Audio Video News

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is looking carefully at the proposed acquisition of Hughes Electronics Corporation by Littleton, CO–based EchoStar Communications Corporation. Hughes is the parent company of EchoStar rival DirecTV. Voting shareholders of General Motors, Hughes' corporate overlord, approved the sale late last year. If the deal is approved, the two direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services could become one—and, with 17 million subscribers, one of the largest distributors of television programming in North America.

Henry Kloss, whose prolific hi-fi design and manufacturing career spanned a half century, died of a subdural hematoma on January 31, three weeks before his 73rd birthday.

The music industry may be in the dumps, but the home video business is soaring, according to a January report from trade journal <I>Video Business</I>.

<A HREF="www.dlp.com">Digital Light Projectors (DLPs)</A> are clearly coming into their own this year, based on what we saw at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. Joining Sharp and its groundbreaking XV-Z9000 ($10,000)&mdash;and also based on Texas Instrument's 1280 x 720 DLP chip&mdash;are the new Sim2 HT300 ($14,995), the DWIN TransVision 2 ($12,999), and the Marantz VP12S1 ($12,499).

With the advent of DVD, the death of videotape has been widely predicted. Standard VHS may be going the way of the dinosaur, but tape is re-emerging as a format for high definition movies. Some folks are even predicting that DVD may be relegated to a "mid-fi format."

Too many home theater enthusiasts have an arsenal of remote controls. The arsenal&mdash;not the remotes themselves&mdash;can be the cause of everything from minor annoyances to full-scale domestic battles.