CEDIA 2008 in Denver is just around the corner, next week in fact and I feel corny enough to say I’m really looking forward to it, again. Firstly it’s really nice to see and spend time with the other staff at Secrets scattered around the country. Although the show is exhausting to cover, we all look forward to working together to bring the latest and greatest, along with a few anecdotes and some humor.

I also enjoy meeting many of the great people in the industry from the PR companies to the manufacturers themselves who put so much effort into these shows.

Call me stuck in the 70’s, but I’m looking forward to seeing the Doobie Brothers sponsored by SpeakerCraft and Monster Cable.

Hopefully along the way we’ll experience some great demonstrations both in video and audio, have some terrific dinners, drink some amazing wines, walk miles, and spend as little time in shuttles as possible.

As much as we want to cover it all, by all means if there are those of you that want to hear about anything specific, tell us and we’ll find it for you.

One of the questions I am asked by friends is whether they can use “wireless” speakers. The issue comes up mostly when it comes to surround speakers. I understand why people ask; they can visualize putting traditional left/right speakers near their display, and putting a center channel speaker along the same wall near the amp/receiver makes sense to them. But those pesky surround speakers are a problem, visually, aesthetically, and most-of-all, how do they run wires to them?

While there are currently several solutions for wireless speakers, they pose numerous issues. Sound-quality tops the list, but for some folks more interested in the convenience factor, that’s not a deal breaker. The real issue is that wireless speakers require power to drive them, and since they are not getting a signal from speaker cable, that power comes from an AC line (generally via a wall wart). Which means . . . you need to run a cable from the speaker anyways, plus it needs be located near a wall outlet. If someone figures out how to drive a quality speaker with a wireless signal that doesn’t also make you glow in the dark, the world will beat a path to their door.

While browsing through Blu-ray announcements lately, quite a few of them got me excited about the steam that BD has been picking up and the way the format is developing.

For instance, movie studios such as Pixar are starting to implement BD-Live and content will be seen on  WALL-E and more of Pixar’s upcoming releases.  Hellboy 2 is going to have an interesting use of BD-Live with a feature that allows download of screenshots to make a custom video comic book.  3-D films have been coming to the theaters and now companies like Phillips and others are working on bringing that same technology to Blu-ray players.  Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight when it is released will reportedly include the 2:4 IMAX aspect ratio which has added detail.  Finally, more and more newer BD releases are including the lossless HD audio tracks on the disc as well as getting quality video treatment.

Like a few billion other people, I’ve been spending probably a little too much time watching the Olympics.  At least I’m getting to see them in HD though… or am I.

Sticking mainly with CBC-HD’s coverage for its nicely rounded (not just Canada biased) coverage, I noticed the other night that video footage of the race I was watching was so soft as to seem almost out of focus.  I would say about as good as really good DVD.  Yet the overlay graphics (times, scores, titles, etc) were razor sharp, pixel-for-pixel perfect, so we can’t blame Rogers for over-compressing this time.

Are all the camera operators not pulling focus?  Unlikely.  Was something lost in a signal rate conversion somewhere between Beijing and Toronto?  Does anyone other than me even care?

Granted most of the coverage has been pretty good (like the now famous “super slo-mo” diving shots), but the bottom line: overall less than compelling HD.

And service providers wonder why HDTV has taken about 20 years longer to be adopted than it should have…

I’m trying to enjoy the Olympics, really I am. But there is only so much a person can be expected to tolerate. Between the seemingly endless commercials, studio patter, travelogues, and human interest stories, there’s barely any of that competitiony-stuff going on.

I will not watch it “live” at all (here in the U.S. Pacific Time Zone, nothing is really live anyway). Plus, I do not have the patience to sit through all the fluff. I also tried recording on my DVR, but three or four hours of HD Olympics every night, in addition to my usually scheduled recordings, fills up my hard drive too fast. Comcast actually has a pretty neat On Demand selection that features a few of the previous days highlights, available free and in HD. My only complaint is that I wish there was more of it.

I understand that TV networks pay a princely sum for the right to televise the Olympics, and have to recoup their investment. But there’s got to be a better way to do it.

I have seen a lot of people using Apple’s iPhone lately.  I have wanted one as well but the device doesn’t operate on my cell phone provider’s network.  That left me with the decision to buy the iPod Touch which provides a lot of the same functionality as the iPhone and has the same stylish interface that is so fun to use.  I brought the device home and loaded it with some songs and pictures and I was pleased with the clean and bright display as well as how easy it was to navigate through media.  The only problem is that I don’t have many songs in an iTunes library and my CD collection still hasn’t been ripped to my computer’s hard drive as of yet.

On the other hand, I have long been a fan of the Rhapsody subscription service because I like the idea of accessing so many different songs without purchasing them.  Unfortunately, as of now, Rhapsody subscription songs do not play on the Apple iPod series of MP3 players.  While Rhapsody has created an online store that sells their library songs in the MP3 format to reach the Apple crowd, iPod users still don’t have a subscription service available to them.  I really hope this changes either with Apple offering their own subscription service or through an agreement with Apple and the Rhapsody service.

So, I went back to my local electronics retailer and I bought a very inexpensive 2gb MP3 player from Insignia.  This player has an interface which requires lengthy presses of tiny buttons and its screen is just big enough to fit a couple lines of text.   Needless to say, its unpleasant to navigate through.  On the upside, it does transfer and play Rhapsody subscription tracks quite easily.  So, I loaded the device up with at least twenty different albums and was able to listen to brand new releases such as Skin Deep, Buddy Guy’s soulful new blues offering.  I take this device with me to the gym while my iPod Touch stays at home because I want to listen to brand new music without spending fifteen dollars for an album I haven’t heard yet.  Functionality that fits.

As happens on a regular basis, I got a call this week from a friend asking for advice about upgrading their home theater system. After years of delay, they had finally purchased a nice 50-inch plasma for their family room, but other than a DVD player had nothing else.

I asked some questions about their needs and priorities; they wanted it to look nice but were more interested in sound quality than aesthetics. They did not want sub-par equipment, but didn’t want to spend a lot of money either. All very reasonable points. After a little more discussion, I suggested two 5.1 speaker systems from manufacturers that, in my opinion, had an excellent price/value ratio. Both systems sold for about $2,000. My friend literally gasped at the price. He makes a very nice living, but the idea of spending $2,000 on speakers was shocking. He’d seen complete packages—ones sold by big box stores—for less than $500. I tried to explain that, at that price point, you get what you pay for. It didn’t seem to make a difference.

This is a common experience. People want a quality home theater, but when they weigh the cost of attaining it, quality often comes out on the wrong side of the ledger. It is important to respect people’s choices as to where they spend their money, especially when disposable income is a scarce resource. But sometimes, especially at the lower end of the market segment, those few extra dollars can translate into a different level of enjoyment.

With the main design concept of curving enclosures, BA’s furniture quality Vista is elegant and amazingly finished in either high gloss piano black lacquer, or optional cherry endcaps.

For a flagship line, Vista is the modestly priced with the top of the line VS 336, 3-way floorstanding unit at $1,699.00 each. The LCR VS 224, 2-way wall-mountable unit at $699.00 each and a pair of bookshelf units, the VS 260 with a 6 ½” woofer at $699.00 or the VS 240 with a 4 ½” woofer at $399.00 each. A center channel VS 325C with dual 5 ½” drivers at $899.00 and lastly the VPS 210 10” powered subwoofer with 500-watt RMS, 1800 peak class-D amplifier at $1,600.00.

The demo with just a pair of the VS 240’s was surprisingly elegant and rich sounding. Although base was not lacking, switching on the VPS subwoofer yielded yet another level of dimension to the demonstration.

Most of the units are now shipping with all by the end of summer.

 My HTPC is built and in use.  A few weeks ago while browsing my queue at Netflix, I noticed a few selections which had a “Play” icon next to them.  My wife and I found a selection to our liking and a few seconds later the movie started to play.  The movie played through its entirety without any glitches, this too over a wireless network.  The picture was a little soft, but then again I did not have the DVD of the movie we watched to compare against, so it could have just been the master.  Regardless, the instant gratification component was very satisfying.

The library is somewhat limited, but it has been expanding.  Movies in the “Watch Instantly” catalog can be viewed in addition to the rental discs you may have at home.  Unlike the rental contract which imposes a restriction on the number of rental discs outstanding at any given time, there appears to be no such limit here.  There is no HD content, and even if such content were present, some amount of buffering would be needed before the movie would start to play.  Netflix is now also offering a dedicated box made by Roku for people who do not have an HTPC setup.  Internet connectivity is, of course, still required.

I don’t travel much, but in the last two months have stayed at three different hotels in major metropolitan areas (Los Angeles and Silicon Valley). While they weren’t five-star resorts, they were upscale hotels of major chains that cater to business travelers. I had nicely appointed rooms, complete with flat-screen HDTV’s.

Not only could I not find any hi-def programming, but the picture quality was terrible! It reminded me of watching over-the-air signals through a set of rabbit ears, or basic analog cable. All of the displays were hooked up to a special box for purchasing services (such as on-demand movies and internet through the TV). I don’t know whether the box is to blame, or something else in the signal chain. But it seemed such a waste to spend money on HD displays, when they produced such poor images. Kind of like buying a filet mignon and then boiling it.