Introduction Let me come right out and say that in the 20-plus years that I have played video games, from the Atari 2600 to the Microsoft X-Box and Sony PS2, I have never been more enthusiastic about a video game system than the handheld Sony PSP. This brand new, handheld gaming system from Sony is not the most powerful game machine on the market. It packs a modest 333 MHz processor and there aren’t a great deal of games available yet, so why am I so up on this system? The answer is simple. A video game system is only good if you actually end up playing it. I almost always fall for the hype and buy the newest home game systems. I currently own an X-Box, a PS2 and a Nintendo Game Cube. I’ll probably be replacing them with the next generation versions when they hit the streets, but I can already ...

Introduction Satellite television has been at the epicenter of the home theater boom for more than a decade and now enjoys over 20,000,000 subscribers between the two major services. Satellite radio is banking on following in DirecTV and Dish Network’s path. Anyone who watches Wall Street or has been to a car dealer lately now knows XM and Sirius are the two primary players in the satellite radio market. XM reports having over three million subscribers. Sirius recently topped one million. Many car radios support one of the two satellite radio services, if not both. Portable XM radio players, as small as the size of a deck of cards, are available to consumers at all sorts of mass market consumer electronics locations. With the unquestioned boom in satellite radio, the consumers who have been forgotten are the serious audio enthusiasts. Until now. Polk Audio has been a lauded brand name in home and ...

Introduction I remember one glorious day in the early 1980s when my dad and I traveled to the local shopping mall in Echelon, New Jersey in search of some new electronic gadgets. The store in the mall was called Video Concepts and it was like a surreal playground for a nine-year-old. My dad, in his mid-30s, seemed to be having some fun, too. He turned the event into a shopping spree of epic proportions. We bought a fold-down big-screen TV, an Intellivision game station, a good dozen games and a VHS videotape recorder that resembled something the military would use to record Soviet spy activity. With movies costing a mere $100 per, we picked out some classics but rented even more. I can remember the salesman suggesting that this VCR was built to last a lifetime – even at nine, that seemed like a long time. 21 years later, VCRs have finally given ...

Introduction Despite its enormous name, the Audigy 2 is a worthy successor to the original Audigy and, in addition to prodigious capabilities aimed at the pro or semi-pro musician, it also is the first computer-based system to play DVD-Audio discs. The Audigy 2 ZS is a complete kit for Windows PC (there is no Macintosh version), incorporating an external I/O hub, audio card and accessories, which include a compact IR remote. The card fits into a PCI slot in the usual way, and you can also install the included joystick/MIDI bracket in an adjacent slot if you wish. The I/O box is the coolest (and most visible) part of the system, providing inputs and outputs, with the exception of speaker connections, for the system. The box is 7.75 inches by eight inches by 2.25 inches in size (WDH). It is linked to the installed card via a dual cable, one leg with special high-density ...

Introduction Nintendo’s GameCube videogame system was launched in the United States back in November of 2001, so you may be asking yourself, “Why review it now in June of 2003?” When the system was originally launched, there were very few games and it was unclear as to whether Nintendo could even make a dent in the huge market share owned by Sony’s Playstation and Playstation II. There was also the fear that Microsoft’s Xbox could swallow up the entire videogame industry. Fast-forward to today and all three systems are still in production. The Xbox was not the 800-pound gorilla that many expected, Sony still leads the way and Nintendo’s GameCube has survived and prospered, thanks in part to many exclusive Nintendo franchise games not available on any other system. Now that the retail price of the GameCube is an even more reasonable $150 (down from $200) and I think the chances of seeing a ...