New Chip Brings DTV to Fast-Moving Vehicles – High-speed in-car (back seat) TV puts heavy RF demands on the video tuner, and it also must operate in a harsh vehicular environment with challenges of temperature, vibration and dust. Microtune Inc. has a new chip that replaces conventional bulky modules with advanced silicon TV tuner chips. They yield performance, reliability, size and cost benefits to auto makers. The new MT2067 chip is an integrated dual-conversion single-chip tuner supporting the frequency range of 48 to 862 MHz.
Tweeter Electronic Stores Out of Business – East Coast home electronics retailer Tweeter closed all its 70 stores last week, including six in the Philadelphia area. Their chain also included the old Bryn Mawr Stereo stores and had over 600 employees. Tweeter had filed for Chapter 11 last month, and so did Circuit City.
YouTube Offers HD Format Videos – Google’s YouTube has begun to provide certain videos in an HD format, both 720p and 1080i. But if your broadband connection isn’t broad enough, the videos will look as bad as most YouTube videos. Broadband speeds in the U.S. are way behind those in most developed countries. Perhaps the new satellite Wi-Fi system supposed to start in February will provide solutions at a reasonable cost for some of us.
Blu-ray Has Been Hacked – The futility of anti-copyright software is demonstrated by the news that the supposedly hacker-free Blu-ray protection has been thoroughly hacked by some of those active on the Doom9 forum. Blu-ray has two levels of copy protection: AACS (as used by HD DVD) and BD+AACS. This breakthru is going to unfortunately aid the pirating of discs; there is said to already be pirated Blu-ray discs in China.
Most Expensive Speakers II? – We recently reported on some $192,000 a pair high-end speakers, but reader JR Hertel sent us links to two others easily beating that record: The Perfect 8 “Force” speakers are $277,000 a pair and the Acapella Audio Arts “Spharon Excalibur” come in at $380,700 a pair.
