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HTPCs are hot among home theater cognoscenti. Using a personal computer to anchor an audio/video system has boomed in recent years due to the availability of high quality video processing software, Dolby Digital and DTS decoding support, and DVD transports. HTPCs (home">http://www.guidetohometheater.com/news/11166/">home theater personal computers) also thrive in part because of the tinkering gene shared by many enthusiasts.

Memorial Day is the traditional beginning of summer. This year, it will mark a new chapter for Klipsch">http://www.klipsch.com">Klipsch Audio Technologies.

The">http://www.thewiz.com/wiz/app/CeMain">The Wiz may not be long for this world. On Monday, February 10, Cablevision">http://www.cablevision.com">Cablevision Systems Corporation announced that it would sell or close its remaining 17 consumer electronics stores, all in the New York metro area, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The announcement came only a few days after Circuit City announced major cutbackshttp://www.stereophile.com/news/11569/">cutbacks; of its workforce and the elimination of sales commissions.

The quest to secretly track music fans continues: Royal">http://www.philips.com">Royal Philips Electronics and Digimarchttp://www.digimarc.com">Digimarc; announced last week that they have signed a new agreement that extends the licensing of Digimarc's digital watermarking patents to include audio applications as well as a broader range of video applications.

One might assume that the mutually dependent businesses of electronics manufacturing and retailing would track each other in perfect unison. That's often true, but they can sometimes get wildly out of sync with each other. It's one of the great economic mysteries.

The Consumer">http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has responded to an ongoing copyright infringement suithttp://www.stereophile.com/news/11562/">suit; being pursued in a US District Court by the music industry against Verizon Communications, Inc.

The Swedes have found a new way to kill time on those long, cold Scandinavian winter nights. On February 7, Swedish">http://www.sr.se">Swedish Radio (SR) announced that it had begun multichannel test transmissions from the Sirius 2 satellite, utilizing DTS's">http://www.dtsonline.com">DTS's Coherent Acoustics compression/ decompression algorithm. The tests are intended to run until the end of April 2003.