Accessories / Industry

RTI Focused on Dealer Training

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

RTI makes complicated programmable remote controls, and they’ve hit upon a winning strategy – focus on their customers.  Brilliant!  (It should be obvious, right?) Well, there is a twist – one that many CE companies selling to the CEDIA (custom install) channel haven’t quite figured out: RTI’s customers are not end users, but the custom installers who buy the remotes and program them for the end users.  The whole purpose of a custom programmed remote control is the programming, and this is an area where RTI can stand out (more on this later).  Therefore, RTI announced online training earlier this …

RTI Focused on Dealer Training Read More
Audio / Computing

New Ways to Listen To Music

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Musicmatch is one of several music playback programs for PCs, along with offerings from Microsoft, Real, Apple.  With a good multimedia sound system — I’m working on reviews of THX systems from Klipsch and Logitech — you can use these programs to listen to music at your PC.  The programs also allow you to transfer music to portable devices, or stream music around your house with various add-on gadgets (though access to copy-protected music is usually not available in that scenario). The programs now also offer access to online music stores for purchasing music (by track or by album) or …

New Ways to Listen To Music Read More
DVD / Industry

NY Times Does the Impossible

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

The New York Times today reviewed upsampling DVD players.  What I found remarkable was the balance between making a somewhat difficult concept easy to understand for non-enthusiasts, while still being technically accurate.  As a bonus, it was a reasonably vigorous review, and even offered clear conclusions.  But this exception to the rule highlights just how bad a job the consumer electronics industry has done complicating the products and the jargon.  Even efforts to simplify things on a practical and technical level come in acronym form with compatibility notes back to other acronyms (think HDMI and DVI). The industry as a …

NY Times Does the Impossible Read More
HDTV

Purpose-built HDTV antenna slightly better

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

In a completely unscientific test, Gemini/Zenith’s high tech HDTV antenna slightly beat out Jensen’s adjustable loop antenna in my basement.  With proper windowsill placement, both can pick up seven over the air HDTV channels, and neither can pick up NBC no matter what I do.  Neither of them get perfect reception: despite what you’ve heard about the "cliff effect" (the signal is either there or not there, as if dropping off a cliff), HDTV is not an all or nothing affair in my house.  Perhaps it’s the grade of my street, the angle to the Empire State Building, or the …

Purpose-built HDTV antenna slightly better Read More
Displays / Industry

TI Taking Over Where Intel Left Off?

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I was wandering through IKEA yesterday and noticed that Philips appears to have an exclusive on all the A/V display props; an interesting product placement ploy.  Even more interesting were the sheer number of plasmas sitting on top of $79 build-it-yourself furniture.  Plasmas and LCDs may win on decor friendliness, but not on budget, where microdisplays offer a reasonable compromise between the size of the unit and the size of your wallet. Usually, microdisplays means DLP or LCD, but I’ve always been a fan of LCOS, which can offer the resolution of a digital technology and the fatigue-free experience of …

TI Taking Over Where Intel Left Off? Read More
DVD

Well, Gizmodo was wrong…

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Last month I pointed out that Gizmodo declared the HD-DVD wars over with Blu-Ray victorious due to better studio support.  This week, four major studios lined up behind HD-DVD.  With Sony and Columbia firmly behind Blu-Ray, this is shaping up to be an interesting format war. Bill Hunt over at The Digital Bits suggests that a format war is better than the situation we had at the launch of DVD – where nobody other than Warner was promising to support the format.  He goes on to say that if hardware vendors provide universal players, actual format could be irrelevant.  In …

Well, Gizmodo was wrong… Read More
Accessories

Digital TVs as Oversized Picture Frames

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Convergence is such a loaded word.  Often people assume it means that your TV is networked to your TiVo which plays MP3s off your PC.  While that vision is well and good (and my 4 year old assumes everyone lives that way), most people adopt point solutions that meet their needs at much lower price points.  It’s not just home theater; even in the PC world, this is true.  Sneakernet is a prime example: rather than wire up their homes to share files, many people burn a CD or DVD, or put the files on a USB keychain drive and …

Digital TVs as Oversized Picture Frames Read More
Uncategorized

New posts coming, been on the road

- by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Content is coming (eventually), I’ve just been on the road.  Some products that are in for review over the next few weeks: THX multimedia surround sound system AC power filter/surge suppressor mini subwoofer with proprietary technology TV digital photo viewer headphones of all varieties (wired, wireless, in-ear, noise cancelling – you name it) I’m also evaluating several different HDTV antennas, and may also write about LG’s HDTV tuner/upsampling DVD player, JVC’s D-ILA (LCOS) RPTV, a pair of front projectors expected in shortly, and Yamaha’s new RX-V2500 THX Select receiver. -avi

New posts coming, been on the road Read More
Accessories

Cables: Are Other Monsters Lurking About?

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

There have been several new entrants into the A/V cables market lately.  Accell has been an OEM for others’ products for a while, and has decided to launch their own brand.  The packaging isn’t especially eye-catching, but the products are well priced and well constructed.  Accell sent over a large box of goodies around the beginning of the year, and I’ve been using them interchangeably with traditional AV brands such as Monster and Acoustic Research with no noticeable performance problems.  I haven’t seen them distributed anywhere at retail yet in New York/New Jersey, so that could be a bigger hurdle …

Cables: Are Other Monsters Lurking About? Read More
Displays

New LCD contender: Samsung reinvents CRT?

- by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

The rumors of the CRT’s demise may have been overstated. Gizmodo dug up this Nikkei Electronics article reporting how Samsung has developed a 32″ TV using proprietary CRT technologies that allow a total cabinet depth of just 15″. Now, it’s still going to be heavier than a comparably sized (and much thinner) LCD, but if they can keep prices down to current CRT pricing levels (under $1,000 for HDTVs), this could be a killer product. The article describes how difficult an engineering challenge it was to acheive; production is expected to ramp up throughout 2005. Keys here: Samsung is once …

New LCD contender: Samsung reinvents CRT? Read More