Devices View – Page 19 – a Techsponential Company

Yes, it was a live demo… also a misleading one

June 12, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Back in February I wrote about Microsoft’s Lightspeed IPTV demo at CES and linked to BusinessWeek’s skeptical coverage. Well, the magazine was just biding its time and this week they completely skewer the initiative (subscription required), highlighting the endless delays in commercializing it. It seems the impressive demo I saw at CES was real. The problem is that the technology doesn’t work for millions of users at once, which is kind of important for the operators who want to broadly deploy it. Live and learn. Still, TV over IP seems somewhat inevitable. Japan and Korea have DSL service 10x faster …

Industry

Retail Goes Custom

May 31, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 2 Comments.

There’s a new big box retail mini-chain (5 stores) here in Northern NJ, Electronics Expo, and it is unlike any other big box retail store I have seen. The CEDIA custom installation market is growing at double digit rates, and Electronics Expo is essentially a gigantic showroom for flat panel displays, front projectors, and more flat panel displays. The highlight of the store is the second level – a walkthrough of a ‘model home’ with flat panel displays absolutely everywhere. Extremely high end receivers – though no separates – are arrayed in two of the rooms on the main floor, …

Displays

Front Projection: When More is Less

May 29, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Evan Powell over at Projector Central has an insightful article up on choosing the right resolution for budget front projectors. Bottom line: In the U.S., 848×480 is ideal for DVD, video games, and regular TV. HDTV looks pretty good at this resolution, too. These projectors are cheap, the images are beautiful – go for it. Moving up to 1024×576 is essential for Europeans, where the extra resolution is needed for regular TV (the U.S. and Europe use different TV standards). Moving up to 1024×576 is counterproductive for U.S. consumers because the extra resolution isn’t used for TV and makes little …

DVD

The Sony PS3 and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Reapprochment

May 18, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

There’s been a flurry of news over the past month about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD backers getting together to avoid a format war for the next generation of high definition discs. I’ve avoided covering each step on the drama, so here’s a quick recap of the posturing between the two camps: "Hey, we’re new here at Sony, and going proprietary hasn’t worked out so well in the past few years. Let’s work this BD/HD-DVD thing out" "OK" "Um, we can’t," "No, really, we’re still trying," "Look! HD-DVD can do 45GB per disc, too!" "A single format doesn’t look likely – the …

Audio / Computing

Of non-iPods

May 12, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

I’ve been testing several digital music players and third party headphones – none of them from Apple. It’s not that I don’t like the iPod, I just haven’t gotten one in recently from Apple. My past experiences with iPod suggest that Apple leads the industry with good reason. I prefer SanDisk’s Digital Audio Player to the iPod Shuffle, though I understand the Shuffle’s appeal – particularly the tight integration with iTunes for moving music on and off the device. Still, I prefer seeing the title of what I’m listening to, and the SanDisk has both a screen and a remarkably …

Audio / Displays / Industry

When Manufacturers Don’t Manufacture, What Are They?

April 26, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I wrote earlier about Outlaw’s new 990 audio processor, and was left with a few questions. They’ve since posted a FAQ that not only answers my questions, but also provides rare public insight into industry practices for cross-company parts sharing. Audio is a lot like the automobile industry – creating a platform is enormously expensive, and companies often share development to keep costs down. Sure, there are a few boutiques that create everything themselves from scratch, but custom efforts are enormously expensive, limiting the potential market size. Outlaw uses the three different models shown below for product development, and so …

Audio / Industry

New/Old Audio Technologies New Again: Part Two

April 15, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Outlaw just announced a new pre/pro (the surround sound processing portion of a receiver without the amplifier section), the model 990, and its a doozy: a high end version of the company’s 950 for only $1099. More surprising than the product itself is Outlaw’s secrecy about it – while some analysts (including yours truly) were briefed on this last year, this is the first public indication the company has made that they were even working on a new pre/pro, and it should be shipping within the next month or two. The change in strategy was due to the flack the …

Audio

New/Old Audio Technologies New Again: Part One

April 13, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

I seem to have missed this out at CES (and the company is completely quiet on its web site), but AKAI is getting back into surround receivers with a pair of tube receivers. Yes, vacuum tubes. The AVR8500 and AVR8510 are 7-Channel Vacuum Tube Audio/Video Receivers. Both receivers use 7 Dual Triode Vacuum tubes (of “Blue Tube Thermionic” design, whatever that is), one for each amplifier. Tubes actually introduce audible distortion to an audio signal, but the distortion is harmonically pleasing, giving the sound a "warmth" that audiophiles crave. The AVR8500 is rated at 100-watts x 7, and the AVR8510 …

Displays / HDTV

Internet Persistence and Current TV Trends

March 30, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Home Theater View grew out of business weblogs at JupiterResearch and AskAvi columns written over several years at a personal site, http://www.greengart.com. Thanks to the persistence of the Internet — web pages never really die as long as they’re in Google’s index — one of those old AskAvi columns is now generating a lot of feedback. It seems someone queried Google to find advice choosing a TV, found Column 10, and posted it to a newsgroup. They did this without ever looking at the column’s date (which is on the page, though perhaps not as prominent as it could be). …

Industry

New Online Retail/Marketing/Research Channel: Woot.com

March 24, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

At 1 AM EST every night? morning? something extraordinary is happening to online retail. Woot.com is an online outlet for tech overstocks and refurbs, but its unique business model is opening up some intriguing possibilities for building an installed base for a certain breed of product. The store offers one item per night at dramatically discounted prices – popular items sell out fast, and aren’t replenished. A new item goes on sale the next night. The item descriptions are cheeky, the online forum is relatively uncensored, and the audience is extremely geeky (and proud of it. Though the site definitely …