For the most part, do you consider these digital upgrades as good or bad ideas?

Lots of gear that's still kicking around only has an analog connection with a cable box: like TiVos and Slingboxes made before 2004. And what about your TV? You'd likely be forced to upgrade to gear with digital ports (like HDMI) to watch movies protected with Selectable Output Control.

The studios are desperate to show on-demand movies over cable prior to their DVD release, but claim they can't without SOC. They say the tech protects their revenue by blocking easy analog copying—the so called "analog hole". Problem is, DVDs (a supposed secure format) get ripped and shared online, anyway.

Not only that, but it's almost a moot point. Warner Brothers (who signed the original SOC petition last year) released Observe and Report, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past for video-on-demand this September—before their DVDs hit stores. Consumer advocacy groups, like Public Knowledge and the EFF, also point out that Magnolia Pictures, distributors like IFC, and more recently, Starz Media, are also doing VoD before DVD.

The MPAA says that the outputs would only be disabled for the new movies, and wouldn't impact any existing content. And they make the fair point that there's always a lag between new experiences early adopters get compared to those with older gear.

But I'm sorry MPAA, pull your head out of your arse. DVDs still get ripped, and one of the very studios you represent is still releasing on-demand movies prior to their DVD release. Why bother? Think about the huge customer base you're alienating, and stay away from the back of my TV. [Public Knowledge and PC Magazine via BoingBoing]

For added authenticity, the frame also features a backing that simulates a transparent background. For even more crossover amusement, give one to Grandma so she has something to put her wedding photos in. This is one program even a computer novice can handle. [ThinkGeek via RGS]

Fremer, if you have yet to decipher this, is an audiophile of the highest calibre. Literally millions of dollars of premium audio equipment have passed through his listening room under review for Stereophile magazine, and he's been obsessing about vinyl since he was four years old, memorizing the labels of his parents' 78s. A man who, when digital recording and reproduction methods began to surface culminating in the compact disc's takeover as the predominant music format, became a figurehead for the vinyl superiority movement, staunchly advocating its greater tonal resolution over a CD's 44.1 kHz max. (See this MTV clip for Fremer in action, circa 1993.)

In short, a species of human I had never known prior to hanging out with him in his New Jersey basement listening room last week, and a species, frankly, I was skeptical of in just about every possible way.

Upon getting picked up by Fremer at the train station near his home, my fears immediately began to feel all too real. It was but a minute or two into our car ride from the station that a rant on Walt Mossberg's inferior review of the Airport Express, Apple's music-streaming mini-router that Fremer and I both enjoy in our home systems, begins in earnest:

"If he's not going to tell people how it sounds, then what's the fucking point? Don't step into my world, Walt!" Multiple emails of complaint to poor Walt are cited. I am definitely thinking "uh oh" at this point.

But then, settled into the lone leather chaise in Fremer's basement audio temple, nestled right in the sweetspot of his $65,000 Wilson MAXX3 speakers, I hear the needle drop on Air's "Run" from Talkie Walkie. It's a song I've never heard (kind of fell off Air after overusing Moon Safari considerably), but one that I'm now listening to all the time. Because, with all honesty, I have never heard anything like that song played on that stereo system at that moment. Ever.

The song ends, and after emerging from an opiate-like haze, I hear a hiss. And yes, while the record was playing, I heard a pop, a crackle or two. Isn't this as high-end an audiophile system as they come? Shouldn't the sound be of such purity so as to sustain life in lieu of water for days on end?

I mention this slight—very slight, but noticeable—hiss to Fremer, and it's probably a frequency that 50 plus years of rocking have eliminated from his spectrum. He doesn't even care. This is when I start to understand.

After hearing I'm a Bowie fan, Fremer drops into his near limitless stacks and spins a pressing of "Heroes" with part of the title track's chorus in German. I'm giggling with pleasure at the frankly obscene level of detail I hear (Ich! Ich werde König!), but of course, I'm hearing the pops and crackles that a 30+ year-old record is likely to have. Shouldn't a $350,000 stereo system be completely free of such impurities?

"It's like when you go to the symphony, and the old men are coughing—same thing," Fremer says. Necessary impurities. Reminders of being in the real world.

We play my solid 256kbps VBR MP3 of "Heroes" off my iPod; it sounds like shit. Free of pops and crackles, yes, but completely lifeless, flat in every way. This is the detail that matters: Audiophiles are basically synesthesiacs. They "see" music in three-dimensional visual space. You close your eyes in Fremer's chair, and you can perceive a detailed 3D matrix of sound, with each element occupying its own special space in the air. It's crazy and I've never experienced anything like it.

It is within this 3D space where the audiophile lives and operates, and spends all his money. Fremer himself is the first to admit that it would only take $3,000 to $5,000 to build a system that will be deeply satisfying to most music fans. On a scale of 1 to 100 completely of my own devising, let's put this system at around 85. Now, imagine that you've tasted 85, and you want to go higher; you want Bowie's cries of kissing by the wall to inhabit the most perfect point in your system's matrix, and Bryan Ferry's back-up fly girls on "Avalon" to flank him just beautifully. That, friends, is where you might end up paying hundreds of thousands.

Our little scale, unfortunately, is logarithmic, in that going from zero to 85 doesn't take a lot of effort or money, but going from 98.6 to 99.1 by swapping out a $2,600 AC power cable for a $4,000 one becomes a justifiable end. We did exactly that, and I strained to hear any difference at all (more impressions of our test will follow later in the week), but to Fremer, the difference was abundantly clear—not necessarily better with the more expensive cable, but different, a warmer, fuller sound, as Fremer described it. Here's the breakdown of his current listening-room hardware:

The point is, people like Fremer can not only hear the difference, they crave it. I walked into his listening room expecting to discern absolutely zero difference in the comparison tests we had planned, swapping out speaker cables that cost as much as a meal at the best restaurant in New York for another set that cost as much as a year of undergrad at Harvard. I actually did hear a tiny difference. But to people like Fremer, that tiny difference becomes a mind-boggling disparity, and it's worth paying for if it means a few decimal points closer to perfection. Unfortunately, the logarithmic curve is asymptotic: There is no ceiling. Fremer will be the first to admit that this type of dragon chasing is not and should not be for everyone.

This obsession with tiny differences explains Fremer's fevered defense of analog music sources over digital. Two anecdotes from the past are particularly illuminative:

The first is his memories of rushing to the record store in 1979 to pick up Ry Cooder's Bop ‘Til You Drop, the first mainstream rock release to be recorded using an all-digital process, which at the time was being lauded as the next big thing. But upon getting it home and dropping it into his high-end system, the results were not good:

"It made me feel horrible!" he remembers. Even though it was played on vinyl, Fremer could already detect some missing elements in the 3D audiophile space that just weren't there. "And it's not like I was a digiphobe at this point—I had no reason to be. I was as excited as anyone to hear this."

The second was the first public playing of a compact disc, to a room full of expectant audiophiles a few years later. While they breathlessly applauded the first track played from the then refrigerator-sized device, Fremer was horrified. He heard the same flatness and lack of detail in the 3D audio world he loved to inhabit. "I felt…weird. My hands were shaking. All I could think, then, was WE'RE FUCKED!" A few days later, a new, custom-printed bumper sticker was slapped on Fremer's car: "COMPACT DISCS SUCK."

And thus began a long battle, and thankfully, it seems to have ended happily. Both with the advent of SACDs—which Fremer is a great fan of, proving that he's not hung up on nostalgia—and the greater acceptance and continued life of vinyl, Fremer is a happy man these days. "I'm on top of the world right now. I set out to save vinyl, and we did it."

Because the thing is, Fremer loves music first and foremost. The audiophile I had feared was one who cares far more about the overpriced gadgetry than the actual music. This is not who I ended up meeting. This man listens to music and makes sure it was recorded with the best fidelity, that the intents of the artist have been preserved. And thank God he does, because we certainly don't.

I listen to most of my music on downloaded, compressed, lossy MP3s, and so do you. But even if you can't hear the sound quality, we need someone like Fremer up on that wall, a preservationist of archival recordings and an ombudsman for new recording techniques, because one day you'll want to hear it, and it'll be there because of audiophiles.

These guardians in and outside of the recording industry ensure that, whether it's in a movie theater tomorrow or in your own home listening room on some far off future date, you'll be able always get back to a recording that expresses every frequency, every ounce of warmth and life, of the original performance. Because if you can hear, it, if you ever get to live in that 3D space, you'll be glad Fremer helped defend it.

For more audio goodness, hit up Fremer's own site at musicangle.com

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is a HUGE fan of Morse Code.

Yup, everything's going to plan. [Reuters]

Many manufactures stopped making the devices in January, expecting the demand to peak around the original Feb. 17th shutoff date. Therefore, the extension kind of leaves them with their pants down—so to speak.

The trade association estimates U.S. retailers have 3 million to 6 million boxes at hand.

"The worst case is that there are only 3 million boxes," Petricone said. "Retailers would then run out of inventory by the end of February."

Throw that on top of a huge waiting list of 3.7 million rebate coupons, and you have yourself a powder keg of problems. The stimulus package that is currently in the works could help diffuse the situation to a degree, but the bottom line is that this is never going to go down without people being left out in the lurch. They should have just pulled the trigger on it this month and got it over with. [Physorg and Getty Images Photo]

Low-power stations are not required by the FCC to make the switch to digital on Feb. 17th, so viewers who want to continue watching all of their programing need a converter that can handle both digital and analog signals. Based on cost factors and confusion, in the end most viewers will probably end up buying a standard digital converter box with their government coupons and saying goodbye to their favorite analog channels—which puts the future of those stations in jeopardy. [Dallas News and Getty Images Photo]

Previously, the analog shutdown was going to happen in February 17, but with Nielsen estimating 6.5 million U.S. homes still with analog TV only, politicians have thought twice about taking the circus from the people, after their inability to give them bread. [ABC News]

The bill (a rewrite of the Obama-supported Sen. Jay Rockefeller plan) doesn't look to provide more funding for DTV vouchers—it's more a slam on the brakes maneuver to buy everyone some time. The most important point about the bill, however, is that it leaves broadcasters the "option" to still make the DTV switch on February 17th.

On one hand, that's the only fair plan that the government could leave broadcasters after forcing them to make major internal technological revisions. On the other, viewers who weren't prepped for February 17th could still lose some (or even all) channels in spite of the formal delay. [WSJ and Getty Images Photo]

Hawaii took the DTV plunge this past Thursday at noon, broadcasting a message with a looped announcement and a help line the legions of confused islanders could call. As expected, pretty much nobody understands what's actually going on, and many have left off buying a converter box until they were forced to do so. Angry phone calls streamed in about missing primetime Thursday shows like Grey's Anatomy (ugh.) and CSI (double ugh.). But why did Hawaii choose to go digital a full month before the original proposed date?

Turns out the endangered Hawaiian dark-rumped petrel, a small nesting bird, was the deciding factor in the change. The analog transmission towers on the slopes of Maui's Haleakala volcano obstruct their nesting grounds, and tearing them down before the birds' mating season is an attempt to buck up the dwindling population.

The story seems like a Carl Hiaasen subplot and unfortunately I don't think we can promise such entertaining stories from the nationwide transition. But with any luck, it'll be a little bit smoother. [Yahoo!]

“[W]e’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting ready for the February 17 date,” Martin said during a CES Q&A. “I am concerned about the consumer confusion that would be created.”

No kidding he's concerned, but he's probably more confused today than anything. As many of you may have put together by now, this is the same Martin we caught watching the DTV parody video on Friday, mouth agape. Perhaps the experience on Friday influenced his answers on Saturday? We may never know, but it doesn't sound like it did.

What we do know is that, according to Nielsen, the failure of DTV coupon program has resulted in as much as 7% of the nation's households being “completely unready” for the switch. That's 7% of the population daytime TV and the Price is Right simply can't afford to lose.

Most broadcasting companies are critical of Obama's position too, since many have not budgeted in the cost of operating two transmitters past the February 17 deadline.

“No matter when the deadline is, there will always be some who are not going to be prepared,” said Michelle Vetterkind, president of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.

Regardless of the infighting, DTV will become the standard on February 17, unless Congress swoops in with a last-minute delay. We'll keep an eye out this month for additional info. Until then, maybe check in on grandma, and see if your geeky skills can be put to good use. [MSNBC]

John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama-Biden transition team, requested that "the cut-off date for analog signals should be reconsidered and extended". The letter was sent this Thursday to the chairs and ranking Republicans on the House Energy & Commerce Committee and Senate Commerce Committee.

Probably realizing that the Roman Emperors were right with their "bread and entertainment" policies, Podesta also argues that Americans can't wake up 28 days after the inauguration "to find their analog TV's no longer able to receive an over-the-air signal".

Indeed. I can see exactly what he means here. Not only it is true that the analog to digital TV program is broken, but I can already imagine people getting up in arms, thinking that the world is over after "the muslim" got into the White House: "Whar's mah TV? This ain't wawkin'! ah knowed thet guy warn't enny fine! Fry mah hide! Kids, t'th' shelter! Git mah rifle!"

So yes, this is a wise move that would benefit everyone until the issues with the program—funding and public education on the analog-to-digital transition—are solved. [Broadcasting Cable]

The 30-year study, published by the fine folks at the University of Maryland, also discovered that people who read and socialize well are happier on average, and watch watch less TV. This is actually in line with my own research findings, The Jack Loftus Method, which found people are generally happier when having sex with other people, and not their television screens.

And finally, from the Duh! department, comes this gem from Maryland researcher and sociologist John Robinson:

"TV doesn't really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does," said Robinson, who was also the study co-author. "It's more passive and may provide escape - especially when the news is as depressing as the economy itself. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise."

Unless, of course, you're watching porn. Then we all win. [University of Maryland]

That group, which accounts for 3% of all TV-owning households in America, will be giving up on broadcast TV entirely, and it's probably not because they don't like watching stuff. It's because they have a bunch more options now than they did when they picked up their old sets. Now they have DVD players, they have the internet and they have game consoles that can download and play video content. Really, broadcast TV is the least-convenient way to watch video content, what with it coming on only at scheduled times and being littered with ads. With other methods you get control over what you watch and when.

I guess it's only a matter of time before us gadget hounds catch up with these backwards-thinking folks. After all, with our HDTVs, DVRs and AppleTVs, we're already set up to get the most out of that lifestyle, if we're not already there. [TV Predictions via Crave]