Audio News for July 25, 2007

by | Jul 25, 2007 | Audio News | 0 comments

Digital Music Sales Grow – Reports from  both the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) show that digital music formats again demonstrated growth in 2006, with 586 million digital tracks downloaded – a 60% increase over the previous year. 28 million albums were downloaded – a 103% increase. While digital revenues grew, physical CD sales fell by 12.8%. Online music sales were $11.5 billion.  The RIAA Chairman and CEO observed that “…a digital marketplace now worth nearly $2 billion has emerged virtually overnight.”

GalleryPlayer to Issue Blu-rays – Seattle’s GalleryPlayer, which stocks the largest library of protected hi-def images from every continent, has announced a partnership with video distributor Image Entertainment to release four Blu-ray discs of some its titles of astonishing imagery this fall. The titles: 1000 Places to See Before You Die: 40 Favorite Destinations; The Amazing World of National Geographic; Art Wolfe: Vanishing Act; 50 Paintings from the Modern Museum of Art. The discs are accompanied by musical scores, and some are also available as hi-def SD cards for use with Panasonic video displays.

Runco International Acquired by Planar Systems – Known the past two decades for its very high end custom home theater products, Runco has been acquired by Planar, who introduced its innovative Xscreen technology last year for front projection. Combined with Runco’s Vidikron and Video Xtreme projectors and CineWide technology, Planar will be able to accelerate its reach into the growing global market for high end home theater solutions. Last year Runco unveiled its Signature Cinema SC-1, which redefined the technology boundaries of home theater with a huge light output making possible screens as large as 500 inches wide. The Video Xtreme series was the first 1080p front projector product to receive THX certification.

Wireless Lamp/Speaker – An interesting combination of home theater growth with the wireless craze is Soundolier’s Duo Wireless Speaker Lamp.  It’s 76 inches tall and looks like a black torchier except for a bit of a bulge which is its 5.25-inch speaker and tiny amp below the frosted shade. There are mini jacks for plugging in an iPod directly, a dimmer switch for the lamp, and a foot control to turn the speaker on and off. It uses a 2.4GHz transmitter, which handles both channels. The primary use would be to avoid running cables to the pair of surround speakers.  The speakers fire upwards, thus delivering a similar diffuse sort of surround field as bipolar speakers.

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