HP's Beats Audio is the real deal

Hewlett-Packard's Envy 14 with the Beats audio system is the bestsounding laptop around.

Beats Audio isn't another cheesy bass booster or fake surroundsound processor. HP says its engineers worked for six months with the golden-eared music producers Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, poring over circuit-board designs and signal-processing software.

HP's system does three things differently from most laptops. First, engineers isolated the audio components from the noise generated by other components packed into the laptop.

When you plug into a Beats laptop and turn the volume up without playing anything, you will not hear the background noise that gets in the way of the music on many computers.

Second , they tweaked the digital signal processing chips to handle low, middle and highfrequency sound separately, and to go from quiet to very loud without flattening out the sound.

Finally, HP packed the laptops with powerful headphone amplifiers. The Envy 14 can drive pro DJ headphones loud enough for spontaneous apartment dancing. The sound is not boomy, it is full-bodied. There is a bass boost button, but you will not need it.

TV quality sacrificed for convenience

Netflix made big news when it announced that it would offer a streaming only plan.

But consumers who prefer to stream their content will learn that just as with cell phones, they will often have to sacrifice quality to get convenience.

Watching Netflix movies through your Wii? If you use the standard composite cable that came with your unit, the best quality you'll get is 480i, approximating the image of a standard-definition broadcast. You can improve the picture quality by purchasing a special component cable for the Wii.

The Apple TV does pass through high definition, but only at 720p resolution — not the 1080p resolution that is part of the Blu-ray standard.

Sony's PS3 and Roku's XD and XDS models can both pass through a 1080p signal, as long as the broadband speed is fast enough.

If the streaming option is appealing, check that you have the right equipment and broadband connection. After all, part of the reason you bought that large 1080p set was presumably to get the best picture possible. You would not want to be disappointed.