America's favorite pastime, and perhaps that of all first-world countries, has yet to be truly rocked by technology. Sure, there have been a few true advancements like on-demand, streaming and the DVR, but only about 30 minutes of the average seven hours of TV Americans watched in 2010 was time shifted. Forty percent of homes have a DVR today, but most are just using them as tapeless VCRs. The reasons are complex and can't be summed up easily, but most would agree that DVRs and streaming options are where smartphones and MP3 players once were: plenty of people are throwing things against the wall, but nothing's sticking. I don't have the answers, but I do understand what the problem is and what it might take to change it. I can only hope that such a proposed change could become a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Hot on the heels of its acquisition of a glut of AWS licenses from cable giants Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House for a few billion, Verizon's at it again. This time, Big Red's grabbing a swath of 20MHz AWS spectrum from Cox Communications for a tidy $315 million. In a separate agreement, Cox and VZW will begin selling each other's services as well. Of course, this is all pending FCC approval, but it looks like this latest purchase will have Verizon only further extending its LTE lead over Ma Bell.

Primed goes in-depth on the technobabble you hear on Engadget every day -- we dig deep into each topic's history and how it benefits our lives. You can follow the series here. Looking to suggest a piece of technology for us to break down? Drop us a line at primed *at* engadget *dawt* com.

The first thing I look for when purchasing a camera is something most aren't even aware of. It's not the brand name or the quality of the lens, the touch screen technology or the LCD screen size, and not the array of functions it offers or shooting presets available – it's the size of the image sensor. As a 20-year pro photographer who's captured over a million images during my career, I'm the guy who admires the parts of the engine instead of falling in love with the flashy exterior or high-end sound system. The image sensor is where the rubber meets the photosensitive diodes.

In writing my first installment for Primed, I'll give a few definitions to clear things up a bit when it comes to a camera's image sensors and size, explain in detail the parts of a sensor, how it alters the photos (or video) you capture, where it came from, and why it's important to consider its size – I'll cover the meat and bones, get to the heart of the matter, the nub, the crux, the nuts and bolts, get down to the brass tacks, all while exhausting our thesaurus. Let's dive in, shall we?

It's been a crazy year for the Engadget Show, but don't count us out just yet. We've got one more exciting episode to hit you with before the year's up. This time out, Tim travels to San Francisco, to check out the high performance BRD RedShift SM electric motorcycle and Zach H. takes a trip to Japan to tour the Tokyo Motor Show with Autoblog's Damon Lavrinc and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Darren joins Tim and Brian in-studio to talk the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the Motorola Xyboard and the Asus Transformer Prime and Engadget founder Peter Rojas pops by the show to discuss the year that was. We close the episode and the year with an Engadget Show highlights reel and a performance by Brooklyn's own My Best Fiend.

Hosts: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater
Special guests: Peter Rojas, Darren Murph, Damon Lavrinc, Zach Honig
Producer: Guy Streit
Director: Michelle Stahl
Executive Producers: Joshua Fruhlinger, Brian Heater and Michael Rubens
Music by: My Best Fiend

Download the Show: The Engadget Show - 028 (HD) / The Engadget Show - 028 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted) / The Engadget Show - 028 (Small)

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It's the Galaxy Nexus. It has LTE. It's the phone we've been waiting (and waiting) for. Sure, some of our more globe-trotting members of the staff were suitably sated by the HSPA+ version that shipped a few weeks ago, but the rest of us domestic types simply need more bandwidth. Or, at least, we like to think that we do, and this $300 (on-contract) Verizon release certainly has that in spades.

However, there's something missing: Google Wallet. That company's attempt at reinventing commerce isn't here and, while nobody's saying for sure, it surely has something to do with Verizon not wanting to kneecap the Isis payment service it has invested in. That leaves us wondering: with restrictions on what apps can be installed, and some rather prominent carrier branding on the back, is this really a Nexus device at all? And, more importantly, is it a good phone? Those answers and more wait for you below.

About a week ago, we traveled to the desert to spend two days with Ron Wayne. The 77-year-old Pahrump, Nevada resident has had a number of careers in his long life, working for Atari, a few slot machine companies, developing devices for use on the ocean floor and running a collectables shop in Northern California. In his semi-retired state, Wayne sells stamps and coins to supplement his checks from the government. He's no doubt best known, however, for his role in the founding of the Apple Computer company, alongside Steves Jobs and Wozniak, a role at which he spent a little more than a week.

During our time in Pahrump, Wayne was kind enough to let us comb over a number of papers from his days with the nascent computer company. The documents, stashed in a USPS mailer kept by the door of his office, were a veritable treasure trove of information, including pages of pages of plans and pencils drawings of an Apple I enclosure Jobs asked Wayne to build -- his creation was ultimately rejected by Apple and lost to history as the company gained steam.

Also stored in the envelope were a facsimile of the contract signed by Wayne, Woz and Jobs, which recently sold on auction for more than $1 million -- in fact, it was Wayne's original copy that hit the auction block. He had parted ways with it for far, far less some time ago. Wayne's Statement of Withdrawal is in the pile as well -- the document effectively ended his term with the company, filed for a $5 fee. Also inside are an Apple I operation manual, with the company's original logo, designed by Wayne himself and an Apple II order form. Check out all of the above in the gallery below.

Some have pegged Ron Wayne as unlucky; not only did he lose big by backing out of one of the most successful companies in consumer electronics, but a set of documents he once sold for a reported $500 recently demanded $1.6 million at auction. Earlier this month, Brian Heater spent two days in the Nevada desert following Apple's third founder, a man known best for his proximity to two guys named Steve and notoriously unfortunate timing. In this issue of Distro, we'll get a glimpse inside Ron's world -- a place occupied by slot machines, antique firearms and collectible coins -- and discover what he really thinks about his onetime business partners. Also in this issue, we'll double your pleasure with a pair of LG smartphone reviews: the Nitro HD and DoublePlay. Dana Wollman will rip through Jawbone's troubled fitness device, the Up, and take Lenovo's IdeaPad U400 for a spin. Ross Rubin will serve up his opinion on "WebOS' Open Sores" and we'll explore the gadgets we can't let go of in IRL. So get to downloading!

The Music Genome Project is in some serious trouble. The fancy algorithm behind Pandora is facing an increasingly popular competitor in the form of Echo Nest. The company's "music intelligence platform" and its accompanying API are already powering iHeartRadio and Nokia Music's Mix Radio. Now it's getting baked into the streaming media service du jour -- Spotify. Echo Nest's capable automated mix-making was already available to Spotify users via Echofi, but now the Swedish media company is using the tech as the basis for its updated radio service. Check out the PR after the break for a few not-so-subtle jabs at Pandora and its restrictions on free users.

Qualcomm's Gobi 3000 is already a big hit around these parts for its dual-mode CDMA and GSM radios, which makes staying connected much easier for serious globe trotters. Its no surprise then that HP chose that particular chip for its DataPass-enabled laptops which offer pay-as-you-go mobile broadband. For those that only need occasional access to 3G on the go or who cant stay in one country for more than a few weeks at a time DataPass and the flexible Gobi radio are a perfect match. Check out the PR after the break for a bit more of Qualcomm's gloating.

While the Android tablets continue to roll in, Apple can still lay claim to the lion's share of the tablet market according to IDC's latest report. Its research suggests that the iPad holds onto 61.5 percent of the worldwide market share, down from 63.3 percent last quarter. Android devices in total also saw a slight contraction, down from 33.2 percent to 32.4 percent. This is partly explained by the HP TouchPad's final hurrah, which rocketed the ill-fated webOS tablet up to third place with a 5 percent of share of tablet sales and an estimated 903,354 devices sold. Samsung maintained its Honeycomb tablet crown, nabbing 5.6 percent of all tablet sales. The Korean manufacturer was closely tailed by Barnes and Noble's Nook Color with 4.5 percent and Asus, arriving at fifth place with a four percent share. Tablets in total sold less than the analysts had predicted, although growth has still exploded 264 percent compared to this time last year. Meanwhile, E-readers outperformed estimates, with 6.5 million E-readers sold in the third quarter, up 165.9 percent from last year. IDC expects some disruptive new tablets will spice up the fourth quarter results and you can take a look at its findings and predictions at the full press release below.

We've got some good news for gamers that were willing to plunge into the PlayStation-certified world of Sony's tablets. The latest update to the company's divisive Tablet S will let you connect your PS3 controllers with those 32-bit games of yesteryear. The update is available now in Sony's homeland of Japan and the company is also rewarding its tablet faithful with a free download; an Ape Escape-themed mini-game collection. It's not all good news, however. The clamshelled Tablet P doesn't get the controller hook-up and you'll need to buy an additional USB adapter cable to connect a controller to the monoscreened Tablet S. A briefly worded, vaguely translated release awaits after the break.

Update: We've heard from Japanese users that you'll only need to the cable to initially pair the controller with the tablet. After that, you're free to wirelessly play away.

VIA is hardly the first hawker of x86-based chips to start bragging about its Android compatibility, but it certainly doesn't want to be left behind as the open source OS starts worming its way into more and more machines. The EITX-3002 is the first of its offerings to sport official support for Google's OS. At the heart of the Em-ITX board is your choice of a 1.2GHz NANO X2 or a 1GHz Eden X2, and a VX900H, which casn push 1080p video to dual monitors. The target devices are obviously touch-based systems like in-car entertainment computers and kiosks. To see the board in action head on after the break and, please, try to stay calm -- we all know how exciting Froyo-based kiosks are.