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Michael Riggs

Personal MP3 Players

When you won't leave home without music you've ripped or downloaded, there are portables aplenty to take with you.
Photo by Tony Cordoza

Portable MP3 players have gone from novelty to staple item in four short years. But with popularity has come proliferation, and many MP3 players aren't just MP3 players anymore. A growing number play files encoded in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) formats as well, and the storage options are many.

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50 Greatest A/V Innovations

The most revolutionary products & technologies of the past 50 years

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1080i vs. 1080p

Is that magic spec, 1080p, really worth the extra premium you pay over 1080i? We give you the clear picture.

TV is rooted in the same concept as movies: Capture and display a sequence of still images fast enough, and the eye perceives smooth motion rather than a succession of individual pictures. Historically, however, TV has handled this process somewhat differently from movies. A TV image, or frame, is a grid of individual picture elements (pixels), arranged in rows and columns.

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Shopping Made Simple: Digital Recorders

Looking to record your favorite music and videos? Get ready to go digital

Despite all the huffing and puffing over copy protection, making your own audio and video recordings is easier than ever. And for audio in particular, recording quality is also better than ever. The tough part is sorting through all the alternatives - a task we'll strive to simplify here.

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Radio's Back on the Table

Spiffy table radios from Boston Acoustics, Cambridge SoundWorks, and Teac
After years of neglect, the once-lowly table radio is experiencing a rebirth.
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Satellite Radio in Action

Four plug-and play systems reviewed

If you're frustrated with the radio programing in your area (and, seriously, how could you not be these days?), the premise of satellite radio is like a dream come true: dozens of channels playing near-CD-quality music, organized by genre, brimming with vitality, and, best of all, almost uninterrupted.

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HDTV Over the Air

Get pristine high-definition TV the old-fashioned way -- with an antenna. What you need to know to choose the right one.

When I got satellite TV installed at my house a few years ago, I had a regular VHF/UHF antenna put in at the same time so that I could receive high-definition TV broadcasts. Over-the-air was the only game in town for HD back then. Now, with the major cable companies embracing high-def, and with satellite-TV services offering more and more high-def channels, HDTV is easier to come by.

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