Media Players

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Making the Wireless Connection: New HP 3D, TV, and Audio Solutions

A trio of new products from HP don't quite add up to a home entertainment system
- By Michael Berk
- Posted November 16, 2011
- 1
Over the past couple of weeks Hewlett Packard has rolled out a huge pile of new consumer products, among them a clutch of all-in-ones, touchscreen PCs and tablets, Beats-enhanced laptops, and even a curious little Wi-Fi mouse.

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Vinyl: It’s Still Growing

At L.A.’s Amoeba Music, vinyl isn’t just a hot trend — it’s a growing business.
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted November 16, 2011
- 2
They say that when everyone’s hip to a trend, it’s no longer hip.

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Blu-ray Players: Tales of the Undead

How to battle the hordes of zombie electronics
- By Al Griffin
- Posted November 2, 2011
It’s that time of year again when the undead walk the earth. But along with ghosts, vampires, and zombies, another partially animated entity haunts us: Blu-ray players in need of a firmware update.

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Five Vintage Turntables to Add to Your eBay Watch List

Spin some sides on these golden oldies.
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted October 31, 2011
- 8
I had an ear-opening experience when I got to do a blind listening test of some vintage turntables at Vancouver, BC vintage audio dealer Innovative Audio this past summer.

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Win $100 in Music from HDtracks

Tell us about your high-rez listening habits and plans and pick up a C-Note's worth of better-than-CD-quality music
- By Michael Berk
- Posted October 28, 2011
- 27
Changing directions a bit from last week's Peel remote giveaway, we turn again to music — high-resolution music, in particular, and we're giving away $100 worth of downloads courtesy of HDtracks, the Web's leading purveyor of lossless, uncompressed, and better-than-CD

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Review: Libratone Live

A compact sound system combines Euro design, Danish engineering, and Apple AirPlay
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted October 26, 2011
Just three years after the iPod ruled the audio industry, manufacturers are starting to look on it as a quaint “legacy device,” one they have to accommodate for customers who just aren’t with it. The iPod’s being replaced as our primary music source by all sorts of wireless stuff, like smartphones, Bluetooth-equipped computers, and routers connected to network-attached storage (NAS) drives.

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Review: PS Audio PerfectWave System

The most significant improvement of any audio component I’ve ever added to my system.
- By John Sciacca
- Posted October 19, 2011
Peanut butter and chocolate. Wine and cheese. Lennon and McCartney. Some things are great on their own, but when they meet their perfect counterpart, the result can be pure magic.

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Rocky Mountain Audio Fest Report, Part 2: Speakers, Amps, and More

The hottest trends and hi-fi gear from last weekend’s Denver show.
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted October 19, 2011
The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is growing up. A few years ago, it was known as a gathering of small (sometimes one-man) companies demonstrating exotic (sometimes downright wacky) audio products. Some of those guys are still there, but so now are most of the better-known high-end audio companies.

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Vudu and Dolby Launch 7.1 Streaming

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in Dolby Digital Plus surround for now, more to come
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted October 18, 2011
While the image quality of video streaming services has been improving, audio has lagged behind. But it looks like it’s catching up.

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DirecTV's Nomad: Where Will You Wander?

Others can push to your phone, but the nomad takes you beyond Wi-Fi
- By Leslie Shapiro
- Posted October 18, 2011
- 1
Streaming from a DVR is a great way to watch whatever you want, wherever you want. Some even say that streaming might be the future of video.

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Whole-Home Audio for the Rest of Us

Legrand's new airQast and Sonos' distribution deal with Target make wireless audio more accessible than ever.
- By Michael Berk
- Posted October 13, 2011
Legrand — a leader in residential wiring and custom install components — in something of a surprise move announced the airQast wireless music system at this year's CEDIA Expo.

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HTPC Update #3: My Favorite Upgrade, the Video Card

The most cost-effective way to make your PC better.
- By Geoffrey Morrison
- Posted October 11, 2011
- 1
I gave in. Battlefield 3 had reduced my HTPC to a smoldering, weeping mess that begged me to put it out of its misery.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.
And to that end, I started with, well the anthropomorphic spin kinda fails here. It's a new video card, that's what I'm getting at.

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