June, 2010 | HD TV PROFESSOR

Month: June 2010

Hulu Drops the Other Shoe

June 30, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Is streaming video over the Internet a viable option over standard cable or satellite services? Hulu is betting that it is. Their free, ad-supported service has given access to new and archived episodes of current and past hit TV shows, as well as a smattering of feature length movies. After months of rumors, news broke yesterday of Hulu Plus, a $9.95 per month subscription service that provides complete episodes for...

THX System to Control HDTVs

June 29, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

To paraphrase Will Rogers, I never metadata that I didn't like. And I like the new metadata system that THX has created. Known primarily for their cinema sound certification, THX has also been very active in trying to make sure that the movie experience in the living room is as good as possible. Their latest initiative, THX Media Director, has been to create a metadata system that can be encoded...

Personal Woofer

June 28, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

At a trade show last week, I saw a fascinating new product. It's called the Immerz from Kor FX. The device looks a lot like a pair of folding headphones, but the difference is that you wear them around your neck so that they rest just below your collarbone. The devices are a pair of haptic transducers that can transmit low frequency sounds directly into your chest cavity. As the...

A Better Mobile TV

June 25, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

I've written about the Mobile Digital Television (Mobile DTV) that is currently undergoing a trial roll-out in the Washington DC market, with eight area stations broadcasting 23 different channels showing the same content as is broadcast on the stations' regular broadcast channels. My reservations still hold; I don't think consumers will want to have to buy a new device or a tuner for an existing device. They already own enough...

Is 3DTV Bad for You?

June 24, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

With any new technology, the Law of Unintended Consequences is always lurking somewhere, waiting to bite you in the butt. 3DTV is no exception, and already the reports are beginning to show up, questioning whether or not 3DTV can be harmful to you in some way or another. Perhaps the most dramatic is the set of warnings that Samsung Australia has published. It may simply be a case of lawyer-induced...

Ken Crane’s Closing

June 23, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Another specialty AV store chain is closing its doors. Ken Crane's, with 10 locations in southern California, is selling off its inventory and shutting down operations within the next two months. The company was founded in 1948 as a Magnavox dealer, according to an article in TWICE. Apparently, the current recession was apparently too deep and too wide for the company to make it across. I suspect that the changing...

3D HDTV to Go

June 22, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

You will soon be able to buy a 3D display that can convert 2D content to 3D on the fly and uses passive polarized glasses to view the stereoscopic images. The display is WideXGA format -- 1,366 by 768 pixels -- so it can handle 720p high definition without scaling. The whole thing weighs under 6 pounds, but that's not too surprising when you find out that the screen is...

FLO TV Goes Slow for iPhone

June 21, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

FLO TV had previously announced that it would ship a piggyback tuner for iPhone and iPod Touch in the first half of this year, then in late March said it would be ready within a month and a half, according to an article in TWICE. The same article reports that now the company says the Juice Pack TV is not far away. The device adds a FLO TV tuner that...

Vuvuzela Must Die! (Here’s How!)

June 18, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

Almost everyone has heard that the FIFA World Cup tournament is underway. And just about everyone has heard the song of the vuvuzela, the noisemaker of choice for South African soccer fans. The deafening din is drowning out sports commentators and giving TV viewers instant headaches. While debates rage on about banning the horns from international competition and broadcasters scramble to find ways to cope with the racket, some viewers...

TV Everywhere Could Be Huge

June 17, 2010 | Author: Muneeb Mannan

In an article last week, Media Daily News cited Time Warner Cable CFO John Martin's statement that he expects half of all pay-TV homes in the U.S. will have the option of a TV Everywhere service to go along with their subscription. Cable and satellite companies are moving rapidly to give their customers "any time, any where" access to their programming content over the Internet. Martin also said he would...