Ken C. Pohlmann

Remember Convergence? How diverse industries such as telecommunications and entertainment were supposed to merge and create weird new offspring? Well, yesterday at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel and Yahoo announced a bit of partnership/convergence action. They want to build a platform that will embed applications on next-generation HDTVs.

Sore losers? Maybe. After throwing in the HD DVD towel, and surrendering to Sony's Blu-ray technology, you might think Toshiba would jump on the BD bandwagon like everyone else, and try to get some of that hot BD action.

Trivia question: Where was the plasma display invented? Answer: University of Illinois (1964). Since then, it has grown into a formidable technology, widely used in televisions.  It particularly dominated the 40-inches and bigger market.  But recently LCD has come on strong, even in the big-screen  area.

People with lots of speaker cabinets in their listening room can laugh all they want, but soundbars are still pretty cool. This newest kind of speaker fits neatly under your flat screen, and creates a good, if not great, soundfield. In some cases, the soundbar system contains all sorts of other electronics.