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About: With rising feature film costs and lower profits, coupled with the growth in home theater, George Lucas is changing his emphasis away from big-budget feature films and will concentrate on entertainment for the home screen. Some observers feel that as home theater increases its penetration into the homes of average consumers, the future of going out the local cinema could become a thing of the past. For a further look into how George Lucas sees the change in how we experience film and video, check out the post from TV Predictions.

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TWICE: Cobra Electronics has entered an agreement to purchase Performance Products, a privately held, UK-based consumer electronics company for about €17 million plus two earnout payments totaling €12.5 million.Performance Products makes GPS devices and speed camera detection systems that alert drivers when they are approaching a roadside speed detection camera. The acquisition is expected to help Cobra enter the speed camera detection market in both the U.S. and Europe and to gain distribution for all its products in Europe.

Performance Products, a family owned business since 1995, was originally a radar detector supplier but transitioned into speed camera detection and GPS because radar detection is in the process of being outlawed in the U.K.

Cobra believes that some of Performance Products’ distribution in Europe will carry traditional Cobra products.

In the U.K., France and Denmark, Performance Products markets Snooper brand GPS devices that also offer speed camera detection when the user subscribes to a special service. The subscriber then gains access to Performance Products’ continually updated database of speed camera locations.

The use of speed cameras is growing exponentially in U.K and is beginning to proliferate in France and Denmark as well as the US where speed cameras are used in 161 cities, said Cobra president and CEO Jim Bazet.

In the US, Bazet said, “There’s no doubt in our minds that this is where detection is headed.”

Cobra SVP and CFO Michael Smith said that portable GPS devices and camera locators will likely merge in the future.

TomTom also offers a GPS model with speed camera detection in Europe, although Performance Products says it is the only company that updates its database 24-hours a day. “And thousands of these camera move around per week,” Bazet said.

Cobra said it currently has a six percent market share in GPS devices in the U.S., a 60 percent share in the radar detector and CB markets and close to a 30 percent share in 2-way radios.

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AVZombie: according to new Nielsen data released by the HD DVD promotional group, owners of HD DVD decks have purchased an average of 8.4 HD DVD discs each since the format launched Stateside last Spring.
It also claims that during August, HD DVD movies outsold Blu-ray Disc movies by nearly three to one. Given the lack of Blu-ray Disc software in circulation, perhaps this isn’t quite the triumph it might first appear.
The HD DVD Promotional Group predicts that the average HD DVD owner will own more than 28 HD DVDs in their first year.

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Yahoo: Sony has unveiled a digital-music player with a built-in noise-canceling feature, a technology that the company claims is superior to the noise-muffling headphones available with some players.

The company believes that by embedding the functionality directly into its NW-S700F Walkman players, it has created a new category of music player and developed a device that has significantly better sound quality than competing players, including Apple’s ubiquitous iPod.

The latest Walkman will come in 2-GB and 1-GB versions.

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A subsidiary company of Hitachi has launched development of a car navigation system that shows maps with less detail in a bid to make such systems easier for drivers to understand and follow.

The main feature of the technology is that it provides only the necessary information, such as key landmarks, in much the way people do when drawing a map for others.

For example, if the chosen route has the driver turning right at a particular intersection, buildings to the left of the intersection are for the most part unnecessary. The new system will omit much of this data when displaying the route, guiding drivers without overloading them with unnecessary information.

The Japan-based firm, Xanavi Informatics, plans to introduce the new technology as early as 2007 in car navigation systems it sells in Europe.

As car navigation systems have grown more popular, there has been a rise in accidents caused by drivers focusing on such systems and not paying attention to what is happening around them. The new technology is intended to help prevent such accidents.

Source: Asia Pulse Businesswire

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BetaNews: A statement made by Universal Studios president Craig Kornblau cites that HD DVD has already been crowned champion in the battle against Blu-ray.

“Look at the blogs, look at the reviews by the early adopters and even look at the mainstream media,” stated Kornblau. “HD DVD has maintained its first-to-market advantage and delivered on the promises of providing the best high definition image and sound quality at the best value for consumers today.”
Universal Studios has been an early supporter of HD DVD since the beginning of the so-call format war, and is seen as the leading major studio in that camp with no intention of considering joining Warner and Paramount in supporting both formats.

Disney, an early Blu-ray supporter, has been reported to consider both formats, while 20th Century-Fox is seen as the stalwart studio in the Blu-ray camp.
Sony’s position as Blu-ray’s champion is seen as unyielding, since it produces movies and Blu-ray components for both home theaters and PCs.

The issue of widespread studio support is of prime importance to the videodisc retail and rental industry, upon whose well-being the whole video industry still depends.

Retailers would rather not divide their shelf space into more than two compartments — standard-definition (NTSC) and high-def — if they can at all avoid it.

If consumers have to ask store clerks whether or not a disc will play on their machine, just that uncertainty might be enough to make both the consumers and the retailers unwilling to invest in high-definition discs and components of either format.

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Akihabara News: Hitachi has introduced 3 new media recorders with rather futuristic shapes. The features are impressive, such as HD video recording thru XCodeHD, 250GB to 500GB, and even 1TB hard disk capacity depending on the model.

The high-end DV-DH1000S is equipped of course with a DVD burner, HDMI and i.LINK.

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How ironic: praising electronics, and being blocked by it. That’s what happened to us last friday. Our sincere apologies to all of our readers who had to face a blank page when visiting About-Electronics.

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We at About-Electronics tend to use our GPS to determinate our location. Less scrupulous people could use this technology to spy on their spouse. Ronan Fitzgerald from Guardian Unlimited has examined the potential for abuse…
Tim Hibbard wants you to see where he is. On his website, Hibbard uses GPS technology to plot his location on a map of Lawrence, Kansas, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

(…) “People are very willing to give up their privacy,” he says. “You just have to give them a good reason to do so. If you can assist a person in their everyday life, they will be more than happy to divulge their current location.”

(…) Of course, the biggest potential for abuse surely lies with the biggest power: governments. As a pioneer, Hibbard is optimistic. “I could choose to be paranoid and concerned about that, but I’m not. I wasn’t around when the first bank was invented, but I’m sure there were a lot of people that had a problem putting their money in someone else’s hands.”

But are we willing to accept that technology, because the benefits and conveniences it offers to us are so tempting? Jen Corlew, of human rights group Liberty, doesn’t believe it’s worth it. “There might be some benefits of GPS tracking technology becoming popularised but I think the technology makers will be hard pressed to say why this is actually necessary. I don’t think those benefits really outweigh the risks of a situation where people can be monitored without being aware of it.”

Ron Fitzgerald: (…) And ultimately, consent is the bottom line. Whether we’re using our mobile phone, wandering around on social networking sites, or just going about our daily lives, we want to have agreed to any tracking that takes place.

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Home Theater Blog: Marantz recently unveiled five new surround receivers, retailing between €450 and €1,500.  Several of the new receivers have 4 HDMI inputs, compared to the standard 2/3 HDMI inputs found on many other A/V receivers.

First up in the line is the SR4001 Dolby Digital EX/DTS ES Surround Receiver, followed by the SR5001 XM Ready Surround Sound Receiver.

Moving up a little farther into the line is the ZR6001SP with “DAvED technology” (Digital Audio via Electrical Distribution).  DAvED is a multi-room audio distribution standard, which allows for plug and play multi-zone operation.

Pushing into the upper tier, is the SR7001 THX Select2 Surround Sound A/V Receiver with 4-in/1-out HDMI (version 1.2).

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ExtremeTech: A new wireless HDMI interface – that it standards-based, meaning that it will work with any device with an HDMI plug – has been developed by Tzero Technologies and Analog Devices Inc.

It works by compressing the data using JPEG 2000, an image compression standard whose artifacts are nearly unnoticeable. Pricing wasn’t announced, but Tzero says the system will be demonstrated in the next few months and available in November.

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Gentlemen, you’re saved: rocks are out, girls prefer plasma TVs! An American study found out women love technology devices as much as men.
And here’s the ultimate proof: “The study found 86 percent would prefer a new digital video camera to a pair of designer shoes.”
Read the full article at CNN.com.

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