Ears On

Affectionately known as the "Moo," the NHT M-00 has been around since the late nineties. Originally it was a pro product that also appealed to savvy consumers seeking higher quality in desktop audio. Nowadays that secondary mission is more explicit, as the M-00 struts its double zeroes on two different parts of the NHT website: Pro Audio and PC Hi-Fi. And now that everyone and her sister is plugged into an iPod, a third mission beckons. What will this thing do for nearly everyone's favorite portable signal source?

The fight over new Internet-radio royalties heated up Friday when National Public Radio took a stand against against them. In advance of a petition for reconsideration, filed with the federal Copyright Royalty Board, came this statement from NPR's Andi Sporkin: "This is a stunning, damaging decision.... Public radio's agreements on royalties with all such organizations, including the RIAA, have always taken into account our public service mission and non-profit status. These new rates, at least 20 times more than what stations have paid in the past, treat us as if we were commercial radio--although by its nature, public radio cannot increase revenue from more listeners or more content, the factors that set this new rate. Also, we are being required to pay an internet royalty fee that is vastly more expensive than what we pay for over-the-air use of music, although for a fraction of the over-the-air audience. This decision penalizes public radio stations for fulfilling their mandate, it penalizes emerging and non-mainstream musical artists who have always relied on public radio for visibility and ultimately it penalizes the American public...." Like NPR itself, many local public radio stations now have active websites with audio feeds, podcasts, and other content that doesn't make it on the air. NPR's audience hit an all-time high of 26.5 million in fall 2006 and has been adding a million listeners a year for the past five years.

Freedb, a key player in open-source CD databases, has succumbed to tensions among its founders. The site is still up but its future is uncertain. If you didn't already know, CD databases provide metadata lookup services to the likes of iTunes and the Windows Media Player, enabling them to display artist, song, album, genre, etc. Without them your iPod would not be nearly as versatile at organizing music. The grandpappy of them all was CDDB, founded in 1993 as a volunteer-driven project. When CDDB went commercial in 2000 as Gracenote, Freedb and other groups split off to maintain their own open-source databases on a nonprofit basis. The open-source services appear most often in PC-based software including rippers, taggers, and players other than iTunes and WMP. Freedb is also used by AudioReQuest, a consumer-level high-end server product. Freedb is survived by Musicbrainz, another open-source database. The biggest commercial databases are All Music Guide's LASSO (used by Windows Media Player and MusicMatch) and the category-leading Gracenote (used by iTunes).

Longterm reliability is a missing piece in most reviews of electronic products. A big missing piece.

"I got a lotta time for otters," someone sang recently. What a coincidence that I happen to be reviewing the OtterBox case for the iPod nano.

Commuters in New York's Grand Central Terminal got an eyeful of huge TVs and the people who love them last week—see full-sized shot in the Galleries. It was the first stop in a Panasonic plasma tour that will also reach Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC, and possible additional places. Says here: "The Panasonic Plasma Tour will be staffed by Panasonic Plasma Concierge experts who will be able to answer consumers' questions and give advice... Featured in the display will be Panasonic's full line of industry-leading Plasma TVs including the 37-inch, 42-inch, 50-inch, 58-inch, the recently debuted 1080p 65-inch, and the 103-inch model, the world's largest Plasma TV.... We know that consumers are looking for bigger screens and, when it comes to large screens, there is no better option than high definition plasma." All righty then. Did you know all Panasonic plasmas are covered by the Concierge program? And that you can call a toll-free number (888-972-6276) so a trained specialist can help you "get on with the experience of enjoying HDTV's benefits"? Well, I should hope so, since Darryl told you last June. Check out the Plasma Concierge website too.