Category: Home Entertainment

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HDTV Home Entertainment Sony

Sony KDS-R60XBR1 HDTV Review

sonysxrd.jpgSony felt like they were falling behind in creating acronyms so their latest, greatest television brings us the latest, greatest in alphabet soup product naming. Sony dubbed the technology behind their KDS-R60XBR1 as SXRD, which is basically a tweaked out version of LCOS.

Bottom line is that this television doesn’t seem to suffer any of the problems that other technologies seem to have (rainbows, screen-door, gigantism) and has a really great picture.

Don’t take my word for it – take a gander over at Home Theater Magazine for the full scoop.

(via HDBeat)

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Home Entertainment PVRs

NBC and CBS jump on the download bandwagon

earl.jpgNot quite as convenient or portable as Lost or Desperate Housewives, it looks like DirecTV users will get NBC programming and Comcast users will get CBS content on demand for the low, low price of $.99. Programming will be available only to in-house PVR users of the respective companies and not for iPods or other portable media devices.

Now, I don’t know about you, but personally, if I wanted to watch any of those shows, I’d record them on the PVR, rather than pay for them later.

I’m curious as to how DirecTV is planning on offering VOD as they haven’t been able to do this in the past.

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Home Entertainment

Logitech wireless speaker review

Sd450

Our friends over at ExtremeTech have just dropped a review on the Logitech Z-5450 Digital 5.1 Speaker System. I’ve always liked the idea of wireless speakers if for no other reason than to trim back the rat’s nest of wires that is crawling out of my computer. But I’ve always felt that they just don’t sound very good.

ExtremeTech feels differently and depending on the size of the room that you have and the depth of your pocketbook, this system may be for you.

Bottom Line – Expensive, but good.

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Home Entertainment Media Servers and Streamers

SqueezeBox III – Third times the charm?

I always thought that Slim Devices Squeezebox was cool. They were the first network MP3 player that had a digital output, their own server software that didn’t suck and it worked with iTunes. It was difficult to get past its looks, however. The first two versions had wonderful personality and were great dancers, but you didn’t want your friends to meet them.
Squeeze
Slim Devices fixed that by offering their Silicon Valley neighbors, Roku, the most sincere form of flattery.

The new Squeezebox has a little something for everyone. It plays a laundry list of audio formats(AAC, WMA, MP3, FLAC, Ogg), although no encrypted formats (sorry, binge iTMS users) For audio nerds, the 24-bit Burr-Brown DAC and digital outputs should float your boat. It’s both wired and wireless and you can keep several units in sync to play tunes all over your house/office/underground bunker.

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