Other Tech

The iPhone has been stealing all the media buzz lately, but what about Apple's other radical offering, iTunes Plus? As I wrote in my July/August column (also available at soundandvisionmag.com), Apple and EMI have decided to sell music without any Digital Rights Management. They're charging extra for those downloads ($1.29 each vs.

Thanks to more efficient manufacturing, cutthroat retail competition, and predatory market-share grabs by a few manufacturers, HDTVs are now readily affordable. But the one thing that hasn't changed is the refrain heard from many people when they get their new sets home: "Hey, where's all the high-definition programming?"

From the outset the most intriguing thing about the Apple iPhone hasn't been the phone so much as the interface: a high-resolution touchscreen on which your fingers do the talking: Tap an icon to select an application, spread them to enlarge the picture, slide your finger to move the cropped image into view, swipe the screen to reveal the next slide. It all feels so natural.

Much of my work as owner of Experience AV in Montrose, Colorado, is in the strange world of spec homes - and in this market, a developer with a little foresight is the best friend a custom installer can have.

The 21st century is giving us numerous ways to listen to and control our music. Not only can we now distribute tunes around our homes with the touch of a button, but the wonder of metadata feedback actually lets us know what's playing as well.

I remember the first video camera I bought back in the '80s. It was about 2 feet long, I had to perch it on my shoulder, and it shot grainy VHS footage. Suffice it to say that consumer camcorders have come a very long way since then. The HITACHI DZHS500A DVD/HDD hybrid camcorder ($600, hitachi.us/tv) is an amazing little unit, even in the current flooded market.

In-wall speakers have come a long way since the first models, which were essentially re-purposed car-stereo speakers. That dramatic improvement over the past decade is due largely to the boom in "architectural" audio products driven by the advent of flat-panel TVs, any-room home theater systems, and whole-house audio.