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A tangled nest of
wires and a bucket full of remote controls used to be the mark of a
sophisticated consumer electronics connoisseur — the more boxes the better.
Now, less equipment signals greater sophistication. Entertainment devices
have converged, and components work in tandem through Wi-Fi wireless
networks. Here are some entertainment options that combine high quality and
ease of use.
Digital
Dashboard: With Royal Philips
Electronics’ iPronto “dashboard for the digital home,” you can operate as
many as four entertainment devices simultaneously. Consider the juggling
feats you can perform: channel-surf on your TV, skip through a DVD to call
up a particular movie scene, and tweak the surround-sound array on your
home-theater amplifier — all at the same time, all with one box. The super
remote also lets you program digital video recorders and retrieve and store
as many as four different Web pages at once. The backward-compatible device
can learn the remote-control codes for devices you already own, saving you
the challenge of trying to think like a machine in order to make it
function. Compatibility works both ways; Philips offers updates and
improvements for the iPronto’s operating system with downloads so that it
won’t be superseded by the next generation.
Recordable DVDs:
With the advent of digital
video, the VHS tape is rapidly being outmoded by DVDs. But until recently,
you still needed tape if you wanted to record anything. A consortium of
companies led by Philips and Sony are changing that with a jointly developed
format for DVD recorders. Sony’s RDR-GX7 and Phillips’ DVDR1000 can record
onto permanent single-use discs or onto DVD-RW discs that let you record
repeatedly. You can play the discs on your PC, laptop, or palmtop DVD player
— something you can’t do with tape.
Home Theater in
a Box: Digital audio and
video will benefit greatly from a five-channel home-theater audio/video
system. Several manufacturers, including Denon, Sony and Yamaha, are
offering simple, high-quality “home-theater-in-a-box” systems. The beauty of
these systems is that they consolidate your stereo, VCR and television and
improve the signal and reproduction quality of all your home-entertainment
equipment.
The Entertaining
PC: In Microsoft’s view of
the world, the PC should be the central home entertainment device for
storage and playback, especially when the PC is connected to a household
network using the Wi-Fi wireless networking standard. The company hopes to
accelerate its vision with the Media Center Edition of its Windows XP
operating system, which turns a PC into a digital media hub. Look for PCs
all over the world to include the Windows XP Media Center Edition this fall.
People seeking the greatest range of options with the fewest pieces of
equipment may find it a good solution.
Wide-Screen LCD
Color TV: For the ultimate
home-theater viewing experience, consider Sharp’s wide-screen 37-inch LCD
color TV. The sleek, slim display delivers high-definition pictures with
3.15 million-dot resolution — 30 percent more horizontal pixels than a
comparable plasma TV with the same screen size. The Advanced Super View
low-reflective black TFT LCD delivers a high-contrast picture at all viewing
angles. This item will soon be available worldwide.
Home Audio
Server: If changing CDs —
even in a multiple-disc player — is taking up too much time, consider using
Onkyo’s NC500 Net-Tune Receiver. Working with Onkyo’s higher-end Integra
NAS-2.3 Net-Tune Server, the Receiver can store the equivalent of 1,400 CDs’
worth of audio and run up to 12 different audio streams at once to different
stereos. It can also receive artist, album and other track information
online through an Ethernet cable and send it to a television or computer
monitor.
Eventually, the
most demanding electronics connoisseurs won’t have any visible equipment at
all. But that won’t happen right away . . . give it a year or two. |
