I'll admit, when Circuit City proposed, and then shoddily implemented, something called Divx, as an alternative to the just born and still struggling DVD format, I did wish things upon them that only Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent could have imagined. You know, things like "May the fleas of a thousand camels nest in your shorts." Divx discs were designed around the rental model, except without the hassle of a return. Buy them for $4 and you could watch them for 48 hours after the first play. You could buy a few more days at a later date, or convert them to "silver" for some other higher price. In the end though, they would be unplayable landfill. Of course such Tom Foolery required a dedicated Divx player which, if you were foolish enough to buy one, would now join the discs at the landfill. I've never seen such corporate "hey-that's-a-great-idea-nah-forget-it"-ism before. In about six months, Divx had come and gone.

Covering a trade show as massive as CEDIA dampens your desire to write your regular blog, so first off, apologies for the month plus a day delay since my last refresh.

Okay, this blog isn't really about audio or video. Not directly at least, but I wanted to mention that we've been in search of clean power, cheap power, non-global-warming-controversy-inducing power, for a long time. Nuclear is clean (you know, in the beginning), and so is hydroelectric power, but only a few of us live near enough a river to take advantage of that. Besides, the amount of paper needed to complete the required zoning permits and environmental impact statements to install that bright red waterwheel you've been eyeing would negatively impact your carbon footprint, so forget that.

I played out my pair of Shure E4c about a year ago when, ensconced in their circular case, they rolled out of my car into oncoming traffic. Realizing the driving public wasn't trained by years of reading signs on the back of 18-wheelers declaring "Where there's a rolling earphone case, there's a running audiophile," I erred on the side of caution. Bye-bye Shure.

One of the myriad benefits we can enjoy now with the end of the high definition disc format war is the elimination of competition that threatened to drive down prices of hardware and software. Imagine what would happen if cars came in different colors. What a mess.

I just installed one of the new line of wireless 'N' routers (802.11n draft resolution), the Belkin Vision N1. The computer industry is, for the most part, not quite as psychotically frenetic with their product introductions as the consumer electronics industry, so this went fairly smoothly. No HDMI teeth mashing, no video muting, no loud buzz when you switch to DTS.

Part I - Jump Already!