Audio News for August 9, 2005

by | Aug 9, 2005 | Audio News | 0 comments

Home Electronics Consume Lots of Energy – Most consumers
are not aware of just how much energy is required to power the latest
generation of home electronics, and some critics are questioning their
environmental effect. A large plasma display could easily raise a
home’s energy bill $50 or more annually. A new survey showed that a
home theater system can use as much electricity as a refrigerator.
Video devices, which accounted for 5% of a typical household’s energy
use in l980 now account for 13%, and that’s expected to climb to 18% by
2015. The number of hours that TVs and computers are on has increased
because there’s a richness of media available. The EPA’s Energy Star
specs are being rewritten so consumers will know how much power
electronics use. TVs are currently the government agency’s focus.

Yahoo Tests New Audio Search – Yahoo has announced what it
claims to be the most comprehensive audio search service.  It has
an index of over 50 million audio files, including newscasts, speeches,
interviews, podcasts and music. Content is identified by reading
metadata information embedded in the audio files. Yahoo has received
permission to index downloadable songs offered by virtually all of the
Net’s top music services. The expansion into audio search coincides
with more focus by Yahoo and other search engines on indexing online
video.

Fox Supports Blu-ray Hi-Def Disc – 20th Century Fox says they
will use Sony’s Blu-ray format for their home video HDTV discs to be
introduced this fall. Sony has constructed their latest Playstation
units around Blu-ray.  Toshiba and others in its camp are rushing
to get out its first hi-def HD-DVD discs, so it appears a hi-def
highly-dumb format war will soon be upon us.

Wireless/Lossless Digital Music Center Launched
– Olive Media
Products of San Francisco has announced the Symphony – a wireless music
center for audiophiles. The $900  hi-fi component is based on a
central device storing, managing and distributing digital music
throughout the home. Olive’s Pure Audio technology employs a 32-bit IBM
PowerPC processing lossless audio with a digital output to the user’s
audio system. Owners can record CDs, LPs and tapes to the noiseless
2.5” 80 GB hard drive, which holds up to 20,000 songs.  The
integrated CD database IDs, tags and archives discs automatically.
Music may be streamed wirelessly to up to five rooms simultaneously, as
well as to either Macs or PCs.  Users can update their iPods via a
USB connection and use the built-in CD-RW drive to burn CDs. More info
at www.olive.us

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