OTHER TECH

For more than a decade, the arrival of high-definition television was trumpeted with all the bluster of a carnival barker and the sincerity of a contestant on a reality-TV dating show.

Photos by Tony Cordoza Now that you know what the hottest games are, why are you still playing them on a small screen using the TV's anemic speakers? Jacking your game console into your home theater is a no-brainer that will take your gaming to the next level. Using a big screen draws you into the action, and the surround sound totally envelopes you.

Photo illustration by John Wilkes This year's Sound & Vision Reviewer's Choice Awards feature a number of home- entertainment firsts, including JVC's GR-HD1 high-definition camcorder, Sony's RDR-GX7 DVD recorder, which supports both the DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW formats, and Yamaha's MusicCAST, the first Wi-Fi music system from a m

My father always attributed his early interests in technical matters to his maternal grandfather, who, in his words, "knew a little bit about everything." In those days, the lowly telephone was not commonplace in rural America, international calling was an exotic luxury for the wealthy, and the Internet was the stuff of pulp science-fiction novels.