Audio Video News

Ever wonder what claims of “weatherproof” or “all-weather” really mean when it comes to speakers built to withstand the elements of life outside?

Late last week, the <A HREF="http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association</A> outlined steps it says are being taken by its Video Division Board to expand existing voluntary industry definitions for digital television. This follows a vote the previous week in which the CEA decided to futher define the technical requirements a television set must satisfy to be labeled "HDTV."

We know that DVD is hot, but few could have predicted that the video format would become the fastest growing in the history of consumer electronics. The latest statistics reveal that, in 2001, consumer spending on DVD purchases and rental combined were $6 billion, 2.4 times more than the previous year. This represents an increase that put DVD purchases ahead of VHS purchases for the first time, despite an installed player base of 25 million DVD households versus a VCR installed player base of 96 million households.

15 Minutes with Astra Insights’ Shawn DuBravac

Stop for a moment and think back to home entertainment 10 years ago. You were starting to build a library of Blu-ray titles, thankful that HD had finally made its way to disc, but 4K at home was a technology of the future and streaming was still a curiosity. Netflix was a hugely successful DVD mail-order company with a billion discs delivered but could see the writing on the wall when it started offering movies on demand over the internet in February 2007. Today, streaming is commonplace and home audio and video have reached unprecedented levels of quality, raising the question of what comes next? Looking ahead to the future, we reached out to Dr. Shawn DuBravac, founder of the Washington, DC-based consultancy Astra Insights, former chief economist for the Consumer Technology Association, and author of the New York Times Best Seller (Regnery, 2015). A well-regarded futurist and trendcaster, DuBravac writes frequently about technology with a focus on deciphering disruptive shifts.

I raced back from the Las Vegas Convention Center to fire up the computer I'd left in my hotel room to catch the East Coast feed of the Nightly News at 3:30 pm thinking that Brian Williams would be broadcasting live from the CES convention floor....

Where does the Obama administration stand on the consumer's right to record? Depends on the situation. On copyright issues, the White House is not predictable, but eclectic.

BenQ says it has a way to put some style along with performance on your desk top. (Anyone who's ever seen the top of my desk knows there is no way anyone will ever put performance or style there. I suppose other people are not in as sad a shape as I am, however.)