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Some People Still Love Their TVs
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 05, 2011
Yesterday we reported a Nielsen survey showing that TV ownership has dropped two percent. Unmentioned were a couple of other TV ownership patterns, both reported by DisplaySearch: Consumers who do own TVs are replacing their sets more frequently. And those who own flat panel sets are likely to own multiple sets.

Worldwide, consumers are replacing both tube-based and flat-panel sets at a faster rate than they had in the previous 10- to 15-year average. What's attracting them are not the latest technologies, such as 3DTV or IPTV, but more basic things such as picture quality and price. See press release.

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Audio Video News
"Star Wars" on Blu-ray: The details. Really!
Ken Richardson  |  May 04, 2011

Hot off the Lucasfilm press. Text of the complete press release follows:

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Audio Video News
TV Ownership Drops Two Percent
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 04, 2011
The ownership of TV sets has dropped from 98.9 percent of U.S. households to 96.7 percent, a decrease of more than two percent, according to Nielsen. The last time TV ownership declined was in 1992 following a recession.

Nielsen attributes the decrease to drooping incomes and alternative media. The research company derived its figures from the 2010 Census as well as a national sample of 50,000 people.

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Audio Video News
"Star Wars": May the 4th be with you
Ken Richardson  |  May 03, 2011

Well, not all.

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Audio Video News
The Speakers Remain the Same!
Mike Mettler  |  May 03, 2011

The next leg of Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience tour is officially underway, and I highly recommend you check it out. Dates and info are here.

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Audio Video News
Bose to Donate His Company to MIT
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 03, 2011
Dr. Amar Bose will donate the majority of his company's shares to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been both student and teacher.

The 81-year-old founder of the Bose Corporation graduated with MIT's class of 1951, eventually taking bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D degrees. He joined the faculty in 1956 and taught electrical engineering until 2001. In a letter to his employees, Dr. Bose cited his debt to Professors Y.W. Lee, Norbert Wiener, and Jerome Wiesner.

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Audio Video News
Comcast VOD Boasts All 4 Major Networks
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 02, 2011
Whose video on demand service has content from all four of the major commercial broadcast TV networks: ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC? The answer is Comcast.

With the addition of more than 20 series from ABC and Fox on April 27, Comcast is the only player who can make that claim for its VOD operation. The shows include Fox's Glee and The Simpsons and ABC's Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. Fox's Masterchef will be added on June 7 and Hell's Kitchen on July 19. Additional NBC shows on the way include America's Got Talent on June 1, Love in the Wild on June 2, and The Marriage Ref on June 27.

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Audio Video News
The Royal Wedding: the digital album
Ken Richardson  |  Apr 29, 2011

Loved that little ceremony? Loved the music even more?

It's online right now.

According to a press release, The Royal Wedding: The Official Album is ready for purchase from "the world's foremost download and streaming platforms."

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Audio Video News
Sony's Akio Morita on Norio Ohga
Mark Fleischmann  |  Apr 29, 2011
You've probably read elsewhere that Norio Ohga died last week at 81. As chairman of Sony from 1982-95, he got the company into the motion picture and music businesses. An accomplished musician and music lover, Ohga was the guy who insisted the Compact Disc format should hold at least 74 minutes to accommodate Beethoven's Ninth Symphony without flipping. See obituary.

Perhaps the person best suited to reminiscing about Ohga would be the one who wooed him away from his career as a performing musician, Sony's legendary founder Akio Morita, who died in 1999. Following are some passages from his 1986 book Made in Japan. He starts by describing Ohga as "the young music student who asked so many audacious questions of our salesmen in 1947 that they finally brought him around to the company to talk to the engineers."

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Audio Video News
YouTube to Do More Movie Rentals
Mark Fleischmann  |  Apr 28, 2011
YouTube is planning to move further into movie rentals, enlarging a small existing operation to include more major titles.

What, you didn't know YouTube does movie rentals? The Google-owned site started renting indie films in partnership with the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010. But now the push is on to make YouTube's rental service more of a mainstream operation like Netflix or iTunes.

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Audio Video News
Buy Panasonic Stuff, Get Avatar
Mark Fleischmann  |  Apr 27, 2011
Panasonic's exclusivity deal with the Blu-ray 3D release of Avatar has a new variation. Now you can buy a Panasonic Blu-ray player or compact system and get the hot disc. Previously it was available only to purchasers of Panasonic Viera TVs.

The BD 3D Avatar remains unavailable in stores.

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Audio Video News
The Droids you're looking for?
Michael Berk  |  Apr 26, 2011

Sony's PSN and Qriocity network outage may be ongoing, but the company's pressing forward on the mobile hardware front.

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Audio Video News
My, Netflix, How You've Grown
Mark Fleischmann  |  Apr 26, 2011
Was it only yesterday when Netflix was a babe in the cradle, with giant Blockbusters and cable operators looming over it? My, Netflix, how you've grown. You've all but defeated Blockbuster and now you're bigger than the country's largest cable TV and satellite radio operators.

The latest Netflix quarterly earnings report shows 23.7 million subscribers. While this is short of estimates, it's still enough to propel Netflix past Comcast, with 22.8 million subscribers, and Sirius XM, with 20.2 million subscribers. This has got to make the cable industry in particular nervous.

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Audio Video News
A hostile and retaliatory measure with great hubris
Michael Berk  |  Apr 26, 2011

The Beastie Boys have struck back against bootleggers (who've been distibuting an unauthorized copy of the final mix of the upcoming Hot Sauce Committee, Part 2), posting a full stream

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Audio Video News
PlayStation Network, still on the fritz
Michael Berk  |  Apr 25, 2011

Things are still looking bleak for the PlayStation Network; the gaming network (along with Sony's Qriocity streaming music-and-movie service) has been down

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