Apartment dwellers are plagued by exclusive telecom service agreements struck by their landlords and co-op boards. As a result their choice of triple-play service is limited to a single favored provider--until now. The Federal Communications Commission has just banned such agreements.
Despite their popularity, LCD TVs have always had a problem with black level. Yesterday Dolby and SIM2 gave dazzled reporters a glimpse of how good black and dark colors could look on a flat-panel set. Unfortunately, this High Dynamic Range (HDR) tech was only a prototype, so it'll be awhile before you get to share the love.
It was 40 years ago today (well, just about) that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. What a year 1967 was! It was also the year of Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, Disraeli Gears by Cream, Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd, Surrealistic Pillow by the Jefferson Airplane, The Doors by the Doors, and that album with the banana on the cover by the Velvet Underground. A scan of Rolling Stone magazine’s “40 Essential Albums of 1967” also turns up Moby Grape, the Hollies, James Brown, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Arlo Guthrie, the Beach Boys, Tim Buckley, the Kinks—please, a sustained round of applause for the Kinks—Van Morrison, Dionne Warwick, Buffalo Springfield, the Moody Blues, Love, the 13th Floor Elevators, and (a previously undiscovered gap in my listening life) the Serpent Power. Thank God I wasn’t into drugs then. Look at what I would have missed.
Blu-ray will take 29.4 million more homes by storm by the end of the year, say researchers. Blu-ray is doomed, says the chief scientist of THX. Who to believe?
The Canton Chrono Series seems to have a split personality. With the grilles off, you can’t help noticing the gleaming diamond-etched aluminum trim rings that hold the almost equally flashy aluminum drivers. With the grilles on, the floorstanding models become impassive black totems, complemented by equally self-effacing centers, stand-mounts, and subs. The only hint of style is a glossy lacquered fiberboard baffle that twinkles slightly on close inspection under a bright light.
People are watching more network TV shows on the internet and I wondered what it would be like to be one of them. I'm the first to admit I'm not crazy about watching anything longer than three minutes on my PC monitor--even after upgrading to a 24-inch 1080p NEC. Still, I couldn't resist doing an hour of Star Trek from CBS.com. I figured if I could get through season one, episode one--"The Man Trap"--I might do a few more. Slow data rate and low res were givens. My first frustration beyond that was that the Adobe Flash Player wouldn't let me upscale the image to fill the screen. That meant I had to either stick to my desk chair or squint at a postcard-sized image from my armchair across the room. Buffering errors interrupted the flow of the program three or four times. As for the ads, I saw the series in the original telecasts (yes, I'm that old) and ads didn't bother me then. If anything, the online ad interruptions were fewer and briefer than typical broadcast TV. But the ads were painfully loud compared to the volume level of the program. Again, that happens on broadcast TV too, but in this case the disparity was extreme, and got even more irksome during one ad with substantial low-bass content, which turned my desk sub into a blaring bass bomb. Unfortunately my Onix desktop amp doesn't come with remote control. Altogether, I won't do it again unless I can get a full-screen image and a reasonable ratio between program and ad sound levels. These are solvable problems. Over to you, CBS.
Local stations suffered a setback in the transition to digital television last week when the Federal Communications Commission ruled that satellite providers needn't carry local signals in HD till 2013.