When Netflix launched its DVD-by-mail service 20 years ago, the dozens of websites selling DVDs said the newcomer would never survive. Funny how almost all of those competitors are now long gone.
In December 1999 the music industry sued (and ultimately shut down) downloading service Napster. Three years later Apple opened the iTunes Music Store, pointing the way to the future of music distribution and turning the recording industry on its ear.
Napster, the notorious Internet-based peer-to-peer file sharing service made its debut 17 years ago this week, forever changing the way we discover and share music and (ultimately) forcing the record industry to face the music: The Internet wasn’t going away and (with the help of Apple) would radically transform music distribution.
Nineteen years ago this week, the second issue of Stereo Review’s Sound & Vision hit newsstands. Stunning cover (and content) notwithstanding, the 152-page second act of the magazine that replaced Stereo Review (which enjoyed a prosperous 40-year run) and Video (which was the videophile’s go-to magazine for 21 years) was met with much praise…but not everyone was happy.
Nineteen years ago this month, Sound & Vision had just published its fifth issue. The cover featured the “world’s biggest TV” — an 80-inch Mitsubishi rear-projection TV that was positively huge by today’s skinny-TV standards.
Super Bowl XXXIV is historic not only because it is the Ram’s one and only Super Bowl triumph, but because it marked the first time the Super Bowl was broadcast in glorious high-definition…
Fifteen years ago Al Griffin and David Ranada teamed up to conduct a double-blind listening test with a half dozen $300-a-pair bookshelf speakers. (Gotta love those Sam Sisco caricatures!) Models from Acoustic Energy, Boston Acoustics, Jamo, KEF, Monitor Audio, and NHT were set up in two groups of three with each stereo pair situated so the “listener only had to turn his head slightly to bring the sonic image of each pair into focus.”
My how times have changed. Fifteen years ago in the September 2001 issue we reviewed Samsung’s Tantus 32-inch HDTV Monitor. It was the early days of high-def and, yes, those clunky vacuum tube TVs that dominated TV for half a century were still around.
A lot has changed in the past 15 years. Ultra-thin TVs that hang on the wall have replaced bulky tube and rear-projection TVs. DVD and CD players have become quaint relics of the early days of digital. The list goes on…
DVD-Audio was the big story in our February/March 2000 issue, which devoted more than a dozen pages to the launch of a promising new multichannel music format hailed by Neil Young and other artists as audio’s second coming. Things didn’t quite turn out as planned.
Thirteen years ago today Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, allowing music lovers to buy and download music from top artists in digital form instead of having to copy MP3 files or ripping CDs into iTunes.
Eleven years ago this week, Apple introduced the ultra sleek iPod Nano. The Nano was a replacement for the hugely popular iPod Mini, which drove the number of iPods sold from 2 million to 10 million by the end of 2004, just 12 months after it was introduced.
In September 2005 Apple unveiled the iPod nano as a replacement for the popular iPod mini. Considered super sleek at the time, the player was pivotal in the evolution of the world’s most famous music player...