Editor's Eye

When I browse audio forums and social media, I often see absolute nonsense posted about the fidelity you can achieve with a phone, claiming it is not "audiophile" or whatever. Reality is if you stream lossless music through a phone and use good headphones, the listening experience is extremely high fidelity.

Summer 2023 is just around the corner and Hollywood writers have been on strike since May 2. If the strike ends soon, it may not have a significant impact but there are concerns that a prolonged strike could be catastrophic for movie theaters that depend on a constant flow of blockbuster releases to remain profitable.

Getting to know Sound & Vision Editor Mark Henninger.

Premium VOD (Video On Demand), Early Access, Theater at Home, In-Theater Rental. Each of these terms essentially describe the same thing: new movies screening in theaters that can also be streamed for home viewing. Premium VOD (we’ll run with that label) is a fairly recent development, one that quickly accelerated with the arrival of Covid. And while theaters have since re-opened, Premium VOD appears to be here to stay in a big way, with many new movies available to stream from services such as Vudu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and more.

A regular complaint aired in Sound & Vision’s Letters section is that the 5.1 surround discs covered in our Remaster Class column are 1) out of print, and 2) too expensive to buy on e-commerce and collector sites like eBay and Discogs. And while I commiserate, the reality is that disc releases, be they LP, CD, SACD, Blu-ray, or whatever, don’t remain eternally in print. That’s why there’s a thriving market for vintage vinyl, and why albums and movies are regularly remastered and reissued on disc.

Yes, it had to be done. Consider it a form of spring cleaning. The “it” is in this case is a streaming service — HBO Max to be specific — that I decided to drop. My video streaming plate had become over-filled during the pandemic as I spent much of my free time at home, and now that I was vaxxed up and ready to re-engage (as much as possible) with the world, I made the decision to dump at least one service. It’s not that I wanted to lose it — in the final days of my active subscription, I of course happened upon a new original series, Mare of Easttown, that was right up my alley — but something had to give, and it was going to be HBO Max.