Put away that charcoal. Here's a different kind of grille for your patio.
My, how times have changed. Back when vinyl records were king and a 25-inch-diagonal TV screen was considered big, here's how you had a good time in the backyard: a keg of beer, burgers on a charcoal grill, and your roommate's big, ugly speakers (carted out from the living room) blasting Rush (Geddy Lee, et al) until the conservative neighbors call the cops. A decade or so goes by, and the fun gets more sophisticated: a cooler of imported beer (maybe a margarita machine), steaks on a gas grill, and a big, ugly boombox belting out Rush (Limbaugh) until the liberal neighbors call the cops. Today, it's likely to be takeout from a local BBQ joint, a mini-fridge full of hard lemonade, and steam from the hot tub mingling with big-band music from outdoor speakers hidden somewhere in the (twice-monthly manicured) foliage.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the folks at SpeakerCraft think it's quite possible you've never seen a more beautiful rear - speaker, that is.
Immerz’s KOR-FX is an over-the-shoulders tactile transducer that converts the lowest bass frequencies into vibrations that you feel through your collar bones. The effect was definitely interesting, but it may have been turned up a little too much for my tastes in order to make sure different attendees actually felt the effect. Tentative price is $189.99 and should be available beginning in April.
MovieBeam wants a piece of the $10 billion U.S. movie-rental industry, and they think they can do it by charging you $199.99 for the box (after $50 introductory rebate), a one-time service activation fee of $29.99, and between $1.99 and $3.99 per movie (add a $1 surcharge for HD - that's right, HD - titles).
Triad’s new InWall Silver/4 Omni Sconce brings together two things that like watts – a speaker and an LED light. Although you can’t color the sound, the speaker does come with color gel options of amber, orange, green, red, blue, and yellow.
Dish Network’s $99 Sling Adapter connects to a Dish ViP722 or ViP722k HD DVR receiver with a single USB connection. The adapter lets you access programming from your receiver using a PC, iPhone/touch/Pad, Android, or BlackBerry device anywhere you have a high-speed Internet or 3G mobile connection.
At CES, legendary audio company McIntosh introduced a special 50th Anniversary Limited Edition McIntosh MC275 tube power amplifier. According to McIntosh, the 75-watt x 2 MC275 was designed and engineered in 1961 by McIntosh co-founder Sidney Corderman and the McIntosh Engineering Team, and it's been an object of desire for McIntosh aficionados ever since. Adding to the excitement of the introduction, McIntosh handed out what has to be one of the best press kit flash drives in the history of CES: a miniature version of the MC275 with 4 GB of flash memory hidden inside one of the output transformers. McIntosh says they are only building 275 of the 50th Anniversary Limited Edition MC275 (hmmm, I wonder where they came up with that number?), so it's destined to be a highly sought after piece of gear. I'm not sure how many mini-MC275 flash drives McIntosh has to give out, but I know it's going to be quite a collector's item, too. Now, if I could just figure out where to connect the speaker wires...
Auralex is trying to make acoustical control attractive to more than just hard-core home theater owners. At CEDIA they showed off some of their new SonicPrint custom-printed ProPanels – fabric-covered acoustic absorptive panels – that can be outfitted with fabric covers printed with any kind of design or image you want. They have thousands of licensed artwork available, or you can send in your own image(s) for immortalization on your home theater wall. Auralex has some movie poster artwork available already, and their negotiating to have even more. Hanging an acoustic panel that looks like a movie poster on the wall will sure sound better than hanging a real movie poster covered with glass in a frame on the wall.
Darryl Wilkinson
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