Other Tech

There's no denying that digital high-definition TV (HDTV) is a vast improvement over our old analog TV system, but if you want to record any of the high-def programs delivered over the air by local broadcasters or via satellite from Dish Network or DirecTV, your options are ridiculously limited.

Since he first delighted audiences and divided critics with his stylized, idiosyncratic first feature, Strictly Ballroom, writer/ director Baz Luhrmann has gone on to make Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge - each more ambitious, more stylized, and more dividing of critics than the last. Each has also had greater success at the box office and in accumulating awards both in the U.S.

There once was a time when audio/video components didn't have USB or Ethernet ports. When "kilobits per second" was not a hi-fi term. When a kid who stumbled over a stack of LPs in a dumpster actually knew what they were.

Compared with the "in the lab" box for one of our test reports on, say, an A/V receiver, the lab data for a TV review may seem skimpy. While there aren't a lot of numbers, the ones we do generate can give you a pretty good idea of what to expect from the set - particularly its color reproduction, which is arguably the most important aspect of a TV's performance.

The steady progression of compressed digital audio into all sorts of places (do you really need to listen to Mozart on a PDA?) is raising all sorts of issues. But none is more important to readers of Sound & Vision than the ability of the codecs - the encode/decode software - to faithfully reproduce music after compressing CD tracks to file sizes that can be easily downloaded or stored.

If you're one of the 1,000 acts playing SXSW - the South by Southwest Music Festival, which despite its name and its Austin, Texas, location is the nation's biggest live-music shebang - how do you get noticed? I didn't notice Braxton Hicks two years ago.