Cheap Earbuds Scam – It finally comes out: you know those super-cheap earbuds everyone seems to be wearing nowadays (and ruining their hearing with), such as those terrible little white earbuds that come with Apple’s iPods? They seem to all sound the same (awful) and many look the same. Well, it turns out they may actually BE all the same. Companies in the Far East make these low-end sub-$50 earbuds and customize them for anyone. One of the OEM manufacturers even advertises that their engineers create "15 new headphones and earphones monthly." They just change a few colors and put someone’s logo on the side and there’s a very saleable product packed with one’s name on it. The average factory manufacturing price is around $8 each, and according to the CEA, shipments of wired earbuds will top $447 million this year. The market has exploded, what with everyone wanting something less ugly than standard headphones on the sides of their heads as they work at their PC, jog, walk, fly, whatever. There is no industry quality standard for audio as there is for video, so this a real minefield. If you must have in-ear phones, stick with the pricey ones like the Etymotic and Shure if you don’t mind things jammed in your ear canals. Otherwise stay with good standard headphones which can still sound the best.
Home 3D a Tough Sell – Some experts are saying that the theatrical debut of Piranha 3D last weekend could do more damage than good for the makers of 3D TVs. 3D proponents would say the more 3D theatrical movies the better, but schlocky uses of the enhanced technology could actually be a setback. Many were already very disappointed in the 3D quality of after-the-fact movies such as Alice in Wonderland vs. those actually shot in 3D, like Avatar. A senior VP from Sony said "Making good 3D is hard. We have to do a very good job as an industry to ensure quality 3D is brought to the consumer – otherwise it will just be considered a gimmick by consumers." The consumer electronics industry is struggling to build on the huge success of Avatar in selling you TVs, Blu-ray players, cameras and game consoles that play 3D content. 3D TVs are more costly than regular HDTVs, and for those who are not entirely convinced that 3D is necessary, that’s one of the main barriers for people buying. Some manufacturers are seeking more mainstream price points for their 2011 3D products. Another barrier is not only that special 3D glasses must be worn to watch 3D at home, and also their sizable cost. Some sets come with two free pairs, but an extra pair is around $150 and there still is not an accepted industry standard for those glasses. Designers are working on 3D systems that don’t require glasses, but that will probably be a very long way off. Even when moviegoers are paying the additional $3 or $4 for 3D movies at the box office, that isn’t translating into rapid adoption of home 3D products. A good example of 3D not yet being prime time is that you still can’t purchase even a 3D Blu-ray version of Avatar.
Best Buy Spends $290,000 Lobbying in One Quarter – Electronics retailer Best Buy spent $290,000 in the second quarter of this year to lobby the government on electronics waste , credit cards, the employee free choice act, the transition to digital TV and the clean energy act. That’s 71% more than Best Buy spent on this in the same quarter last year. In the same period, Home Depot also lobbied Congress, the White House and the FCC.
Treasury of Rare Jazz Recordings from the Late 30s to National Jazz Museum – The National Jazz Museum in Harlem has acquired a set of nearly 1000 acetate disc recordings made at the height of the swing era, and begun to digitize inspired performances by Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Count Base, and other less well-known artists who have been underappreciated. They were recorded from broadcasts by an audio engineer named William Savory, who had quality professional gear of the time, including turntables with up to 16-inch discs and sometimes recorded at 33 ⅓ rpm in order to get longer performances in their entirety – which wasn’t possible on the 10-inch 78s of the period. The museum’s director Loren Schoenberg, transported the boxes of discs to NYC in a rental truck. He says hearing some of the recordings you will say "This can’t be 70 years old."
