Recently Published AV News

Love it or hate it, HDMI is here it stay and it's continuing to evolve with the newly announced Version 2.0 of the HDMI specification. HDMI 2.0 will support 4k (2160p) video, 32 audio channels with up to 1536kHz sampling frequency, and dynamic auto lip-sync. HDMI 2.0 is backward compatible and work with all high speed HDMI (category 2) cables. Streaming multiple video and audio streams off one system - the sky is the limit.

Yamaha just announced a nice firmware update for their current lineup of AV receivers and their new CX-A5000 AV processor. Now you can Spotify your Yamaha. Spotify is a digital music service that gives you on-demand access to over 20 million music tracks. So get ready to take your new Yamaha AV receiver to the next musical streaming frontier.

You may not be familiar with the service, but GetGlue is one of the only platforms successfully merging social media with TV watching. The platform boasts 4 million users with 800 million total check-ins, ratings, and reviews. Time Warner is among one of their investors and they have over 100 network and studio partners in addition to the 30 media companies that utilize GetGlue's API...Make that 31. DISH just added GetGlue to their DISH Explorer second-screen app for iPad. With this, DISH customers can "check-in" and connect with their favorite TV shows, movies and sporting events.

Southwest Air has always been a favorite of ours, but now they have an even bigger draw: free television. Beginning today (and for Southwest Customers exclusively) passengers can use their iPhone, iPad or other Internet-ready device to get free access to live TV and up to 75 on-demand shows. This new amenity is available on all of the airline's 400+ Wi-Fi-enabled planes.

Want to stream the movies you already own to nearly any device? Vudu and Walmart are making that happen for $2 a disc with their Disc to Digital service. Just package up the eligible discs, bring them to Walmart, and you can get a digital copy that will be available though the Vudu app. If you want your SD copy (from a DVD) converted to Vudu's HDX (1080p/Dolby Digital Plus surround), that'll cost you $5. Now, you can also forgo the trip to Walmart and convert your discs from home provided you have a PC with a Blu-ray drive.

The WiSA Association is an industry group committed to bringing reliable, high performance, interoperable wireless surround sound audio products to the home theater market. Today, they have taken a big step forward and announced the opening of their first authorized test center in Sunnyvale, CA. Read on for more information regarding this important milestone in wireless audio.

There are a few products on the market sporting Near Field Audio technology - one from Voxx (formally AudioVox) and one from ifrogz (disappointingly not shaped at all like a frog). These two products basically look and operate exactly the same. They are platforms upon which you set your smartphone or portable media player (no wires needed). When you do, the box "magically" (this is their word, not ours) picks up the sound from the phone or player and amplifies it through its internal speakers. The devices are battery powered though they can be connected to the wall, are portable, and work with most phones or players. A truly manufacturer agnostic wireless playback dock? Now that's what we call interesting.

For those of you that forgot, we held a contest a while back to get a chance to review and KEEP a pair of SVS Ultra Tower Speakers. Now it is up to you to tell us which review you like the best. Not only do you win by getting three, unbiased reviews from consumers just like you, but you get to help one of them potentially win. How? Read the three reviews in our forum and vote in our forum poll for the one you like best. The reviewer with the most votes gets to KEEP the pair of SVS Ultra Towers speakers! Polls close on June 14th, so please vote NOW!

We've heard of new subscriber deals before, but this week DISH announced that it's offering new subscribers the choice of an Apple iPad 2 instead of first year programming discounts. This is for customers who sign up for the Hopper with Sling Whole-Home HD DVR and a qualified programming package. New customers can then use the iPad to get DISH Anywhere service. Combined with the Hopper entertainment platform, customers can use their iPad (or an iPhone for that natter) to watch live TV, DVR recordings and/or On Demand shows. The Hopper with Sling and iPad offer begins on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 and runs until September 18, 2013.

Do you want a theater modeled on the one used by Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, and JJ Abrams to view their movies? IMAX will build you your own Private Theater - in your own home. While the price hasn't been announced, if you have to ask, we're pretty sure you can't afford it. With custom speakers, a system that does daily speaker calibrations, a floor to ceiling, wall to wall curved screen, and dual 4k projectors, this is the theater of your dreams. Right now, IMAX is waiting to start designing your Private Theater. Will we see an IMAX certification program like THX does? Time will tell.

Sorry if you had your brains explode all over your monitor, but it happened to us too. As revealed in this week's Emotiva Podcast, Emotiva has acquired Bob Carver LLC. Emotiva, long known to the Audioholics of the world as the go-to manufacturer for Internet Direct amplifiers, has a history of providing solid-state amplifiers at a fraction of the price of the brick and mortar competition. Bob Carver, a literal giant in the field of amplifiers, has a long history in the world of high-end audio through his companies which include the well-respected Sunfire. To top it all off, Bob Carver will now be working with Emotiva on R&D. The implications are mind-boggling.

DTS announced something recently that didn't get much play. The company launched its new DTS-HD Layered Audio technology. What this is, is a way to allow online media services to stream (on-demand) adaptive bit-rate files from a single encode. DTS-HD Layered Audio takes the best stuff from the DTS-HD codec and uses it to create and store adaptive bit-rate audio streams—all from a single encode. So if you're streaming to a mobile product that isn't running at blazing 4G speeds yet, you can have them pull from a lower bitrate encoded stream. At the same time broadcast quality streaming is possible for those on higher bandwidth connections. DTS demoed the technology at NAB this year and it works as advertised.

The battle for television is on...in fact, it HAS been on for years now. It's been in motion ever since streaming media services like Hulu, Netflix and iTunes started infiltrated their once-protected airspace. Now, a new company, Aereo, threatens the admittedly untenable status quo. Aereo isn't a mispronounced new sandwich cookie, it's a service that, similar to PlayLater, Ivi.tv and FilmOn, justifies its existence through legal technicalities, but which nevertheless faces an uphill battle. But Aereo has some serious backing from IAC and its Chairman and Senior Executive, Barry Diller—and that's good for something. Aereo's service is based on providing an individual antenna for every subscriber, thus creating (in it's definition) a "private transmission" to the user. At that point, Aereo allows for DVR recording and playback services and, of course, access to the live antenna broadcasts available.

For a brief time we licensed our name to an online store. While it continued to grow throughout the years, the owners of the store did not meet their contractual obligations with Audioholics.com. In addition, the presence of the online store negatively affected our reputation, traffic and SEO so we ended the partnership amicably and asked them to move to a different domain. Hence Audiogurus was born. However, Audiogurus continues to use our name without our consent despite us issuing a cease and desist. Please be warned we have no affiliation with Audiogurus whatsoever and Audioholics does NOT sell any products other than our informational E-books.