Audio News for October 31, 2012

by | Oct 31, 2012 | Audio News

13% Growth in Blu-ray Disc Sales – The Third Quarter 2012 Home Entertainment Report has been published by the DEG (Digital Entertainment Group). It illustrates the continuing shift to the sale of films and TV shows via the digital marketplace, and especially on Blu-ray. Blu-ray, electronic sell-thru and video-on-demand (VOD) all saw material increases in the third quarter. The report showed consumer spending rising .24% compared to last year. UltraViolet registrations have surpassed six million. Electronic sell-thru rose 37.7% compared to the third quarter last year. Sales of catalog titles on Blu-ray grew 22% in Q3 from a year earlier. 2.8 milion Blu-ray disc players were sold in Q3, up 5% from a year earlier. Total household penetration of Blu-ray devices now is close to 50 million U.S. homes. 7.8 million HDTVs were sold to U.S. consumers in Q3 and the HDTV penetration rate is now at more than 101 million U.S. households.
Home Electronic Show in New Delhi – The first Home Electronic Show was held in New Delhi, India Oct. 26-28. Over 60 leading electronic and consumer goods brands were present, including Panasonic, Samsung, Whirlpool, LG and many others. It was India’s biggest ever exhibition of consumer electronics, home appliances, ICT and digital lifestyle products. Among the gadgets shown were: LG’s 85-inch HD 4K 3DTV, Yamaha’s arty ISX-800 music player, which plays from CDs, pendrives and iPods, and also has an FM radio and is an alarm clock. Yamaha also showed their ‘sound projector” – a gadget which employs the walls of your house to reflect sound, creating a surround sound experience.
Vampire Electronics – Several online articles have warned against a situation that is very appropriate for this time of year – vampire electronics. Homeowners can trim $100 or more off their electric bill each year by slaying their vampire electronics that are sucking energy all over your home. These energy vampires work day and night to drain your wallet. Idle gadgets in the home consumer over 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity each year. They can be gadgets like your desktop computer or small gadgets like your smartphone charger. An appliance using a remote control or displays a clock on it draws power when turned off. If left plugged in, phone and battery chargers continue to consume energy after the phones are disconnected and the batteries taken out. So just unplug these electronic vampires when they aren’t in use. Or use a power bar into which you plug all your electronic gadgets and turn them all off with a single switch. You can also turn off power to a single wall socket with an inexpensive power switch. “Smart” power strips or surge suppressors will shut down an outlet when they sense a gadget has gone into standby mode. Some rechargeables have built-in timers instead of switches.  You can get an inexpensive power usage monitor to determine the operating costs of your various gadgets. It plugs into a wall socket and gadgets plug into it. It tells you how electricity that gadget uses each day, week or month.
DLNA Devices Double to Over 500 – The number of certified home theater devices has doubled since 2010, now peaking at over 500.  The prediction is that 60% of home audio products will be network enabled by 2016. Certified AV systems are able to communicate with other consumer electronics, effectively expanding the boundaries of the digital home thru easy interoperability.

Related Reviews
Logo Pure Pleasure
Logo Apollo's Fire
Logo Crystal Records Sidebar 300 ms
Logo Jazz Detective Deep Digs Animated 01