Audio Video News

Speaker-industry pioneer Irving M. ("Bud") Fried passed away on March 31 at his home in Philadelphia. A lifelong resident of that city, his first exposure to audio was listening to the sound of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1928. But it wasn't live. Though he was to become a fixture at Philadelphia Orchestra concerts, he first heard the ensemble's music emerging from the theater horns of his father's movie theaters in 1928. That was not only the year movies learned to talk, but also the year young Fried became a confirmed music lover and audiophile—decades before high fidelity even had a name.

The Home Entertainment 2005 Show is coming to New York City April 28 to May 1, at the New York Hilton hotel. A ticket to the Show not only gives attendees entrée to previews of the latest in home audio, home theater, and convergence products—it also includes free educational seminars on a variety of subjects, moderated by top industry editors.

Earlier this month, a new distribution system for the delivery of digital-cinema content across continents was tested between the US and Singapore. The system, called Cross-Continent Digital Content Transmission, or CCTx, is the result of collaboration between the Singapore government, an industry association called Singapore infocomm Technology Federation Digital Media Chapter (SiTF DMC), and the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern California. Other partners involved in the pilot program included Thomson Technicolor (consulting); GlobeCast, StarHub, and 1-Net (international and local circuit and data storage); and Christie, Dell, Texas Instruments, and XDC (technology).

While religious and political animosity continues to brew between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, there is one thing they can agree on: digital cinema. A subsidiary of technology and services provider <A href="http://www.avicatech.com">Avica</A>, Digital Cinema Limited (DCL), has announced that they are starting to implement a nationwide digital-cinema network that will ultimately lead to a conversion of all 515 screens in both regions of the Emerald Isle to the digital format. After two years of planning, DCL began installing the first 25 projectors earlier this month and hopes to have all Irish screens operational within a year at a cost of over $53 million.