Thought all you needed to get a 4K TV working is HDMI 2.0? Guess again. The next generation of content protection is called HDCP 2.2, and not only is it not backwards compatible, many new 4K devices don’t even support it. So it’s possible that the 4K TV you bought last year, or even the …

All smart TVs have streaming apps, like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and so on. Media streamers are nothing but streaming apps. Sure it’s convenient to use your TV’s built-in services, but are they the best experience? Probably not, actually. More to the point, is it worth getting a media streamer if you already have a smart TV? Maybe… Behold, the …

Sony/Samsung Both Samsung and Sony, leader and major player in TVs respectively, have huge amounts of money invested in 4K. Right now, 4K TVs represent potentially big profits, not costing that much more to make than 1080p LCDs, yet selling for much higher prices. One of the main reasons 4K adoption is slow is the lack of content. The same …

FaceTime, circa 1960. Today there’s simple technology, namely headphones and projectors, that can help those starting to lose their vision and hearing. Via Wikipedia We all get old, something I’m begrudgingly having to admit as I see all my friends with loud kids, and I find traces of gray in what remains of my hair. But shock! There are people …

I’d like to call it H.265, because it sounds cool, but its full name is High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). It’s the new successor to Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also known as H.264, which is one of the compression schemes used by Blu-ray. The idea of HEVC is to offer the same level of picture quality as AVC, but with …

Panasonic plasmas are gone. Pioneer’s plasmas, the revered Kuros, are long gone. Samsung and LG are left, but for how long? There’s a growing market of used plasmas, from a variety of sources, temping picture quality fanatics with great deals…but at a risk. Is that risk worth the price and picture of a used plasma? Good question. This article was …

Geoffrey Morrison I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Every time I try to start a debate on the Internet, it devolves into “Well, I didn’t read this but you’re stupid.” I’m paraphrasing. Barely. A few weeks ago Steve “The Audiophiliac” Guttenberg and I decided to have a bit of a debate, on the “correct” way to listen to music. …

Geoffrey Morrison/Maxell There’s an attitude, particularly among those who style themselves dedicated audiophiles, that boils down to judging others for how they listen to music. It says that people who stop all else and do nothing but listen, are somehow more righteous than those who don’t. That it’s not possible to be a true music fan if you do other …

Panasonic’s 4K LCD TV. The company will not be making a 4K resolution plasma. Sarah Tew/CNET It’s an easy sell: Four times the resolution of HDTV. The numbers are a cinch to understand, 2160p easily identifiable as more than 1080p. Every manufacturer is pushing their top-of-the-line 4K TVs as the next generation of superlative picture quality. But resolution is just …

I recently received an e-mail from a reader, Raul, whose daughter is deaf in one ear. She loves music, but with headphones she’d only get one channel. While my initial thought was for a fairly simple fix, as I researched to be sure, it turned out to be more complex than I figured. A short and long answer, to follow.The …