Honestly now, does the similarity between these two logos confuse you?   This was an interesting tidbit for all music fans. The Beatles formed their own record label named Apple back in the 60s and when Steve Jobs formed Apple Computers in the late 70s. A struggle between the two companies ensued the day George Harrison saw an Apple ...

Wideband demands on wireless home networks such as voice over IP and especially high definition video have hardware manufacturers racing to release newer, faster products. But they might be rushing in just a bit too early for the 802.11n protocol.   Cisco System's consumer division, Linksys has just released its first products based on ...

Would you buy a DVD today that was also an HD DVD on the flip side? Would you spend any extra for the HD DVD feature?   Warner Home Video is betting that even though you don't own an HD DVD player you might just spring for an HD DVD layer on your next DVD movie purchase. The DVD Hybrid is a new disk type that will be released by Warner that ...

Yesterday Samsung announced it was awarded a huge contract from Apple Computers winning the bid to make chips for Apple's next generation of iPods.   Sr. VP for technical marketing at Samsung Semiconductor Inc Jon Kang was so confident in his company's new chip design he called the 32-bit ARM processor ''PortalPlayer Killer''. The chip's ...

The format war began this week in earnest with the release of an HD DVD player and a handful of disks. The HD-A1 HD DVD player by Toshiba was the first to hit stores last Thursday. An RCA knock off should be coming shortly on May 18th.   The HD-A1 has been reviewed in a few places, I haven't had a chance to see one myself yet but hope to ...

TiVo wins a major victory in its long struggle with EchoStar. A Texas District Court awarded TiVo $73.9 million dollars for a longstanding patent infringement suit against EchoStar, parent company of Dish Network. The ten member jury only took two hours including a smoke break to come to the conclusion that EchoStar had infringed on nine ...

Delays in consumer electronics roll-outs are as inevitable as death and taxes.  Microsoft pulled an ''on-paper'' release of the Xbox360 late last year and the next game console is still as scarce as a straight answer from a presidential press secretary.  This had made it safe for its competitor Sony to announce a delay on the release ...

It’s a concept that was inevitable given the nosedive prices have been taking on digital storage (hard disk space) and the increase in bandwidth Cable TV providers are able to offer subscribers.  Remote Storage Video Recorder is a cross between On Demand and the PVR (Personal Video Recorder) that is due to be tested by ...

Internet Protocol Television or what AT&T calls “infinite channel TV” is high quality (including HDTV) audio / video streamed through a subscriber’s internet line.  It’s how the phone company plans on selling you TV in the near future.  The idea has been around for some time but it seems the industry is preparing to give ...

A recent Cnet article reveals just how much extra processing power is used by your MP3 player in decoding DRM (Digital Rights Management).  It’s just another reason to rage against the DRM!  It seems that playing back MP3s encoded with a DRM can reduce your battery’s life expectancy by as much as 25%.    When ...