Feature News Stories (653 Posts)

NHT Goes "Dark" In Bad Economy

Now Hear This, aka NHT, is a speaker company with an interesting way to get around tough financial times. NHT isn't filing for bankruptcy or going out of business. Instead, the firm plans to sell its current inventory and then simply take a break for awhile. Continue Reading

Apple's 2009 iLife Will Teach People How To Play a Musical Instrument

The latest thing you can do with an Apple product? Learn how to play a musical instrument. Steve Jobs and company's new Apple iLife 2009 can be used to learn to play the instrument of your choice. iLife 2009 also features nine tutorials from famous rock stars like Sting, John Fogerty and Sarah MacLachlan. Continue Reading

Vizio Now Number 2 Flat HDTV Seller in America - Samsung Is Tops

Look out, Samsung. The breath you feel on the back of your neck comes from Vizio, who has just passed Sony to become the second largest HDTV seller in the United States with a 14.3 percent market share. Samsung currently leads the market with a 20.2 percent share. Continue Reading

Specialty AV Brands Look To Dealers To "Push" Their Products Over Creating New Consumer Demand

If you are a manufacturer of specialty audio/video products, you want to retailers carrying your products to do something more aggressive about moving the merchandise than just directing customers to the right aisle and swiping the occasional credit card. Continue Reading

DirecTV Investor Lends Over $500,000,000 To Sirius XM (SIRI)

The company behind much of the backing of DirecTV has come to the rescue of struggling satellite radio provider, XM Sirius. Draws like Howard Stern and to a lesser extent Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart have helped the network but its not out of Continue Reading

Are Blu-ray's Days Numbered? The Half Life of AV Disc Theory

HomeTheaterReview.com's publisher/editor Jerry Del Colliano muses about the longevity (or lack thereof) of various audio/video formats, including the current HD champ Blu-ray, and how and why the companies change their offerings for the consumer. Continue Reading

Pioneer To Leave The HDTV Business - Slashing 10k Jobs

It's with a heavy heart that we report that Pioneer plans to stop producing HDTVs in 2010. The company's KURO line of plasma HDTVs has been almost universally hailed as the best panels money can buy, but that alone could not ease the company's economic woes. Continue Reading

Is Dish Network Looking To Get More HD Bandwidth By Buying Sirius XM?

Okay, we know that one of satellite provider DirecTV's top investors has loaned $500,000 U.S. to Sirius XM Radio. Now we can begin speculating about whether DirecTV will benefit from this development, and if so, what's there for DirecTV at the end of this rainbow? Continue Reading

Elevator Music Kings Muzak File For Chapter 11

Muzak is one of those brands like Xerox or Scotch tape - people use the name to describe a whole genre, whether it's really that specific item or not. Muzak is the generally cutesy-fied version of music that seemed to forever be playing in elevators and supermarkets. Continue Reading

Sirius XM In Fear Of Takeover From EchoStar (Dish Network)?

Once upon a time - okay, back in 2008 - two satellite radio providers, Sirius and XM, got hitched at the behest of Sirius CEO Mel Karamzin. Now it seems that the radio marriage may include a cable TV partner, namely Echostar's Dish Network. Continue Reading

Sunday's Super Bowl Was 2nd Biggest TV Broadcast of All-Time

Never mind all that fretting over shrinking television audiences. The Nielsen ratings show that the Sunday Super Bowl football game, with the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers facing each other on the gridiron, got the second biggest viewing figures in history. Continue Reading

Porn Interrupts Super Bowl Broadcast In Tucson

Theoretically, the only balls anybody is supposed to see during a football game are the ones being tossed around and run with by the players. However, Comcast subscribers in Tucson, Arizona wound up seeing something else during the Super Bowl telecast. Continue Reading

A Filmmaker's Guide to Why You Need to Calibrate Your HDTV Today

As a filmmaker who has witnessed the painstaking process of color correction in post-production, Andrew Robinson discusses the importance of HDTV calibration. For the movie lover who truly wants the most accurate picture possible, there are a number of calibration options. Continue Reading

U.S Credit Freeze Hurting The Home Theater Business Badly

You have to wonder what the point of credit is when even people who have plenty of money and have never failed to pay a bill in their lives can't borrow money from the banks. This situation is having a devastating effect on the home theater industry. Continue Reading

Sirius-XM (SIRI) To Raise Rates While Destroying Programming

There is a whole movement growing to protest the phenomenon of cereal boxes and bags of potato chips that cost more than their recent forebears, while containing less actual food. Sirius-XM seems to be following the same trend as the snack packagers. Continue Reading

CES 2009 Home Theater and Audiophile Highlights - Jerry Del Colliano

HomeTheaterReview.com's publisher/editor Jerry Del Colliano talks about all that he saw and heard at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in the realms of home theater and audiophile products brought forth by some of the world's most prestigious AV companies. Continue Reading

Adult Content Shaping The Future of Blu-ray and HD Downloads

Adult content has always been one of the most profitable aspects of home video in any format, perhaps largely because while many people like the communal experience of watching conventional films in a theater, adult films are usually best appreciated in private. Continue Reading

Mark Levinson, Lexicon and Revel To Merge To With Harman Professional - Over 130 Jobs Lost

There are several things that generally happen with business mergers, no matter what industry is under discussion. One is that some specialty items that were available from the individual companies cease to exist. The other is that a lot of people lose their jobs. Continue Reading

CES 2009 Report From HomeTheaterReview.com Editor Andrew Robinson

The 2009 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada wasn't all that HomeTheaterReview.com editor Andrew Robinson had hoped it was going to be. In this exclusive report, he talks about what he feels was lacking at the event. Continue Reading

Polk, Bose & Video Players To Suffer From Circuit Liquidation

A lot of average Joes and Jills are going to be severely inconvenienced (at minimum) once Circuit City goes away, removing yet another easy source of obtaining electronics from the landscape. However, the closure is hitting a lot of manufacturers even harder. Continue Reading