Devices View – Page 22 – a Techsponential Company

CES 2005: New Remote for Custom Installers

January 9, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

UEI launched the Nevo SL "Pronto killer" touch screen remote control here last night in Las Vegas, and it’s got two really interesting features: a better programming interface than Philips offers for the Pronto (not that that’s saying much – the Pronto programming environment is terrible), and built in WiFi. WiFi could be used for just about anything – the remote is based on a version of Windows Mobile – but at least initially the idea is to stream media from one PC to another. Now, that may seem a bit ahead of its time, but according to Current Analysis*, …

Computing / Industry

CES 2005: You want convergence?

January 4, 2005 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

SBC preannounced their big CES news: a set top box that combines satellite TV programming, digital video recording, video on demand, and Internet content. There have been everything-but-the-kitchen-sink set top boxes before (anybody remember last CES? the year before that?), but I believe that this is significant for one reason: distribution. Most of the converged set top box dreams of years past are all about consumer technology value propositions: distributing content around the house, moving photos and music off the PC, and providing Internet access from the TV. That’s nice, but other than increased tech support calls, there’s little incentive …

Games

Happy New Year

December 31, 2004 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Everyone else is doing retrospectives at the end of the year… Ten years ago, I was single, living in an apartment, and my home theater consisted of a 27" CRT TV, Dolby Pro Logic receiver, HiFi VHS VCR, and a cobbled-together surround speaker system from Acoustic Research, Yamaha, and an AudioSource subwoofer. Despite non-discrete surround sound and letterboxed VHS — probably the lowest resolution format for movies of all time — it rocked! Other than the lack of a laserdisc player, it was reasonably cutting edge. DVD, digital front projectors, HDTV, home THX, Dolby Digital EX, automatic room callibration, DLP …

Displays / Industry

SED: Time to memorize a new acronym?

December 29, 2004 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

A blog quoting a Japanese source suggests that Toshiba is abandoning LCD and plasma and instead putting its display R&D into yet another display technology: SED. SED stands for Surface-Conduction Electron-emitter Display, which, if I understand it correctly – and I probably don’t – is an array of millions of tiny tube TV sets. Advantages include many of the same claims made for another technology working its way through the labs, OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode – don’t you just love these terms?): really really thin incredibly bright, sharp images more energy efficient than plasma a technology that [insert Korean …

Computing

Workable PC Convergence Demands More Convergence, Less PC

December 28, 2004 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I was interviewing a custom installer about using PCs as video scalers, and he said something that applies, more or less, to any serious use of PCs for home theaters: the only way to have a reliable PC-based A/V system is to have a PC dedicated solely to A/V. I’ve had several XP Media Center Edition systems in over the past couple of years, and that’s certainly one way to do it. The downside to Media Center PCs is that they’re pricey if you don’t need the full suite of functionality, and though they’ve gotten much better, they are still …

Accessories / Displays

Are Furniture Vendors In Too Deep?

December 22, 2004 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

It’s right before CES, and I’m inundated with press releases. Bell’O sent over a preview of their 2005 lineup, and I noticed something that struck a nerve: like all furniture vendors, they claim that their stands are ideal for hot selling rear projection TVs using digital technologies (DLP, LCD, and LCOS). They even go so far as to list a few specific models such as Sony’s 60" Grand WEGA LCD TV. Except that the stand doesn’t match the TV’s depth. None of them do. All the stands are at least 19" deep, and most are 21" – 24", while the …

Displays / Games

DLP Ideal Display for Gamers

December 19, 2004 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

Joe Wilcox saw Samsung’s DLP promotional tie-in with Halo2 for XBox and liked the notion but asks whether it could be more than just marketing. Samsung does note that their sets offer easy A/V hookup for video game consoles (like nearly every TV on the market today) and digital image processing. But Samsung and TI, the makers of DLP technology, have really dropped the ball here, because it turns out that DLPs may be the ideal display technology for videogames, and I’ve yet to see any marketing pushing that message. Here’s what they should be saying: DLP sets are big …

Accessories / Industry

Secrets Debunks Its Own Review: No Audible Differences Among Power Cables

December 16, 2004 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Here’s an experiment/article that’s going to echo throughout the audiophile world and possibly hurt sales of high end accessories. The online magazine Secrets of Home Theater is renowned for taking a geeky enthusiast’s view of home theater and audio; they’re best known for publicizing the DVD chroma bug, an obscure problem in some DVD players that makes bright colors in certain scenes bleed slightly into the next color. (I like to think my reviews and articles for Secrets have been a bit more accessible). Lately, Jason Serinius has been writing glowing reviews of CD demagnetizers and aftermarket power cables for …

Accessories / Industry

RTI Focused on Dealer Training

December 10, 2004 - 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 …

Audio / Computing

New Ways to Listen To Music

December 9, 2004 - 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 …