Tech2

The annoying thing about Internet-connected smart TVs? Accessing the smarts usually costs you bucks. Probably 95% of the streaming Internet video I watch on my Samsung flat-panel is Netflix ($7.99 a month) or Vudu (usually $4.99 per movie for 720p high-def).

I HAD AN EPIPHANY of sorts last week when I was doing lab measurements for our review of the Creative ZiiSound D5x. Pretty as the product is, it took me about 45 minutes to get it to mate with Creative’s supplied USB Bluetooth dongle. Then it took me another 30 minutes to get it to mate with the DSx subwoofer. In the latter case, I’m still not sure what I did right — it just suddenly started working.

The CEA-2010 subwoofer output measurement lets us separate the great subwoofers from the merely good ones, in a way that’s more reliable and repeatable than traditional measurements or listening tests. However, it’s still not widely used.

The CEA-2010 subwoofer output measurement lets us separate the great subwoofers from the merely good ones, in a way that's more reliable and repeatable than traditional measurements or listening tests. However, it's still not widely used.

I’ve been covering video projection since the early 1990s, but last week was the first time I walked into a product display and had a hard time figuring out which projector was showing which picture.

Sitting beside my laptop computer is the coolest portable TV I have ever used. But the question I’m trying to answer is whether anyone’s going to want it.