One of the few major audio manufacturers to function as a public company will be taken private. Kohlbert Kravis Roberts and GS Capital Partners bought Harman International in a deal worth $8.3 billion.
At least one major cable operator is pruning analog channels in advance of the end of analog broadcasting, slated for February 17, 2009. Time Warner Cable's Staten Island Project will provide 100 new channels of HDTV to the southernmost borough of New York City.
Smaller iPod-compatible speaker systems like this one are usually described as "speakers" (as opposed to "systems"). The Altec Lansing inMotion gets points for not calling itself an i-something. What's seductive about it, though, is its shape-shifting ability.
Cable operators may discriminate against broadcasters by reducing both the quality and quantity of DTV channels, the head of the National Association of Broadcasters asserted last week in a keynote at the NAB's annual convention in Las Vegas.
I admired the HSU Research HB-1 horn-loaded loudspeaker when I first heard it at the Home Entertainment Show in Los Angeles in June 2006. Nearby demo rooms were stuffed with megabucks two-channel gear, much of which simply didn't approach the directness of this $125 budget wonder. I blogged my first response, and it's a good thing I still feel that way, because now it's printed right on the HB-1's carton: "This speaker may become the underground bestseller of 2006." Make that 2007. Aside from the year, I stand by my original impression.
Sony will offer replacements for 20 defective glitch-prone DVD titles. The cause of the defect is yet another digital rights management scheme that's gone wacky.
The latest challenge to the music industry comes from musicians themselves. Some of them are re-recording their hits to capture licensing revenue that otherwise would go to their record companies.
The federal government's Copyright Royalty Board refused this week to reconsider an earlier decision to impose a massive rate hike on Internet radio broadcasters starting May 15. Depending on whom you ask, this is either a victory for recording artists or the finally tolling of the bell for net radio.
Recent doings at Circuit City may be of interest in the wake of the mass firings reported here and elsewhere. The story became a Primedia trifecta--covered here, on the Stereophile site, and on the Ultimate AV site--in addition to wide coverage elsewhere including a stern editorial in the New York Times.