Klipsch listens

The Klipsch Icon V Series is a new class of product designed with input from Best Buy. The chain's employees and customers asked for "best-in-class performance and value." Klipsch then came up with two floorstanders, a monitor, a center, a surround, and two subs-all with the company's famous horned tweeter. All of the speakers include wood veneer top or side caps.

Blu-ray Pricing Finally Gets Real

Is Blu-ray player pricing finallyreaching real-world levels? Last fall, the $200 barrier fell as Amazon began selling the Sony BDP-S300 for $200. The Samsung BD-P1500 sold for prices ranging from $190 to $200 at RadioShack. Around the same time, predicted that Blu-ray players would sell for as little as $ 149 before the end of 2008. Were reporting this irresponsible rumor just for the selfish pleasure of typing “Blu-ray” and “$149” in the same sentence.

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DRM Dies a Little Every Day

Wal-Mart has become the latest online music retailer to dispense with digital rights management. The mega-store is quietly putting its encryption-key servers to sleep. If you bought a DRM-encrypted download from Wal-Mart, you’ll need to burn it to a CD and re-rip it if you want to continue to use it with additional computers or music players. Microsoft, Virgin, and Yahoo have made similar moves recently. Yahoo, hedging its bets, now links to downloads on other Websites.

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This Just In...

MK SOUND is the new name of the speaker manufacturer formerly known as M&K (Miller & Kreisel). MK first sold its products through the Abt Electronics Website, and we suspect it will be hitting the brick- and-mortar stores soon. Welcome back!...

PIONEER, a plasma stalwart, will bring its first LCD TVs to North America and Japan in 2009, according to a Japanese press report. The company already sells its LCDs in Europe...

HITACHI will buy glass panels for its plasma sets from Panasonic. This follows a similar move by Pioneer...

THESED DISPLAY, entangled in a long-running court battle, may yet see the light of day. Canon has won the latest round against Texas-based licensor Nano Proprietary. When (or whether) that will actually put these flat-panel displays on the production line remains to be seen...

REALDVD is a DVD-copying Windows application from, of all people, RealNetworks. That sound you hear is a Hollywood executive dialing his lawyer's number...

DELL and Sonic Solutions are offering another DVD-via-PC recording option, via the Qflix drive bundle, for $120. But this one records paid downloads from CinemaNow...

AT&T's TOTAL HOME DVR can record and play up to 37 hours of HD or 133 hours of SD simultaneously on up to eight TVs. And it's free with a U-verse subscription...

AMAZON VIDEO ON DEMAND is now available through Sony's BRAVIA Internet Video Link, a $300 add-on for Sony TVs. Sony has already added an impressive array of other programming, including YouTube, CBS, and Sports Illustrated...

NAPSTER is now Best Buy's property in a $121 million deal. What's remarkable about this is that Napster transitioned from illegal to legal downloads and survived long enough to be bought...

7DIGITAL, based in the U.K., is the first European download service to offer all four major music labels' catalogs in DRM-free MP3 form. Roll over, DRM, and tell Steve Jobs the news...

UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP shocked everyone by raising its revenues 5 percent over last year's. Its innovative digital licensing deals should be a model to the other three long-declining major labels...

CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design & Installaton Association), whose custom-install A/V trade show is the second largest after CEA's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), drew 4,000 fewer attendees to the 2008 Expo compared with the previous year. Will skyrocketing energy prices and a dodgy economy make mega trade shows a thing of the past?...

CIRCUIT CITY, under a new CEO, will not pursue a merger or sale. However, it will reduce store openings and possibly close stores. The chain was doing badly compared with its competitors even before last fall's credit crisis...

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