When home theater enthusiasts talk about their audio systems, they usually concentrate on components such as the disc player, receiver (or preamp-processor and power amps), and speakers. But there's another component that deserves just as much attention: the cables that connect the other devices together. Without cables, those other components would be nothing more than expensive boat anchors.
<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/headshot150.sw.jpg" WIDTH=150 HEIGHT=200 HSPACE=6 VSPACE=4 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Recently, <I>UAV</I> contributor Michael Fremer sent me a copy of an e-mail containing an e-discussion he was having with Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). The topic of their e-conversation was a petition by the Consumers Union (CU), a non-profit organization that publishes <I>Consumer Reports</I>. The gist of the petition is given on their Web site:
On June 14, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) introduced a bill that would set a hard cutoff date of January 1, 2009, for the shutdown of analog over-the-air (OTA) television broadcasting. The bill, formally S.1237, is also known as the SAVE LIVES Act of 2005. Someone worked pretty hard to come up with the words to fit that acronym: Spectrum Availability for Emergency-Response and Law-Enforcement to Improve Vital Emergency Services Act.
This week, Panasonic hit the road to demonstrate their latest products to journalists in San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles, California. Unfortunately, the shipping company they hired to get the gear from San Jose to LA dropped the ball (at least they didn't drop the gear!), failing to deliver the equipment on time, so most of the presentation was theoretical.
Late last week, D&M Holdings and Boston Acoustics announced that they have signed a definitive merger agreement in which D&M will purchase Boston Acoustics for $17.50 per share in cash for a total of approximately $76 million. The deal adds Boston Acoustics' premium speaker line (along with the Snell brand, which BA acquired within the last couple of years) to D&M's already impressive portfolio, including Denon, Marantz, and McIntosh, as well as the D&M Professional, ReplayTV, Rio, and Escient brands.
A new study by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) reveals that only 33.6 million (12%) of the 285 million television sets in the United States are used to watch over-the-air (OTA) programming. CEA issued its data in a letter delivered to the leadership of the Senate and House Commerce Committees to assist them in "their deliberations on how to ensure the needs of all Americans are addressed when analog broadcasting ceases." The House Commerce Committee is preparing to consider legislation currently under development by Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) that will set a hard cutoff date for analog broadcasts. The Senate Commerce Committee is poised to release draft DTV legislation later this month.
As I mention in <A href="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/scottwilkinson/505sw/">my current column</A>, streaming high-quality A/V content in real time over the Internet is not practical due in part to bandwidth limitations. Currently, DSL and cable modems top out at about 3 megabits per second downstream (into the home), while DVDs typically consume 4-7Mbps of bandwidth, and standard MPEG-2 HDTV requires over 19Mbps.
Despite the ongoing rumors of back-room talks aimed at averting a format war over the next generation of blue-laser optical discs, each camp is continuing to develop its own standard. In our <A href="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/news/051605HDDVD/">last report</A> on this game, Toshiba had announced a 3-layer HD DVD with 45GB of storage capacity. Now, TDK has upped the ante again by announcing that they've developed a 4-layer Blu-ray Disc (BD) prototype with a total capacity of 100GB; each layer holds 25GB, just as in single- and dual-layer BDs.
At the Society for Information Display (SID) 2005 International Symposium, Seminar, and Exhibition this week in Boston, MA, Samsung is highlighting a number of important developments. Their 82-inch LCD panel, the largest in the world, is being exhibited for the first time in the Americas. The prototype is said to have a horizontal and vertical viewing angle of 180º, reproduce 92% of the NTSC color gamut, and exhibit a response time of 8ms or less.
<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/headshot150.sw.jpg" WIDTH=150 HEIGHT=200 HSPACE=6 VSPACE=4 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>As digital television emerges as the home-entertainment medium of the new century, the convergence of audio/video broadcasting and the Internet is inevitable. After all, DTVs are nothing more than computers dedicated to A/V tasks; it seems a simple matter to include telecommunications capabilities as well. This convergence is made even easier with the increasing use of broadband cable modems, which access the Internet via the same infrastructure that brings television to roughly two-thirds of American homes.