33rd-Year Anniversary of VHS – It was in 1977 that the VHS videocassette format was introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show. It quickly became part of the VHS vs. Betamax format war. Sony’s Betamax had come out in 1975. JVC developed VHS the year before, and promoted that it could record twice as long as Betamax and had faster rewind and fast forward speeds. Never mind that it looked worse. A VCR originally cost $1280 and blank tapes were priced at $20. Since JVC licensed the VHS format to other electronics makers, many brands flooded the market and they became cheaper than their Betamax counterparts. By 1987, 90% of the VCRs sold in the U.S. were VHS and Betamax was fading out. Sony refused to share its format widely and reportedly wouldn’t let porno material be put on Betamax tapes, while JVC had no such qualms. The last standalone JVC VHS VCR was made in October 2008.
Marian McPartland Gets Order of the British Empire – Longtime ambassador for jazz, pianist Marian McPartland – host of public radio’s Piano Jazz – was earlier this week made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her services to jazz and to aspiring young musicians. Her career has also included writing, composing and educating. From the sound of England, she met her future husband Jimmy McPartland in Belgium, where she was entertaining Allied troops with a vaudeville act during WWII. Their first day in NYC the couple were greeted by Louis Armstrong. In addition to performing around world, Marian has made over 60 recordings.
PacketVideo Launches Two Inexpensive Downloadable Connected Home Solutions – Adding to an award-winning family of Twonky connected home solution, PacketVideo has introduced TwonkyManager 2.0 and TwonkyServer 6.0. Over three million consumer electronics devices in use to date employ Twonky solutions. The new software works with PCs to make finding media and playing it on connected home and mobile devices as simple as drag and drop. Sharing video, photos and music becomes a seamless experience. Users can aggregate media located on multiple PC or media servers thruout the home into one cohesive view. There is no need to worry about where media is stored. Whenever new devices enter the home an Auto Copy feature copies digital media files to the master media library. Video thumbnails allow users to search thru video libraries at lightning speed regardless of file format. TwonkyManager 2.0 and TwonkyServer 6.0 are available together for about $20.
TV/Internet Browsers? – Don’t really exist yet and may never, due to legal and business concerns. Although Vizio, LG and other makers are offering HDTVs with built-in Wi-Fi, don’t expect to be able to sit down and blithely scan all of the Internet. You will find there is an expanding range of online content, but these are just specific dedicated services which differ from one TV manufacturer to another. You might be better off to get a cable which goes from your laptop to your big home screen. Another option is the $100 Roku HD box, which allows you to stream paid HD material from Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, MLB.com other other sources. If you need to hook it up to your display, you’ll need a HDMI cable, but don’t be persuaded to pay dearly for a fancy one; in this case those you can get online for as little as $5 are just fine.
