Audio Video News

Whenever anyone starts proclaiming that plasma is a dying technology, I put my hands over my ears and start singing, "La, la, la, I can't hear you!" Sure, LCD TVs have come a long way in terms of black levels and motion detail thanks to LED illumination and frame interpolation, but these are work-arounds for problems that most plasmas never had in the first place—and they often come with their own odious artifacts, such as frame interpolation's "soap-opera effect." So it was with great glee that I read a report in This Week In Consumer Electronics about a study from market-research firm DisplaySearch, which found that shipments of plasma panels to TV manufacturers in 2010 were way up from the previous year.

What hot new video display technology grew in every quarter of 2010? Well, plasma isn't new, but aside from that, there's your answer.

"2010 was a great year for plasma TV panels," reports DisplaySearch. "Growth seems to be supply-limited."

Marantz, celebrated by us for its surround receivers, will sponsor a concert tour by violinist David Garrett, a young crossover artist who has been known to perform Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The tour will hit concert halls and theaters in 21 U.S. cities this month.

Corporate sponsorship of concert tours is not exactly new. Rock dinosaurs have been doing it for years. This arrangement is a good fit for both Marantz, as a company intimately involved in musical reproduction, and Garrett, with his rock star chic.

Super Bowl Sunday will bring more than a game and some high-profile ads. It's also when Best Buy is expected to announce a new program that will offer consumers a small degree of price protection and encourage them to upgrade old purchases to new ones.

To enroll in the Buy Back program, enroll your product purchase for a fee. Best Buy will then offer to buy it back for a percentage of the original price within six months. The longer you wait, the more the percentage goes down. Good deal? That's up to you. But if the product is something whose value would depreciate quickly, and you're inclined to update often, it may be worth considering.

Last Thursday, Ken Florance, Director of Content Delivery at Netflix, posted the results of a very interesting study on the Netflix Tech Blog. The company measured the effective throughput speed of its HD streams as delivered by many ISPs in the US and Canada from the first of October to the middle of January. The US results are shown above, while the Canadian results are shown below.

Pioneer has licensed its Elite brand to Sharp as a prelude to the joint marketing of Elite-branded LCD TVs.

Historically the brand has applied to all of Pioneer's higher-end products, including plasma TVs, audio/video receivers, Blu-ray players, and speakers. For instance, Pioneer maintains two receiver lines, called Pioneer and Pioneer Elite. The deal with Sharp covers only TVs, and will allow Sharp to introduce a line of high-end Elite-brand LCD TVs this year in North America.

Even while Netflix has passed the 20 million mark in subscribers, some Netflixers are pleading for a disc-only rental plan.

"If you don't want instant gratification, then there should be an option -- call it the slow lane, if you like," said a blogger quoted in Home Media Magazine. In the wake of recent Netflix disc-rental price increases, an online poll showed 10 percent threatening to ax their membership. That probably won't cut much ice with Netflix, which sees its future in streaming, even to the point of removing "Add to DVD Queue" from its streaming interface.