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Other Tech
Digital Cable-Ready Diary
Al Griffin  |  Jan 05, 2005

Along with a deluge of bigger, flatter HDTVs of various technological stripes, a hot TV news item at CES 2005 was the arrival of digital cable-ready TVs with slots for a CableCARD. This credit-card-size device was designed to eliminate set-top cable decoders - those ugly black boxes that have squatted, like parasites, on or below our TVs for the past two decades.

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Other Tech
Peace Entreaties
David Ranada  |  Jan 05, 2005

A format war over a high-definition disc format now unfortunately appears inevitable. The all-but-formal declaration came at the Blu-ray press event on the first day of this year's Consumer Electronics Show (also see Rich Warren's article, "Next-Generation DVD").

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Other Tech
Shopping Guide to Home Theater
 |  Jan 05, 2005

Electronics superstores are terrific. If you're out shopping for an HDTV, they're likely to have at least a couple dozen models to choose from, where a specialty store might have half as many. And, of course, a small store can't begin to compete with a superstore's prices.

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Other Tech
Photo Mix #1
 |  Jan 05, 2005

Hordes of reporters - including S&V's Rich Warren (tan coat to left of center) - await announcements from electronics giant Thomson (RCA) the morning of CES's media-only first day. CES-2005-photo-mix-1b.jpg The American Chopper guys help Toshiba close their press conference

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Other Tech
One for All!
 |  Jan 05, 2005

Everyone appreciates surround sound as a part of a home theater, but many people don't enjoy being surrounded by speakers.

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Audio Video News
Press Day at CES - Something Wickedly Good Comes this Way
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 05, 2005
The day before the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) officially opens, members of the press are "treated" to an exhaustive lineup of press conferences. Some are good, some are awful, and very few are worth waking up before the sun rises. On the other hand, every now and then you find a nugget of golden information that makes all the coffee and pastries you can cram in your stomach worth wile.
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Audio Video News
2005 CES: Day One
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 05, 2005

CES doesn't officially open until Thursday, January 6, but for the horde of assembled press, it begins on January 5. While workers swarm over the Las Vegas Nevada convention center in what appears to be a hopeless attempt to have everything ready by Thursday's official opening, wall-to-wall press conferences are being held. Tolerated as a necessary chore by the scribes, the press conferences nevertheless serve a useful purpose for manufacturers, giving them a captive audience to do with as they will. This year the festivities were more efficiently organized than usual, the only shortcoming being the lack of sufficient pauses between events.

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LG DU-60PY10 60-inch Plasma HDTV
David Katzmaier  |  Jan 04, 2005

With a 60-inch (diagonal) screen and a cabinet only 5 inches deep, LG's largest plasma HDTV, the DU-60PY10, has the kind of measurements both home theater buffs and interior designers will find enticing. But unlike many of its industrial-style plasma counterparts, this panel is very much a traditional, self-contained TV.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
DVD of the Month: Troy
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 04, 2005

<I>Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Diane Kruger, Brian Cox, Sean Bean, Brendan Gleeson, Peter O'Toole. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Aspect ratio: 2.40:1 (anamorphic). 162 minutes. 2004. Dolby Digital 5.1 (English, French). Warner Brothers Home Entertainment 28411. R. $29.95.</I>

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The Custom Installer: The Little Things
John Sciacca  |  Jan 03, 2005

Inventor, musician, scientist, politician, and philosopher, Ben Franklin was a brilliant man. His Poor Richard's Almanac is full of timeless proverbs, such as, "For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

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