Audio Video News

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Audio Video News
What Comes After High-Def? 4K!
 |  Oct 30, 2005  | 

<I>UAV</I> readers have been flooded with so much news lately about the transition to HDTV- with respect to both the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray format war, and this country's transition to digital TV broadcast- that I almost feel bad bringing this one up. But it's true- in late October Warner Bros. began field trials of digital cinema presentations in Japan featuring so-called 4K resolution, which is, gulp, an image with a pixel count of 4096x2160.

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Audio Video News
Step Away from the Remote Control
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 30, 2005  | 
A recent study1 has found that remote controls are lost or misplaced more often than car keys, eyeglasses, small poodles, and great ideas for surveys. Tampa, Florida-based PRISM Sales International believes it has found a way to end the agony of the lost remote2 forever (or at least until the batteries in this new product run out).
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Audio Video News
Congress Locking In On 2009 DTV Transition
 |  Oct 27, 2005  | 

Committees in the House and Senate have both agreed that 2009 is to be the year that analog broadcasts end in the US, but many details, including the exact date of the inevitable transition to DTV, aren’t yet resolved.

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Audio Video News
The Little DVD Player that Could
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 24, 2005  | 
Once a marvel of technology, the portable DVD player is now on its way to becoming a "been there, spun that" kind of product category. (Oh, how quickly we take electronic things for granted nowadays…) So manufacturers - and there are many - of this kind of portable device have to focus their design attention on enhanced features or reduced weight/size/cost in order to attract the attention of the much loved, cash-carrying consumer. (Yeah, don't go looking around the room. I'm talking about you.)
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Audio Video News
Listen to - and Watch - the Hand
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 24, 2005  | 
Pity those poor manufacturers of portable audio and video devices whose names don't begin with an "A" and who don't make gadgets with a model numbers starting with a lower-case "i". HandHeld Entertainment, makers of one of those "not an iPod audio/video" portables, sees an avenue to fame and success in offering a handheld portable player that costs significantly less than an iPod from Apple. Prior to Apple's much ballyhooed introduction earlier this month, HandHeld Entertainment announced plans for the next generation of their digital video/audio/photo media players.
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Audio Video News
Warner Officially Adopts Blu-ray
 |  Oct 23, 2005  | 

Some are calling it the end of the format war, others are calling it the beginning. Warner Home Video announced last week that it has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association and will release its films on Blu-ray, and, ostensibly, HD DVD as well. Universal is now the only studio of the six majors to be committed to HD DVD and not Blu-ray.

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Audio Video News
Coming Soon To A Set-Top Box Near You: MPEG-4
 |  Oct 20, 2005  | 

DirecTV and LG Electronics made a joint announcement that the Korean electronics giant has begun production of the first DirecTV set-top boxes that will decode signals encoded using MPEG-4 video compression. The boxes will be sold under the DirecTV brand name and will empower a massive increase in DirecTV's lineup of HDTV channels that is scheduled to begin this fall.

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Audio Video News
Apple Announces Video iPod
 |  Oct 16, 2005  | 

Last week Apple concurrently announced a new iPod digital music player that can play digital video as well as audio, and iTunes 6.0, which enables users to purchase and download music videos and TV shows from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS.

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Audio Video News
John Landis, Uncensored
Chris Chiarella  |  Oct 14, 2005  | 
The October issue of HT featured our one-on-one interview acclaimed director John Landis, but those pages were scarcely adequate to contain his boundless enthusiasm, and who are we to restrain the mind that perfected the R-rated comedy? We hereby present this unfettered version of our discussion with the man behind Animal House, The Blues Brothers (celebrating its silver anniversary this year with a new special edition DVD from Universal Studios), and An American Werewolf in London, to name but a few, in addition to Michael Jackson's groundbreaking video "Thriller," which once ruled MTV.
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Audio Video News
China To Launch Next-Gen DVD Format
 |  Oct 13, 2005  | 

The strange and twisting-turning saga of the next-generation optical disc format war just got stranger with reports that China announced plans to develop and launch its own next –generation DVD format in 2008, seemingly placing China's massive manufacturing infrastructure at odds with the emerging Blu-ray and HD DVD standards.

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Audio Video News
Wanna Be The Top Gun In Your Home Theater?
 |  Oct 09, 2005  | 

Over the years we've seen many home theater companies attempt to rekindle memories of Hollywood's grand, but nearly forgotten ballyhoo past (some of which would make even the great William Castle jealous). Several companies make devices that will shake, rattle, and roll your chair during passages with loud, deep bass. We've even seen subwoofers said to originate from research projects aiming to imitate the low frequency groans that elephants use to communicate to each other through dense brush.

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Audio Video News
High-Styling High Fi-ing
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 07, 2005  |  First Published: Oct 08, 2005  | 
There are cool products, and then there are cool products. While not quite living up to Bang & Olufsen's uber-cool status, some of the new "StyleFi" gadgets from Oregon Scientific certainly fall under the pretty-darn-cool category.
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Audio Video News
Pretty as a Picture
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 07, 2005  | 
Panasonic, the self-proclaimed leader in plasma TV, doesn't like the way the company's plasma TVs look. It's not that they don't like the picture quality - ask Panasonic people and they'll give you umpteen reasons why they think images on their plasma TVs look stunning - but, flat as plasma TVs are (I believe the old phrase "flat as a pancake" will soon be replaced by "flat as a plasma TV"), Panasonic knows some folks just can't be satisfied. (They won't be happy until we have wall-paper televisions.)
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Audio Video News
Paramount Jumps Ship to Blu-ray
 |  Oct 06, 2005  | 

In a surprising about-face Paramount Home Entertainment announced early this week that it intends to release its films on Blu-ray Disc. As confusing as this announcement makes the current format war in general, what's perhaps more confusing is that the studio ostensibly still plans to release films in the HD DVD format as well as Blu-ray in spite of the fact that all parties involved seem to agree that two formats will simply confuse consumers, perhaps to the point that they won't buy into either format.

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Audio Video News
Them's High Definition Fightin' Words
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 04, 2005  | 
The war of the words over who will reap the lucrative licensing fees from the next-generation high-resolution disc format (i.e., HD DVD vs. Blu-ray) continues to inflict heavy collateral damage on consumer interest and confidence in the potential of a high-definition spinning disc format.
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