Other Tech

March 6 - Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) now says it will release its first Blu-ray high-definition discs on May 23 - the same day the first Blu-ray player goes on sale.

The big news in 2006 has been the emergence of two new high-def DVD formats—Blu-ray and HD DVD. With greater storage capacity than a traditional DVD, we can now get higher-quality audio and video on the small screen. Depending on the compression used, each release can contain a whole slew of extras—or you can fit entire seasons of television shows, in SD, on one disc. Now, with the introduction of some internal drives for the home computer, you can back up vast amounts of information with a single disc. My personal iTunes music library, which contains the majority of my CDs, encoded as AAC files at 192 kilobits per second (stereo), could almost all fit on one Blu-ray disc. That's three-and-a-half months of continuous music. Add the ability to play Blu-ray titles, and it's the perfect time to move that home computer into the home theater for some high-def goodness. Before you get too excited and run out to buy a new drive, there are a few things that you need to consider first.

Noise-canceling headphones - once a luxury reserved for hard-core business travelers living on jets - have gone mainstream. Though fancy models still cost north of $200, today you'll find name-brand phones for as little as $50. That's clearly within reach of iPod-toting everyday Joes.

There is probably more diversity in the audio/video market than in the Amazon rainforest. Dealer's shelves (and Amazon.com's Web pages) are filled with a seemingly endless variety of DVD players, A/V receivers, speakers, and complete home theater systems.

Pity Brad Garrett. For 9 seasons on Everybody Loves Raymond and now on the sophomore Fox sitcom 'Til Death, the comic has excelled at playing the put-upon loser, his characters doomed to mope around the three-walled soundstage while suffering various indignities heaped upon them by brothers, mothers, and argumentative wives.

Buying a home theater system used to mean going to a swanky boutique where a designer deftly guided you through the process. Like a tailored suit, your system was carefully assembled one component at a time after hours of diligent auditioning.