(Photos by Tony Cordoza) Let me tell you about my very first hard-disk drive. It was about the size of a VCR and made as much noise as a small refrigerator. It cost about as much as a refrigerator, too-but who cared?
Illustrations by Jack Gallagher Whether you think the transition to digital television (DTV) broadcasting made a lot of progress in 2002 will depend on whether you tend to see water glasses as half empty or half full. Sales of high-definition digital televisions (HDTVs) gained momentum as prices dropped.
Photos by Tony Cordoza There's no shortage of home theater systems. There are big ones and small ones, black ones and silver ones, expensive ones and cheap ones. There are systems that come all in one box, and systems that come in half a dozen.
From their TV ads, it's easy to see that both XM and Sirius satellite radio are aimed first and foremost at the car market. Sirius commercials portray a typical listener as a family man who loves being behind the wheel, while XM's incorporate strangely violent imagery of grand pianos plunging onto highways and shattering into millions of pieces.
Illustration by Turnstyle Imaging There was a time during television's black-and-white era when Andy Griffith's wholesome face dominated the airwaves, entire families dined in front of the tube with TV dinners balanced on their laps, and commercials hawked tasty, refreshing cigarettes. Hooking up your TV back then was easy.
This past fall, astute subscribers to the Time Warner digital cable service in New York City began to notice something unusual-and no, it wasn't that their bills were going down. It was the appearance of Channel 1000 on the onscreen program guide, accompanied by the letters MOD. Was this a new retro fashion channel? Actually, the truth is more interesting.
Photo by Tony Cordoza All diagrams by Dimitry Schidlovsky except for the LCD which is by Mark Schrieder. Given that cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) provide the best pictures, why are so many companies moving away from tubes and into new technologies? Because that's how they can make the thinner and lighter TVs everybody's clamoring for.
Illustration by Turnstyle Imaging Years ago, if you wanted a new piece of gear, you'd go down to your local stereo shop, describe what you were looking for, audition a couple of pieces, make your selection, and then pay the sticker price.
(Homepage illustration by Dan Vasconcellos) You've been on a long drive, but you're now close enough to home to receive your favorite hometown station, right on time for the local news and then some music. A couple of miles after you tune it in, the sound suddenly blossoms, and the radio's display starts showing you what's playing and who's performing it.
Photos by Tony Cordoza Portable MP3 players haven't changed much over the last few years except they've added capacity even while shrinking in size and weight.
Photos by Ebet Roberts Walk into the home of Alan Parsons, nestled in the hills of Santa Barbara, and you'll see ample evidence of his illustrious career. There are so many gold and platinum records on the wall of the studio annex that they spill from the hallway and fill the kitchen.
The scene: the London Planetarium. A fitting venue to visit The Dark Side of the Moon. But it's 1973, and this is the album's maiden voyage. And a quadraphonic mix, not approved by Pink Floyd, is being played on terrible, destined-to-be-forgotten speakers. The band members decline to attend and are represented by cardboard cutouts.
Photos by Tony Cordoza Knowing how deep a spell all-in-one home theater systems have cast over DVD fans everywhere, we decided to divine just how much magic was hidden within four such systems: the Denon DHT-1000DV ($1,300), Panasonic SC-ST1 ($1,000), Sharp SD-AT50DV ($800), and Yamaha DVX-S100 ($800).