Source of boxed information: all Parks Associates except "Speed Demons," Yankee Group Oddly enough, when I was growing up two of my favorite cartoon shows held diametrically opposite views of technology in our lives. The Flintstones promoted the simple life.
Home audio/video-based networks are made up of three basic components. Media servers take in content from the Internet and other sources, store music, video, and photo files, and distribute them to the network. Media receivers are placed in various rooms along the network to accept content from the server or a PC and transmit it to a TV, audio system, and so on.
Organizing a CD or DVD collection used to mean alphabetizing a huge pile of discs and painstakingly filing them away on shelves. But a new breed of component called a media server - a cross between a traditional A/V component and a full-featured PC - gives you easy, expanded access to your collection by letting you store it as digital data on a hard-disk drive.
Because we want our audio/video gear to entertain us, not drive us insane with frustration, simplicity has always been the hallmark of a well-designed system. A lot of people avoid that frustration by getting all their components from one company.
Media receivers bridge the gap between computer and home theater by letting you store your audio and video files in one room while you select and play them on an entertainment system in another room. The first digital media receivers were limited to streaming music stored on a PC over a wired network to your stereo.
Whole-house entertainment means never having to handle physical media. With all your music, photos, and videos parked on a hard drive and accessible through your home network, you can enjoy them in any room where a media receiver is attached to a TV or stereo system.
While there's certainly no shortage of people clamoring for dedicated home theaters they can fine-tune for optimum performance, there's also a growing number interested in creating flexible entertainment systems that can deliver sound, video, and even Internet-based content throughout the house.
So you finally went out and bought a high-definition TV. Congratulations - you've joined a growing community of people who've switched to the new digital technology.
She first caught our attention with her spectacular entrance as the goddess Venus on the half-shell in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. She made even greater splashes as the virginal innocent in Dangerous Liaisons and, the following year, at age 19, playing the complex sexual sophisticate June in Henry & June.
The fun and sun capital of the world. Luxury yachts, fashion models, Cuban cigars, fast cars, and topless beaches. Tanned babes and boys, boats and bikinis, palm trees and piña coladas. Ocean Drive and Art Deco. The Magic City - Miami. Where better to get away from it all? A four-day weekend, a gold-star hotel, and - what the heck?
Flat-panel TVs have been the rage for a couple of years now, and even if the larger sets are still beyond most budgets, speaker manufacturers are falling over themselves to offer the latest flat-panel-friendly model. Thin is definitely in.
