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Rob Medich

New Product: Crosley Explorer 1 AM/FM/XM Radio

Yes, it's two, two radios in one: the style is retro, but the technology is Space Age. Debuting at the Consumer Electronics Show and set for a spring launch, this tabletop model from Crosley offers AM and FM, but it's the company's first product equipped for XM satellite radio - hence its name, Explorer 1 ($250).

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Satellite Radio's Big Year

With more than 10 million subscribers between them, XM and Sirius have finally hit the big time

Thirty-six floors above Rockefeller Center - or Times Square, depending on which side of the building you're gawking from - Jim Collins is giving a tour of Sirius Satellite Radio's Manhattan headquarters. The VP of corporate communications points out a bunch of empty cardboard equipment boxes propped up against a glassed-in control room.

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Power Play

Running cables through the walls could be history as your house's electrical wiring becomes your new home network

About six years ago, electronics-industry honchos started holding big powwows to discuss the feasibility of giving household power lines (the electrical wiring you plug all your stuff into) the ability to also carry communications signals - as in music, computer data, Internet access, episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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Home Sweet HomePlug

We recruit a New Jersey family to answer the question, "Can you really use your electrical wiring to create a whole-house entertainment network?"

Electricity Practically runs through Kevin Post's veins.

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Inner Workings: Inside a Touchscreen Remote

True, it's not as cool a user experience as moving holographic frames in midair, like Tom Cruise did in Minority Report. But admit it: You get the slightest thrill when you work a touchscreen. And if that screen just happens to be built into a remote control, well, you feel as finger-empowered as E.T.

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The Future of Recorded Music - Part 1

Are Discs Obsolete?

The Tower Records store at New York City's Lincoln Center isn't seeing particularly heavy foot traffic these days. Stopping by, I find just a shopper or two per aisle - pretty typical, a saleswoman says. And the customer demographic seems a bit on the mature side - hovering around 30 or older. Where are all the Rihanna- and AFI-loving kids?

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The Future of Recorded Music - Part 5

The CD's Life & Times

In part one we asked if the compact disc was dead. Here we offer a timeline of the Compact Disc's history - and prehistory - from 180 years ago to the present.

The 1800s

The Big Bang? Beethoven! In a way, it all begins with his Symphony No. 9 (see 1979).

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Inside DVD Piracy

How bootleggers steal movies - and what the feds are doing to stop them

The job would have to be done at midnight. That's when Mission: Impossible III was debuting at Manhattan's Ziegfeld theater. The six bootleggers didn't always have to wait until a movie opened to the public. Sometimes they'd get into private screenings, courtesy of a scalper who'd sell them tickets for a few hundred dollars.

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Installations: The Real King of All Media

Here's a scoop: Howard Stern Show executive producer Gary Dell'Abate is a true-blue audio/videophile

"Oh God - how trite," Howard Stern once told him. "Every guy in radio collects old radios."

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HD Download Lowdown

Are Microsoft's high-def movie downloads worth the wait?

It was an epic effort requiring superhuman vision and hearing and, above all, heroic resolve. For in order to download the high-definition version of Superman Returns onto Microsoft's Xbox 360 at the Sound & Vision video lab, I, too, would have to return - and return, and return ...

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