Toshiba, which worked so hard to establish the HD DVD format as the high-def disc format of choice, has launched its first Blu-ray player just in time for CEDIA.
I'm not sure when 3D became so popular both in the theater and at home. However, It's a technology we've been toying with since the 1950's but by all indications it's about to come of age...quickly.
The LG LH50 LCD series and the PS80 plasma series will soon provide streaming of the popular movies-on-demand service, Vudu. These new Internet-connected TVs employ "NetCast Entertainment Access", allowing users to browse, search, and choose a variety of HD and HDX films right from their TVs without an additional Vudu set-top box.
Until recently, no single cable operator was allowed to dominate more than 30 percent of the U.S. market. But a court has thrown out the Federal Communications Commission's market cap, eliminating a rule that's been the law of the land since 1992.
Normally we don't use the News column for new product releases. But when there's a first, we jump on it, and we're jumping on three new receivers from Onkyo that deliver nine amplifier channels. They also support dual subwoofer outputs, making them 9.2-channel models.
Cash for clunkers is the deal of the century (or the scam of the century, depending on your point of view). So it was only a matter of time till a smart AV retailer made a trade-in offer.
A federal court has handed a defeat to Kaleidescape, whose superb video-server technology has been fighting for its life in the courts for several years.
In a curiously ambiguous ruling, a federal court has declared the RealDVD disc copying application illegal. However, the court also left open the possibility that copying DVDs for personal use may be legal in some circumstances under the copyright law's fair use doctrine.
Director Steven Soderbergh is mad. And he has every right to be. His work is being deliberately butchered for television. This was once routine in a world where widescreen films had to fit onto a 4:3 screen. Yet even now, in the age of 16:9 and high-def, widescreen films continue to be cropped in ways that horrify the artists who made them.
When the phrase "video revolution" was in vogue, a generation of viewers weaned on commercial broadcast TV suddenly found they could skip ads in a whole bunch of new ways. With a VCR, they could time-shift programming and fast-scan through ads. They could rent ad-free movies at a video store (trailers don't count). And they could subscribe to pay-TV channels, paying for hipper programming almost without ads. But the heirs to those technologies--DVRs and video on demand --are increasingly overrun by ads, even though consumers have paid to avoid them.
HDTV now dominates the American livingroom, with 52 percent of households owning a high-definition display. This is a big percent improvement over 2008, when HDTV was in just 35 percent of households. We've gone from a third to more than half in just a year. You go, American households!