Ears On

Lost amid the year-end fuss was a long-expected development that will have profound effects for viewers on the west coast, in the midwest, and in the southeastern United States. The Federal Communications Commission quietly approved a merger between AT&T (as the combined company will be known) and Bell South. How will this affect nascent telco TV service? Just look at the Wiki map: Three companies now control the bulk of the traditional telecom business (not counting cable or VOIP, of course). See those two gigantic swatches in blue? That is AT&T's newly expanded territory. While Verizon's geographic territory is far smaller than that of Qwest, it includes many more subscribers. That leaves AT&T and Verizon as the most influential players. And they don't plan to compete in video services outside their defined territories. They will compete only with cable and satellite outfits within their territories. Despite rumors that the two Democratic commissioners would vote nay, the FCC vote was unanimous, 4-0, with one absention due to conflict of interest. That the surprise compromise will guarantee net neutrality is being cited as a victory for media watchdogs. Unfortunately, the promise comes with a two-year time limit, and does not apply to video-over-IP services.

What did the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show tell us about the future of CES and our industry in general? That was the question on everyone's lips. When asked "how are you," I cheerfully answered: "employed." This never failed to bring a smile. CES 2009 was hardly a failure. While it did not draw the 147,000 people of 2008, it still mustered 110,000, according to a press release from the Consumer Electronics Association. That is not too shabby by any standard. On the magazine's audio beat, I found fewer audio exhibits in the South Hall, but more at the Venetian, so seeing stuff and blogging about it kept me busy.

Has concertgoing become a lost art? Observing behavior at concerts, I can't help wondering if some of my fellow audience members have lost the ability to listen in the moment. And the music suffers for it.

Audio highlights and trends from CES 2016 worth writing home about.

Unique is not a word to throw around lightly. To be unique, a product has to be like nothing else out there. Even by the strictest standard, however, the Boomtube from Think Outside can wrap itself in the mantle of uniqueness. This little emperor is well clothed.

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.

TiVo may soon lower its hardware pricing to every consumer's favorite number: zero. The news came when CEO Tom Rogers addressed a Reuters technology summit on Monday. The free hardware would begin as a test. In exchange, service plans may extend longer and cost more. Why this, why now? TiVo is a publicly traded company under constant pressure from Wall Street. Once its main competition was RePlayTV but now it's up against proprietary offerings from cable and satellite companies as well as mainstream manufacturers. An especially hard blow was DirecTV's announcement last year that it would de-emphasize TiVo in favor of its own product. Smooth-talking Rogers is determined to defend and increase his subscriber base of four million: "We feel that the notion that TiVo has hit some kind of distribution wall and is no longer a growth animal is not the case." Coincidentally, he is the former CEO of Primedia, publisher of Home Theater.