Audio Video News

Best Buy Is Flaunting UHDTVs at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, following a similar effort last year at New York’s JFK. That may not fit in your carry-on...

A PlayStation Hack allows hundreds of games for the portable PlayStation Vita to work on the PlayStation TV console. That includes such gaming staples as Mortal Kombat and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified...

Global HDR TV Shipments will pass the 32 million mark by 2019, says an IHS forecast, though HDR won’t hit its stride until 2017, when 12.5 million units are projected to ship. “Numerous consumer trials by broadcasters, content producers, and research labs have demonstrated that HDR has huge impact on viewers,” says principal analyst Paul Gray...

Samsung Gear VR, the company’s virtual-reality headset, has added Netflix, Hulu, and Twitch to its streaming attractions. A new Gear VR headset, at $99, is lighter than the existing model, half the price, and works with Samsung’s entire 2015 smartphone line...

Dish Network Axed Virtual Joey, its app for secure TV watching and DVR-like recording on smart TVs and game consoles, except for existing customers. It was unclear at press time whether a new version would become available...

Amazon Dropped the Bomb on ChromeCast and Apple TV, banishing both from its virtual shelves because they don’t play nice with Amazon’s Prime Video. But Roku, Xbox, and PlayStation will continue to be sold—along with Fire TV and Fire TV stick, of course...

Will Amazon Stream live TV? Quite possibly—it is discussing that prospect with CBS and NBCUniversal. Live from Amazon, it’s Saturday Night!...

Traditional Pay-TV attracts 7,644 “average minutes of viewing,” versus 579 for Netflix, 166 for YouTube, 78 for mobile video, 0.7 for Roku, and 0.3 for Apple TV, according to streaming platform vendor Wurl. By tracking both usage and reach, the index is less bearish than other measures of pay-TV’s supposedly imminent demise...

Consumers Like Pay-TV Providers a little more this year, says J.D. Power’s 2015 satisfaction survey. The rating of 723 (on a 1,000-point scale) is up from 711 in 2014 and 699 in 2013—but does it come in time to thwart cord-cutting?...

Cord-Cutting Will Capture Half of viewers under 32 by 2025, according to a Forrester Research study of 55,000 adults. Whether pay-TV providers will recapture at least some of them with strategies like Comcast’s forthcoming Stream service remains to be seen...

Pay-TV Bundles Must Be “Pruned,” Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen told the Next TV Summit. Double-digit price hikes will give way to dropped channels or even—it’s a miracle!— price rollbacks...

Millennials Use Smartphones as their main mobile video devices, says Adobe, with 92 percent preferring the smallest of small screens. Phones have also captured 84 percent of Generation X and 69 percent of Baby Boomers...

Netflix Raised the Price of its Standard streaming service—the one that allows two separate simultaneous streams—to $9.99, an increase of a dollar. The Basic and Premium services remain unchanged...

Spotify Now Beams Songs to Google’s Chromecast dongle. Now you needn’t rely on Bluetooth or Spotify Connect...

The Recording Industry Association of America says fighting Internet piracy with “notice and takedown” methods is a “never-ending game” that forces the music labels to accept piddling deals for streaming. The Forbes opinion piece comes as the desperate music industry is pushing Congress for higher-caliber legal weapons...

Vinyl Is Beating Streaming in revenue, reports RIAA, making $222 million in the first six months of this year, versus $163 million for the likes of YouTube and Spotify. Vinyl is also growing faster, clocking a 52 percent year-over-year increase, versus 27 percent for streaming...

Home Automation Snafus are making consumers question the reliability of DIY products, says an Argus Insights survey of 45,000 customer reviews. “Mainstream consumers were burned last holiday season by installation and reliability issues,” says Argus CEO John Feland, and the afterburn will linger...

Mitsubishi Settled a class-action lawsuit by LaserVue rear-projection TV owners after sections of screens darkened following 8,000 to 10,000 hours of use. For repair, payment, or reimbursement of at least $500, check mitsubishilaservuesettlement.com...

DTS Bought iBiquity, the developer and licensor of HD Radio. The digital terrestrial radio standard already uses DTS Neural Surround for music programming...