Podcast #642: Interview with Mark Ely, CEO of SimpleTV

There has been a lot in the news about cutting the cord lately especially in light of the recent supreme court decision regarding Aereo’s business model. We learned that its a copyright infringement if a company leases you equipment that captures OTA signals, transcodes them and then sends them to you via the Internet. But its not against the law if you do that yourself. There are a few products on the market that can do this. One of them is Simple.TV.

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Podcast #641: Dolby Atmos Enabled Speakers and Receivers

When we first read the Pioneer press release about Dolby Atmos enabled speakers, we’ll admit, it sounded a bit puzzling and we found ourselves scratching our heads. Atmos enabled receivers? Sure, that makes sense, but what does it take to make an Atmos enabled speaker? We’ve never heard of a Dolby TrueHD enabled speaker, or a DTS-HD Master Audio enabled speaker. So what is the difference with Atmos that it needs, or can even provide, a special speaker?

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Podcast #640: ATSC 2.0: Over the Air gets Better... But is it too late?

Before there was HDTV there was NTSC (National Television System Committee) or, as it was known by most people today, standard definition. That was the standard developed in 1941 and was in effect until it was superseded by ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) which brought us high definition television - which in turn gave rise to this podcast!

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Podcast #639: Sonos Playbar and Sub Review

We’ve reviewed multiple soundbars in the past, from a wide variety of companies, but we’ve never reviewed a Playbar. What is the difference between a soundbar and the Playbar by Sonos? Quite a bit as it turns out. Knowing Sonos we expected big things, and we weren’t disappointed in the slightest. The Playbar sells for $699 and the optional Sub for an additional $699.

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Podcast #638: Slingbox Sharing

You know we are fans of the Slingbox and have used them to "Sling" our local TV from one side of the world to another. Ara spent a week in India and never watch a single minute of local television opting to watch football from the USA instead. Slingboxes are quite simply the easiest way to watch your local content wherever you want, provided that you have an internet connection.

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Podcast #637: Glasses-free 3D projector concept

Nothing says "the future of display technology" like holograms. If you’re a Star Wars or a Star Trek fan, you know that someday we’ll have holograms for real, interacting with us. Until now that notion has existing only in science fiction and our imaginations. But fueled by the same dreams you have, over the past three years, researchers in the Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab have steadily refined a design for a 3D video technology that doesn’t require glasses at all.

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