Audio Video News

Tributaries Cable, guys better known for high-end cables and the like, are introducing their first power-protection component, the TX500 Power Manager. The new unit is man enough to handle up to 10 components with 1,800 watts of combined demand. (That's almost enough juice to power a small, third-world nation.) After a surge of inspiration, Tributaries included protection for two telephone connections and for a pair of fully independent RF signal paths engineered specifically for cable, satellite, or antenna connections. Image quality is protected by an RF circuit design that maintains a consistent 75-ohm impedance with bandwidth capability in excess of 1.5GHz. (That kind of bandwidth capability could most likely carry the entire broadcast TV channel lineup of a small, third-world country.)

The digital sky has been falling for the last several days with reports that the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) copy protection scheme that will be used by both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD will allow content providers the option of down-converting HD signals from the analog outputs of the players.

In a classic good news/bad news scenario, both DISH Network and DirecTV announced at CES 2006 that the two satellite giants will offer vastly expanded lineups of HD content in 2006. While more HD is always good news, the at least semi-bad news is that MPEG4 compression is being used on the new channels, and that means existing customers who want to watch the new HD channels need to invest in new equipment.

Gaming sites all over the web were abuzz last week with reports of Microsoft offering an external Blu-ray Disc drive for its Xbox 360 game console. The hubbub started when Microsoft’s Peter Moore stated, in an interview with a Japanese gaming site, that if Blu-ray becomes the apparent winner in the format war Microsoft could accommodate that format easily with an external drive. By the end of the week Microsoft, staunchly in the HD DVD camp along with Intel, was spinning his comments, and reiterating the computer giant's support for HD DVD.

Since our CES reports are no longer laundry lists of products, over the next few weeks my news reports will feature some new and interesting gear that slipped through the <I>UAV</I> show coverage cracks. Like the home theater components shown by Vincent Electronics.

A few images from CES 2006

I took a bunch more pictures at CES than I could put in my blog. So here's the better ones.