will be the carrier for both 1080p video and the new audio codecs. Here's the latest on what it all means.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) recently filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to let broadcasters and TV companies voluntarily switch to the next-gen ATSC 3.0 TV standard for delivering Ultra HD (UHD) TV and immersive audio via formats such as Dolby Atmos.

The final specs for HDMI version 1.3 are nearing completion and it's been announced that the first products incorporating the new HDMI standard will be released late this year. In somewhat related news, Sony has pushed the release of its BDP-S1 Blu-ray player back from August to October 25th. There isn't currently indication that the BDP-S1 will incorporate HDMI 1.3, but speculation is rampant all over the web that PlayStation3, due in November, will indeed incorporate the new spec.

Denon has announced that the upgraded Series 2 versions of the four wireless speakers in its Heos line are now available.

As part of a major restructuring, Sonos is opening its first retail store in the trendy Soho section of New York City tomorrow (July 19).