Ears On

There are lots of wireless ways to get two channels of audio from point A to point B. But which is the right one for you? One of several possible answers is the Audioengine AW1 wireless audio adapter. It takes the form of two shiny black objects. Each one is the size and shape of a box of kitchen matches, with a stubby USB dongle at one end and a stereo mini-jack at the other end.

There are a lot of internet radio stations but not many internet radios. Even as smart a player as Tivoli Audio had to pull back on introducing one, after Tom DeVesto and crew discovered how difficult it is to design a compact internet radio that operates with the same plug-and-plug simplicity as the company's other products. Well, the Tivoli NetWorks is finally here. It's the same shape as the PAL radio but comes in a wooden enclosure (walnut, cherry, or wenge) like the Model One and some other Tivolis. It accesses both internet radio stations and the contents of a PC's hard drive via either wi-fi or ethernet connections. The only control is a round button at the top. Pressing and holding it turns the unit on or off; pressing it quickly mutes the radio; rotating it adjusts volume. Hardest thing you'll need to do is input the password for a secured wi-fi connection. The unit is shipped with five of Tom's favorite stations already selected as presets though you can change them. It is available with or without digital FM tuner. At $600 for the tunerless model, NetWorks is not cheap, but the development must have cost a fortune. See video and press release.

As recently noted in the News Dept., Verizon is pushing its FiOS TV, net, and phone service into all five boroughs of New York City over the next six years. Of course this is a major challenge to the local cable companies, Time Warner and Cablevision. Taking a pro-active stance, Time Warner has already been running TV ads for months deriding Verizon's fiber-optic technology. Here's the scenario: A guy about to tuck into his morning cereal answers the doorbell to find a callow youth offering Verizon fiber, complete with animated effects. Waving his bowl of bran--full of fiber, get it?--the happy cable customer snarkily responds that Time Warner has been using fiber optics for years. What the ad doesn't mention is that Verizon takes fiber all the way up to the house or building served, only then reverting to coax, twinlead, etc. for various services. For my own part, I'm both a reasonably happy Time Warner customer and an embittered former Verizon customer. My dialtone went away, never came back, and the company's fully automated customer service wouldn't put a human on the phone to talk with me about it, though I do regularly get mailings begging me to come back. But what technophile wouldn't be seduced by Verizon's vision of a fiber-optic future? The company is make a huge investment in FiOS. In a country decidedly behind in broadband technology compared to other nations, the Verizon program is just what we need.

People are watching more network TV shows on the internet and I wondered what it would be like to be one of them. I'm the first to admit I'm not crazy about watching anything longer than three minutes on my PC monitor--even after upgrading to a 24-inch 1080p NEC. Still, I couldn't resist doing an hour of Star Trek from CBS.com. I figured if I could get through season one, episode one--"The Man Trap"--I might do a few more. Slow data rate and low res were givens. My first frustration beyond that was that the Adobe Flash Player wouldn't let me upscale the image to fill the screen. That meant I had to either stick to my desk chair or squint at a postcard-sized image from my armchair across the room. Buffering errors interrupted the flow of the program three or four times. As for the ads, I saw the series in the original telecasts (yes, I'm that old) and ads didn't bother me then. If anything, the online ad interruptions were fewer and briefer than typical broadcast TV. But the ads were painfully loud compared to the volume level of the program. Again, that happens on broadcast TV too, but in this case the disparity was extreme, and got even more irksome during one ad with substantial low-bass content, which turned my desk sub into a blaring bass bomb. Unfortunately my Onix desktop amp doesn't come with remote control. Altogether, I won't do it again unless I can get a full-screen image and a reasonable ratio between program and ad sound levels. These are solvable problems. Over to you, CBS.

Today Toshiba announced that it will discontinue marketing HD DVD players. What do you think will happen next? Will you buy a Blu-ray player? Do downloads look more attractive? And finally, those of you who have tried both HD DVD and Blu-ray, which offered the better user experience? Weigh in and tell us what you think. After all, it's your opinion that will determine what happens next in this epic saga.

Sometimes it makes me nervous to lift an iPod-compatible compact audio system out of the box. There are plenty of them out there and I want to review only the exceptional ones. From time to time I pull off the wrapping and know I'm looking at a loser before the iPod even touches the docking connector. Flimsy construction usually leads to flimsy sound. On the other hand, some systems also make a fine first impression. The Tannoy i30 is a case in point. It was packed better than most of the surround receivers I reviewed, in charcoal-colored non-disintegrating foam. At a solid eight pounds, it felt good in my hands.