Sued by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. and several associated entertainment companies, Grokster and StreamCast were exonerated by two lower courts earlier this year, including a…
search
Long-simmering disputes about peer-to-peer file sharing, or P2P, will finally come to a boil sometime next year. On Friday, December 10, the US Supreme Court agreed to examine whether online services Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks, Inc. are liable for copyright infringement. Both services enable users to share music and other forms of copyrighted material, and both derive revenue from advertising.
Denmark's Peak Consult is well known in the European market as a loudspeaker brand, but the company has received scant notice elsewhere. To remedy its low profile Stateside, Peak Consult reports that it has signed with Stereovox to distribute its products in the US.
PC was originally planning to enter the US market with its former distributor, TMH Audio, but TMH terminated its distribution arrangement with PC in August of 2003. PC shared a display with Stereovox at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and decided that the two companies would be a good fit. PC's Per…
Last August, we reported that brick-and-mortar retailer Tweeter Home Entertainment Group had aligned itself with online retailer Cyberian Outpost to leverage each company's respective strengths, both on- and offline. The trend continues as, last week, brick-and-mortar retailer Harvey Electronics announced that it has reached an "agreement in principle" with CoolAudio.com (see previous story) to merge the two companies through an exchange of common stock.
This is not the first time that Harvey has partnered up with a web business, as evidenced by its announcement last April to sell used…
Audiophiles and classical music lovers often risk falling into a repertorial rut. The classical standards are constantly being rerecorded—often to the point of needless repetition. How many versions of Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony or Ravel's Bolero do you really need? Rather than fill up your shelves with recordings of the same tired compositions, I suggest you look into some of these more obscure pieces—all of them perfect for playing on the first day of April. Below, a list of fresh "basics" that any good audiophile should own:
Beethoven: Symphony 69, "Erotica." Bernard Hijinks,…
J. Gordon Holt, founder not only of Stereophile but also of high-end audio journalism as we know it, reveals all in a comprehensive interview with writer Steven Stone: 35 Years and Just Getting Started.
Also this week, John Atkinson experiences the "ground-pounding audio excitement" of car audio shows in Sounding Off! Next, Barry Willis examines the underground world of gray-market goods in Invaded by the Grays, providing a measure of solace for those bitten by the monster. As BW writes, the gray marketeer "is variously reported to blow in like a zephyr or strike like a hurricane; to take…
Onkyo released a tantalizing bit of news on February 25: Sometime before summer, it intends to release a remote interactive dock (RI) for "specified iPod models and many of the Onkyo products (as many as five million worldwide) produced over the past 10 years."
Details are scanty, but here's what we do know: Over the last decade or so, Onkyo, like most mainstream electronics companies, has emphasized inter-operability features, such as built-in RI capabilities, which command separate components through a single remote control. Press the "play" icon in the CD section of your Onkyo remote and…
The English flat-panel speaker company New Transducers Ltd., also known as NXT, recently announced a new transparent loudspeaker technology called SoundVu that the company says will enable television and computer screens to function simultaneously as loudspeakers.
Described as a complementary technology to the company's current Surface Sound speaker technology, SoundVu makes possible, claims NXT, the design and construction of ultra-thin, see-through loudspeakers. The company also says that SoundVu technology can be used in conjunction with all current LCD and video screen materials, from…
In an Internet world, the audiophile's quest for sound quality via high-resolution formats like DVD-Audio or SACD might be the last gasps of a dying generation. New media and technology companies like Liquid Audio, Diamond Multimedia, and RealNetworks are betting that the new generations of music lovers care more about how music is distributed, stored, and manipulated than about how it ultimately sounds. Les Garland, one of the founders of MTV and VH-1, has stated that "Technology fueled the growth of the market for music during the time when we pioneered music on cable. The Internet is…
The Home Entertainment Show 2006 is only weeks away, running June 1–4 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles. Here is a sampling of some of the giveaways and special events that will take place at the Show. Several of these should be of particular interest to audiophiles.
Ladies' Day
XM Satellite Radio–Oprah's digital radio home–would like to invite all women to the show. It's Ladies' Day on Sunday. All women get into the show for free with any regular adult admission on Sunday, June 4 from 10am–5pm.
Register To Win a New XM2GO Pioneer Inno
Sponsored by XM Satellite Radio…
It's the final day of the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show. I'm walking down the Alexis Park's long corridors, beneath its archways and palm trees, wondering where I'll end up next. The air is cool, but the sun is out and I'm feeling very much alive, energized by all the morning's music.
As I walk, certain sounds are becoming more distinct. I'm making my way toward the music. It's coming from the Audio Note room, and it's suddenly violent and aggressive. Soon I recognize the band to be Rage Against the Machine. They're cursing and screaming about something political, I suppose,…