Streaming Device Reviews

Both the computer and consumer electronics industries have spent years trying to find the perfect solution for the connected home. Late in 2010, Google jumped into the fray with Google TV. Its purpose is to let you search and watch your pay TV services, schedule TV shows for your DVR, surf the Internet, and play media from a USB hard/flash drive or from networked computers. At the core of both the Logitech Revue and the Sony Internet TV Blu-ray player is Google’s proprietary Android OS running on an Intel Atom processor. Like the Android-based smart phones, Google TV will have its own app store, although it wasn’t open at the time I was reviewing these two early models.

Netflix on Demand

What could be better than waiting for your next Netflix movie to arrive by snail mail? What if you could receive it on demand, via streaming technology?

Let's recap: Al Gore created the Internet, and, on the seventh day, he rested. Immediately, entrepreneurs began selling pornography, and the World Wide Web had a purpose. Before long, people started posting videos of their dogs belching the national anthem, and, yet, an entertainment-hungry globe craved more. A bunch of other stuff happened, and now Apple has been selling songs, music videos, TV episodes, and feature-length movies via the iTunes Store,embedded in the free iTunes application for Mac and PC. While digital-rights management protects purchased video and audio (although this may be changing), you can enjoy it at the computer and upload it to various iPod portable devices. Still, a growing contingent yearns to relocate its premium content to the comfort of the living room with due ease and elegance.

Liberating gear such as that manufactured by Omnifi, a division of Rockford Fosgate, compels me to look at where I spend the bulk of my waking hours: at the office, in the home theater, or in the car. As with all great action heroes, my daily adventures are set to music—not a problem when I'm chained to my desk with my entire music library at my disposal on my hard drive. A portable player is one way to transcend the confines of the workspace, and some even arrive bundled with cables to plug into a hi-fi system for all to enjoy, but this is hardly an elegant approach.

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is growing up. A few years ago, it was known as a gathering of small (sometimes one-man) companies demonstrating exotic (sometimes downright wacky) audio products. Some of those guys are still there, but so now are most of the better-known high-end audio companies.

Wikipedia says minimalism “describes movements in various forms of art and design . . . where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features.” At Sound+Vision, we generally preach the exact opposite: a “go big or go home” view toward TVs, speakers, and subwoofers. Why settle for 5.1 and a 42-inch screen when 9.2 and a 100-inch screen would be so much better?

The cat's been out of the bag for a month or two now, but today Roku officially announces an entirely redesigned line of streaming media players, featuring a smaller form factor, a few new content channels, Angry Birds - and, on the top-of-the-line XS, a motion-control remote. The new units should hit stores by the end of the month.