Audio Video News

Love your Xbox 360? Want more control over your live sports viewing? Microsoft has you covered with a host of upgrades to their ESPN for Xbox LIVE service (which requires an Xbox LIVE Gold membership, though you'll incur no additional cost beyond the subscription fee).

Steve Jobs may have moved on, but Apple's quickly returned to shaking up the music and movie industries in the good old-fashioned way: with beta releases and rumors.

In a sign of the times for the changing music industry (and an interesting twist in the lengthy tale of the most popular band - 40 million albums sold worldwide and 11 Stateside top tens - to only make it into Rolling Stone magazine once), Canadian prog superheroes Rush have signed with U.S. metal indie Roadrunner (they'll be staying with Anthem/Universal in Canada only).

Traditionalist jazz trumpet titan Wynton Marsalis and British blues-rock guitar master Eric Clapton may have begun their careers very differently, but as both men have made the transition to elder statesmanship they've repeatedly reaffirmed their love for and dedication to the blues forms that gave rise to jazz and rock in the first place.

We've been keeping you up to date on the progress of 7.1 in theatrical sound, and Brent Butterworth checked in last month with Dolby Labs Director of Blu-ray Ecosystems Craig Eggers, who gave us an update on some developments in 7.1 for the home - when we talked to Craig, he let us know that while there were some 225 titles available on Blu-ray in 7.1 mixes, most of those simply duplicated the theatrical mixes.

That's starting to change.

Legrand - a leader in residential wiring and custom install components - in something of a surprise move announced the airQast wireless music system at this year's CEDIA Expo.

BackStage is a fully interactive iPad and iPhone app that does so much more than inform you of concerts. BackStage serves three main functions for the user. The first is a concert calendar which informs you of concerts in your area based on data from your iTunes library and your current location.