Fred Manteghian

One of the biggest ripoffs in the world is from a company that professes to be in business of preventing the commitment thereof. Yeah, I'm talking about the folks at Consumer Reports. For them, it's business as usual and their modus operandi hasn't changed in years. I remember shopping for a car years before the Internet had anything worthwhile on it, and going to the newsstand and picking up a copy of "Edmund's guide to New Cars" for seven bucks. There, in plain English, was a guide that gave me the MSRP, the dealer invoice, the "holdback," the list of options and anything else I might need to drive the best deal I could when I entered the showroom.

My sister gave me a Border's gift certificate for Christmas, and rather than do the conventional thing and buy some books that I would then be obligated to read, I bought some CDs instead. Among them are a remaster of Genesis's 1973 epic, "Selling England by the Pound" and Pink Floyd's last, and sorely unappreciated, "Division Bell." Now, I have both these on vinyl already, and although I'm in the process of thinking about the possibility of getting restarted on the vinyl-to-digital project, I felt it safer and most expedient to just buy the damn things and get them into my iPod post haste.

The consumer electronics industry has done a pretty lousy job of educating everyone on new audio and video technology. And by "industry," I mean manufacturers, their marketing arms, and even journalists, though none at UltimateAV. Start with your newspapers of record. Michael Fremer has palpitations reading the New York Times audio / video coverage (I get the same effect from their Op-ed page!).

Shane: "It's starting to smell like a fish market during a longshoreman strike."