meanwhile, for the rest of us designing products that have nothing to do with PCs, we're faced with part lead times of a year or more, and parts suddenly no longer being available because somebody "made a deal" and bought them all, forcing time consuming redesigns. Tough to reconcile that reality with the article's claims.

At least in the US/North American markets Dolby is mandated (i.e. has a monopoly) as the broadcast standard for ATSC audio. While cable companies could do something different re-encoding feeds/content, that is a step they would want to avoid. Cell phones is are a bit different, there you only need the Dolby decoder because some of the content stands a reasonable chance of having the audio in a Dolby format. But the manufacturers are sort of forced to include it because customers expect to be able to watch anything they want. Many streaming systems also use Dolby encoding for some of their content.

This is independent of what your playback system is, i.e. 5.1 or simple earbuds - you still need to decode the audio. By blocking post processing options from other suppliers Dolby is locking everyone in to "their way" only. I am not knocking Dolby's work, they have some very smart audio people and do significant R&D. It's the heavy handed attempt to monetize that work that is the problem. When used for something like ATSC (use of a publicly owned commons - airwaves) companies that have their technology selected are supposed to license it under "Fair and reasonable terms". Blocking new and innovative methods of post decode sound field processing is neither fair nor reasonable. The companies that work in this area are typically small and can't afford the lawyers to take on a giant like Dolby, so they will (and have) given up.

Are those third party efforts better than Dolby's? Perhaps sometimes yes, sometimes no. The concern with this new position from Dolby is that you and I will never get the chance to know if someone has a better product.

Dolby is also a patent machine and ties up their technology for long periods of time by playing the system. It's a pretty clear case that at least for technology standards that use a public resource (airwaves) should use "open source/non-patented" technology to avoid exactly they type of issue being created by Dolby in telling audio system designers what they can and can not do, and limiting the options for customers.

In some other parts of the world Fruanhofer's MPEG-H is being used for broadcast of audio (for TV), I do not know what restrictions they might place on customers as it's fairly new.

I too got this email but it was a head scratcher since I've used my own router for as long as I've had Fios (since 2007). I called them to say I don't have one of their routers.After some back and forth they agreed I didn't - what I do have however is an old Motorola NIM100 that acts as the MOCA to ethernet bridge in these systems. I responded with "well since I don't have your router I don't have to pay $2.80/month" and the script response more or less was "we don't care what you have, we're charging you $2.80/month or buy *our* new router for $60".

I nicely explained that since I've had this forever it clearly didn't need "support" and I was not going to pay $2.80 month. I explained that I wasn't blaming the support person for my annoyance but could she ask her manager if they wanted to lose a customer over this nickel and dime charge as I don't see any difference between FIOS and Comcast and would just as soon switch on the principal of the thing (I happen to be able to get both). She put me on hold for a few minutes and said they would still charge me $2.80/month, but credit me $3.00 month. Though only for 12 months...so I guess I'll have to call them every 12 months until they cut this silliness out, or the thing breaks and actually does have to be replaced.

In all fairness to the support people there this is only the 2nd time I've called FIOS support and both times it was a good experience.

A few years ago I started a switch from X-10 to Insteon and evaluated some of the systems mentioned in other posts. I settled on Home Control Assistant http://www.hcatech.com/ as it lets me control everything locally but allows remote access if I want; the client app on my phone knows what to use based on what network it's on. The price if very reasonable and support has been great, and it's really well documented.

It does need a Windows PC to run on but I had one destined for the recycle bucket that works fine.

Seeing how well this works there is absolutely no reason for "cloud" in home control - if you can set up a PC and install software on it. For some people that is a barrier to use.

I do however have some Honeywell thermostats as for the money they do a good job versus the alternatives that existed. Their web app is easy for everyone in the house to use. I figure someday someone might figure out good local control for them or I'll replace eventually replace them. But it's tough to argue with something that is low cost (compared to things like Nest) and just works.

Having recently gotten Global Entry (and TSA Pre) I was surprised that the only one airport can do the interviews - Logan. I started the paperwork in October and the first available interview slot was in late February. So for 6+ million people or so where Logan is the nearest airport that performs the interviews, guess how many people the TSA actually had working when I went in? Two...(I will say given their crushing workload and probably mostly irate customers over the long delays they were actually very nice people and pretty efficient).

For me it was only a 45 minute drive, but for a lot of people Logan would be over a 4 hour drive (one way, and 2x that if they lived way up). Seems to me if they want people to sign up then every airport should be able to do this? Though probably the number of people that would want Global Entry is small relative to TSAPre, but it's another reason to think twice about bothering to go through with it.

The content providers have threatened to require the new HDCP 2.x DRM system on the HDMI outputs instead of the existing HDCP 1.x. HDCP 2.x has required all of the IC providers to design new chips, and the standard is much more restrictive and much more fragile than the existing HDCP 1.x.

HDCP 1.x took several generations of product to get to function ( most people's problems with HDMI in the first few years was due to the HDCP DRM failing, not HDMI, which only specs how to send data).

Given the past history of HDCP it could be years before you can reasonably expect multiple pieces of consumer electronics from different vendors to play together well. I'm sure the message "HDCP violation" will look much nicer in 4K.