Audio Video News

Show attendees at Home Entertainment 2003, the hi-fi and home theater event of the year, will be treated to nearly a dozen educational seminars to help guide and inform them about what and how to buy the new and sometimes confusing home audio/video and home theater products available today.

V INC.
You gotta love value, and V Inc.'s offering of a 46-inch plasma display for only $3,999 represents a value indeed. The Visio P4 display has a native resolution of 852:480, and it's compatible with 480p, 720p, and 1080i HD formats. It comes with an integrated 181-channel NTSC/PAL tuner, an attractive stand, and a fanless cooling system, which should provide you with nice, quiet viewing. The Visio P4 offers a good compliment of video inputs, including RGB, component, S-video, and composite, as well as a DVI connection. You'll also enjoy this 16:9 plasma's motion-adaptive deinterlacing, 3:2-pulldown recognition, and four adjustable aspect ratios. There's not much that the Visio P4 doesn't have on board, except, of course, a hefty price tag.
V Inc.
(714) 962-4848
www.vinc.us

High-definition programming will expand substantially this year, with the addition of up to three new full-time HD channels from pay-per-view-provider iN Demand. The announcement from the New York-based company was made April 28 by CEO Steve Brenner.

FCC feet to the fire: The Bush administration will hold the Federal Communications Commission to an early June deadline for rewriting regulations for media ownership. The changes will likely lift most remaining restrictions on control of radio and television stations in single markets, as well as throughout the nation.

<A HREF="http://www.dts.com">Digital Theater Systems Inc</A> hopes to get a financial boost through an initial public offering of stock to take place later this year.

Lowell/Edwards
It's pretty. It's functional. It's Lowell/Edwards' Asymmetric Wall Unit. This elegant unit manages an entire A/V system. The central section is a matte-black-lacquered cabinet that houses all of your components, and you can add drawers to the 36-inch-high granite countertop to hold remotes, software, or whatever you like. The right section of the unit features a platform that can accommodate up to a 32-inch-diagonal display and swivels 180 degrees. Other nice perks are handsome display shelves, cherry-veneer pocket doors that open to reveal a dry bar, and space for three small monitors to suspend from the lower of the two horizontal top panels. This simply beautiful wall unit retails for $12,500.
Lowell/Edwards
(212) 980-2862
www.lowelledwards.com

Pink Floyd—The Dark Side of the Moon (SACD, EMI Records)
I can't think of many rock bands that are a better fit for the multichannel treatment than Pink Floyd. In addition to their music's many other pioneering aspects, toying with dimensions and perspective has never been something that the band was afraid to do. While it must've been a great temptation to incorporate sonic gymnastics of every kind into this material, the SACD's 5.1 mix has enough presence to make it interesting but enough subtlety to keep it legitimate. You get your experimentation, but it's rarely distracting or overpowering.