ContentGuard's business model appears similar to the phone card model, where users buy a fixed number of minutes, which can be used from any telephone. ContentGuard codes can be embedded in users' computers, cell phones…
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A "digital rights management" (DRM) company has been awarded a patent for its "tickets" to Internet-based entertainment. Bethesda, MD–based ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. announced July 27 that it has been granted a patent for its "digital ticket" system, which allows users access to digital entertainment—music, video, graphics, and e-books—from any Internet-connected device.
As Larry Greenhill states in his review of the MartinLogan Prodigy loudspeaker, "Electrostatic speakers are my passion." But Greenhill's heard a lot of great 'stats in his time, so he was "both excited and uneasy" when a review pair of MartinLogan's latest arrived in his listening room. He needn't have worried.
His interest tweaked at the 1999 CE and Hi-Fi Shows, John Atkinson wanted a closer listen to the speaker Sony was using to promote SACD. Although the Sony ES SS-M9ED loudspeaker arrived at the Stereophile offices later that year, the review didn't make it to print until this month…
Times are tough in the online audio delivery market, with long-established start-ups struggling to keep pace with competing formats from Microsoft as well as the ever pervasive MP3. Particularly hard hit has been Liquid Audio, which along with competitor Real Audio, has for the last few years attempted to create the de facto standard for online music commerce.
Steel Partners II, which owns approximately 8.2% of the common shares of Liquid Audio and has been publicly critical of company management, made an offer October 22 to purchase the remainder of Liquid for $3 per share, or almost $68…
Warner Music Group may have just announced its first DVD-Audio titles (see related story), but an upstart independent label is claiming the first DVD-A discs actually available for sale. In an attempt to establish itself as the leader in the new DVD-Audio format, 5.1 Entertainment Group's Silverline Records says it has begun shipping the first commercially available 24-bit/96kHz DVD-Audio disc, Swingin' for the Fences, by Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band.
The release, described by the label as a big-band swing/jazz recording, is said to have arrived for sale at traditional and online music…
Two-channel lives: Once the bread-and-butter of electronics retailers everywhere, the two-channel receiver has become all but extinct. Rotel America is making a valiant effort to save this endangered species with its new RX-1052, a remote-controllable 100Wpc unit claimed to offer "audiophile-grade sonics"—it includes a phono preamp, and a "massively overbuilt" power supply—with versatile four-area multiroom/multizone capabilities and basic video-switching features. Whole-house system integration is made easier via three IR links and 12V trigger outputs. An RS-232 interface connects to…
It was announced this week that Hans Fantel, a founding editor of Stereo Review and long-time consumer electronics columnist at The New York Times, died in early May from injuries sustained in a automobile accident.
Mr. Fantel led a fascinating life. He spent his boyhood in Vienna and escaped to Czechoslovakia after his father, an opponent of German rearmament, was arrested. He then served in the Czech underground before moving to New York in 1941.
Mr. Fantel was a man of great culture. He wrote a book about the Strauss family, The Waltz Kings, as well as William Penn: Apostle of…
A month after news of Apple Computer's start-up subscription music service, reports began circulating that the company was negotiating to buy Universal Music Group, the dominant player in the global music market. The rumored buyout, first reported April 10, was variously quoted at $5–6 billion. The discussions between Apple and UMG may have been blown out of proportion; by April 12 the New York Times was suggesting that Apple might invest in UMG, but was in no position to make an outright acquisition.
Apple has already licensed UMG's catalog of recordings for sale to users of its soon-to-…
There's a basic rule that explains the audiophile's role in the audio food chain: The mass market accepts and then audiophiles perfect. Try to reverse that rule with something like, say, SACD or DVD-Audio, attempting to have sound quality drive mass-market adoption, and you get . . . the DualDisc.
With the obvious mass-market success of Apple's iPod portable, it would follow that smart audiophiles would want to make it better. One company taking that route is PsiberAudio, the brainchild of Andrew Conley.
PsiberAudio has just introduced its first two products aimed at the iPod tweaker…
Don't bother to tell Music Lovers Audio that audio sales have slowed. At a time when many dealers have abandoned two-channel audio altogether or chosen between de-emphasizing music and calling it quits, this Bay Area audio retailer has opened a second store a mere 30 miles from the original North Berkeley location, across the Bay in San Francisco.
Despite having heard advance hype that Music Lovers' new San Francisco store is one of the five best retail audio outlets in the nation, I was unprepared for what I encountered. The huge lobby, which extends much of the length of the…
Many audiophiles are incensed that the digital outputs on high-resolution disc players are limited to the 16bit/44.1kHz standard of the "Red Book" CD when playing DVD-Audio discs. To read some postings on audiophile newsgroups, you'd think it's a massive conspiracy to prevent people from adding their own processors to the playback chain. Putting as many boxes as possible in an audio system is a constitutionally guaranteed right, isn't it?
The lack of such digital outputs is because electronics manufacturers have caved into demands by the music industry to block the availability of…