Your highest resolution is going to come from Blu-ray discs (1080p HD), and the next-highest from local HD TV stations if you access over-the-air signals with an antenna. This will usually be a true 720p signal, although processed by the encode/decode equipment during its journey from the originating studio to the local station’s transmitting tower. A step down will be HD programming from the Dish satellite system, and further down will be what your cable company is offering. These signals are greatly compressed in order to get as many channels as possible into the “pipe.”
Wal-Mart Offers $298 Blu-ray Player – The cheapest stand-alone Blu-ray player on the market is now offered by Wal-Mart Stores: the Magnavox NB500MG9. It has 1080p HD resolution , upconverts standard DVDs to that, the HDMI is v.1.3 and the Blu-ray Profile is 1.1. Best Buy as an Insignia Blu-ray player for $349, and sales incentives are being widely offering by retailers for various Blu-ray movies – some as low as $17 each. For those with a HDTV set who seek a quality Blu-ray player for good value, many experts recommend the Sony PlayStation 3, even if computer gaming holds no interest for the user.
Blu-ray Recorders Next – Stand-alone Blu-ray recorders have only been seen in Japan so far, but Panasonic has announced the 500 GB Blu-ray recorder with twin HD tuners for Australia only. It will be the first Blu-ray recorder for the living room in that country and hopefully will be soon traveling to other parts of the world. Meanwhile hard-drive maker LaCie has announced that it has doubled the burn speeds on its d2 Blu-ray Drive from 2x to 4x. The professional hi-def video recording unit for both Mac and Windows rewrites and reads 25 GB or 50 GB (recordable) and BD-RE (rewritable). It also handles the + and – RW formats, and comes with Roxio burning software and dual FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces. The 50 GB Blu-ray discs offer ten times more capacity than a single-layer DVD, so professionals can choose much higher bit rate codecs for mastering content, thereby improving final picture quality. And any computer user can back up more of their data. Blu-ray audio technology also allows for up to eight channels of up to 192K/32-bit audio streams. The d2 Blu-ray Drive is $650.
Wi-Fi Technology Links Hearing Aids to TV Sound – An induction-loop system allowing those with hearing impairment to hear their TVs and radios without blasting others out of the room is in wide use in northern Europe, but few of the 31 million hard-of-hearing people in the U.S. have it yet. Even with mild hearing loss, when there are other sounds in the room competing, it becomes increasingly difficult for some persons to properly hear the media sound. A small transmitter plugs into the audio out jack and a thin wire is run around the perimeter of the room to create an electromagnetic field that then sends the audio signal directly to the hearing aid wearer. It’s a smaller version of the same systems that churches and auditoriums offer for the heard of hearing. One system from Wireless Hearing Solutions in Michigan costs $185.
