Audio Video News

It’s that time of year—when kids cringe and parents rejoice. The school bus armadas have begun. Little ones are heading back to school, but the whole family is heading back to the malls and online to load up on school supplies for the year. What tops the shopping list? Technology. What is the third most popular back-to-school technology purchase? Headphones. Bizarre, right?

Short version: bandwidth, budget, and better coverage from home.

For the last dozen years, CEDIA has been a fixed point on my calendar;a reset button for the custom‑install world and a reality check for what’s actually shipping versus what’s still a render. This year, I’m skipping it.

Why does the Kindle Fire HDX have that blue tint around the edges of the touchscreen? Amazon says it’s actually to improve overall color: “Most LCD displays use white LEDs, and then apply filters to extract the desired color. The result is oftentimes a compromise to tone and color accuracy, or—if attempting to address these compromises—an increase in battery consumption and, thus, device weight. We’ve taken a different approach. To achieve perfect color accuracy on the Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch at the lowest possible battery consumption and weight, we used blue, not white, LEDs. Blue LEDs allow for a much more accurate and rich representation of color and result in an up to 20 percent improvement in power efficiency.” Amazon was selling the device for $229 at press time.

As competition in the display market intensifies, TV manufacturers are seeking new and emerging technologies to differentiate their offerings from competitors, which is leading to increased production of wide color gamut TVs.

Wi-Fi is certainly one of buzzier hyphenated words I hear each week, and while my experiences have generally been positive, seldom are they jaw-dropping either. That all changed earlier this month when the team from Belkin Corp. demonstrated their newest products, the Wireless Pre-N Router (F5D8230-4, $179.99) and Wireless Pre-N Notebook Network Card (F5D8010, $129.99). "Pre-N" means that these products are arriving in advance of the upcoming 802.11n standard, but are Wi-Fi certified under the 802.11g standard and are intended to perform closer to the theoretical levels promised in Wi-Fi literature.

Nintendo's Wii video game console has become the latest platform to get video streaming service from Netflix.

When Apple extended iOS from the iPhone and iPod touch to the iPad, skeptics scoffed at the idea of porting the operating system for handheld devices to a tablet computer. Now Apple practically owns the tablet market. Rumor has it that the next step will be an iOS-powered TV.

Granted, this is only the latest prediction among many that Apple would move into the TV set market.