Signals

Sort By: Post DateTitle Publish Date
Signals
Can Your Bluetooth Speaker Do This?
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  May 26, 2015  | 
James Atkinson invented the "Little Nipper" mousetrap in 1897. Its familiar spring trap snaps shut in 1/38,000 of a second and is still the go-to method for addressing your rodent issues. Still, the trap's simple and efficient operation hasn't stopped other inventors from trying to build better mousetraps and patenting over 4,000 of them. All of which raises the question: can you invent a better Bluetooth speaker? Meet the Vamp.

Continue Reading »
Signals
Can Your Phone Do This?
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  May 10, 2013  | 

Would you dunk your entertainment electronics toys in water? Probably not, unless you’re running some kind of insurance scam. Don’t worry. Most of my gear doesn’t like being underwater either. Trust me, if you try to play an LP record at the bottom of your pool, bad things happen. Really bad things. The jacuzzi isn’t good either.

Continue Reading »
Signals
Captain Obvious Strikes Again: The Era of Streaming Is Here
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Sep 09, 2014  | 
Boy, oh boy, do I feel like an idiot. I read a news item this morning, and it unleashed a series of tremendously brilliant insights that rocketed through my brain . Surely, no one else had ever so deeply penetrated into the nature of the truth of things. Now, it occurs to me that in fact, everyone else had realized all this long ago. Captain Obvious had struck again.
Continue Reading »
Signals
Car Tunes
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Feb 29, 2012  | 

8-track tape, cassette, MiniDisc, DAT. They all have two things in common. You don’t find them in new cars anymore. And, like lots of other technologies that have come and gone, car radios have easily outlasted them. Actually, add CD to that list. Within a few years, that’ll be gone. But is AM/FM radio on the endangered species list too?

Continue Reading »
Signals
Car Wars
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Dec 03, 2012  | 

Pop quiz! Quick! Which industry is evolving faster? Automobiles or computers? 

Continue Reading »
Signals
Cassettes Are Not Making A Comeback
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Aug 21, 2018  | 
You might have seen the clickbait headlines: “CASSETTES JOIN VINYL IN DRAMATIC COMEBACK.” Don’t believe the hype. It just ain’t happening.
Continue Reading »
Signals
Cassettes, Really?
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Apr 19, 2016  | 
I am sorry. Only certain people will be allowed to read this column. To ensure that you are qualified, you must first correctly answer this question: What is the relationship between cassettes and pencils? If you can answer that, feel free to read on. If you can’t, please move on.

Continue Reading »
Signals
CES 2015 Wrap Up: A Test of Manhood
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Jan 13, 2015  | 
Much like puberty, the Consumer Electronics Show can be awkward, embarrassing, something to look forward to, and something to be glad about when it's finally over. During puberty, your voice gets deeper, hair starts to appear in new places, and you learn what the word “gonads” means. CES is exactly the same. However, unlike puberty, CES happens every year. To help you cope with the strangeness of CES, my curious young friend, here are some pointers from the show floor.

Continue Reading »
CES 2016Signals
CES 2016: The Trouble With Trotters
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Jan 12, 2016  | 
What do Hunter S. Thomson, Philip K. Dick, and L. Ron Hubbard all have in common? For starters, they all use an initial in their names, and anyone who does that is obviously trying hard to appear to be intellectual. More important, I think they would all have enjoyed attending this year's CES.

Continue Reading »
Signals
Change the Channels
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Sep 18, 2012  | 

"One size fits all" surround is dying. It's time for us all to consider a whole new dimension. First, a parallel to impart from the annals of tech history. In the earliest days of photography, the emulsions and lenses were extremely "slow." Even in bright sunlight, a plate might require hours of exposure time. As technology improved, exposure times decreased to a minute or so.

Continue Reading »
SignalsAudio Video News
Chromecast Opens the Music Box
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Nov 05, 2013  | 
The wildly popular Google Chromecast just got even better. It has added Pandora Radio and Hulu Plus to its list of supported content. And, the best may be yet to come.

Continue Reading »
Signals
Circuit City: Retail Resurrection
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Feb 09, 2016  | 
When's the last time that Circuit City crossed your mind? It's probably been so long that you can't even remember the last time you thought about it. And yet, the name Circuit City is instantly familiar to you. That's called name recognition. And clearly, rather than starting from scratch to build name recognition, you'd prefer to start with something well known. That is why Circuit City is being resurrected.

Continue Reading »
Signals
Coming (Fairly) Soon: Car Theater
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  May 12, 2015  | 
Start saving up now. In about 20 years, you'll have to buy another complete home theater. Except this one won't be at home. It will be in your car. Put in perspective, the Compact Disc is about 30 years old so 20 years isn't so far off. Like I say - start saving now.

Continue Reading »
Signals
Coming Soon to a (Home) Theater Near You
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Sep 23, 2013  | 
So far, this has been a pretty good year for moviegoers. The Hollywood dream machine has cranked out a steady stream of big-budget movies with colossal production values. If you enjoy getting your eyeballs fried by flying fireballs or your ears rocked by rampaging robots, the multiplex has been very, very good to you. But how will these screen gems look from your Lay-Z-Boy? After our reviews of the theatrical releases, I asked colleague Leslie Shapiro (our Grace Notes blogger) to join me in eagerly anticipating their Blu-ray releases.

Continue Reading »
Signals
Coming Sooner to a Home Theater Near You: Paramount Tests Shorter Release Windows
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Jul 14, 2015  | 
If you have a home theater, it's easy to see that commercial movie theaters are both your friends, and your enemies. On one hand, without them and the billions of dollars they generate, movie studios would never spend the hundreds of millions of dollars required to make a movie. We owe the content we watch at home to the commercial theaters. On the other hand, adversarially, these theaters get first dibs on all content, and we must impatiently wait for home media to eventually appear. Don't like waiting? Well, if things work out, you soon might be able to cut in line.

Continue Reading »

Pages

X