Home Entertainment Spending Up for Q1 – The first quarter of this year saw the continued stabilization of the industry with promising gains in Blu-ray, electronic sell-thru and video-on-demand (VOD) spending, according to the report compiled by the Digital Entertainment Group. Blu-ray jumped 23% and sell-thru 17% compared to the same period last year. TV sales of Blu-ray were up 54% and catalog sales up 27%, showing that Blu-ray disc is now the standard for quality home entertainment. Most major studios backed UltraViolet and consumers opened nearly two million UltraViolet accounts to access and enjoy their movies and TV shows in any of their devices using the cloud. 2.4 million Blu-ray players were sold during Q1 and total Blu-ray penetration now stands at over 40.8 million U.S. homes. 6.5 million HDTVs were sold to U.S. consumers in Q1 and HDTV penetration is now at more than 77.6 million U.S. households.
Telarc Hi-Res Downloads – are now beginning to be offered at the HDtracks site. It’s now been many years since the new Telarc owners—Concord Music Group—ceased all SACD releases, so though only two-channel, these are appreciated. The first three are Al Di Meola’s Flesh On Flesh, Erich Kunzel’s 1812 Overture album, and The Film Music of Jerry Goldsmith. The first is available in 96K/24-bit; the others at either 176K/24-bit or 88K/24-bit.
A DAC With an Atomic Clock – Antelope Audio has gone atomic on audiophiles’ ears. Their new high-end Rubicon preamp has a rubidium atomic clock as part of its D-to-A and A-to-D converters. The idea is to produce exceptionally clean digital audio—even better than with the standalone DACs which so far have lacked atomic clocks.
DTS and Deluxe Digital Distribution Agreement – will integrate the DTS high performance low bitrate audio codec designed for either streaming or downloading into the Deluxe Digital Media Library for playing back on devices such as tablets, smartphones, connected Blu-ray players, TVs, game consoles and more. The Library has thousands of premium titles but to date has been limited to basic quality stereo audio; this will add 5.1 and 7.1 DTS surround audio and expand the quality and efficiency of the digital media.
Wayne Shorter – In Memoriam
Rememberance of the artist
