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AXPONA 2019: A Guide to the Best Sound
Tom Norton  |  Apr 23, 2019  |  1 comments
The annual Audio Expo North America (AXPONA) show in Chicago has exploded into the biggest audio show in North America. 2019 was my first experience there, and it lived up to its reputation. The only show that’s now bigger, based on the number of exhibitors (though I understand it’s heavy on static displays), is May’s Munich show in Germany.
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A/V Veteran
Titanic: Blood & Steel - A Compelling 12-Part Miniseries
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 09, 2019  |  6 comments
I’ve long been a fan of the Titanic saga, well before the 1997 film. I loved that one, but mainly for the stunning effects and James Horner’s magnificent score, not the badly written soap opera that took up over half of its running time. This week it returned to my attention, partly because in a few days the 107th anniversary of the disaster will arrive (April 15, though no one typically commemorates such an odd number) and partly because last week I re-watched a story of the Titanic on Blu-ray as one of the sources I used for a product review.

The latter however, wasn’t James Cameron’s flawed but still compelling epic. Instead, Titanic: Blood & Steel is a 12-part mini-series, released in 2012 (the 100th anniversary of the sinking, about the building of the ship. It doesn’t address the sinking at all. In fact, it ends just as the ship steams out of Belfast, where she was built (A ship is always a she, and as the narrative makes clear, she’s a ship, not a boat!)

But there’s a lot more here as well...

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A/V Veteran
LG Rolls Out its 2019 Ultra HDTVs
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 26, 2019  |  7 comments
Shortly after sending out formal press releases for its 2019 television and audio lineups earlier this month (the products were first shown at the 2019 CES in January), LG held a March 20th press event in New York to expand on the details. LG began by noting that of the 36+ million sets sold in the U.S. market alone in 2018, only 2.4 million were priced above $1,000. Also notable is that 36% of the TVs sold in the U.S. for more than $2,000 were 70-inches or above. Globally, however, large sizes aren’t as popular.
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A/V Veteran
Why Are Disney's UHD Blu-ray Soundtracks Falling Short of the Mark?
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 12, 2019  |  4 comments
Maybe I’m just in a bad mood from having dental surgery yesterday, or maybe there’s something odd happening at Disney these days. But what, exactly, is going on with some of their Ultra HD Blu-ray soundtracks?
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A/V Veteran
Is This the Videodisc Apocalypse?
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 26, 2019  |  13 comments
The recent decision by Samsung to cease selling Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray players (at least in the U.S.), reported elsewhere on this site, has been taken by many as foreshadowing the death of video on physical media. Add in Oppo’s cessation of player manufacturing last year, and the statistically significant falloff in disc sales (confirmed locally by a recent, dramatic reduction in the shelf space devoted to video discs at my nearest Best Buy), and, the news certainly isn’t encouraging.

But the imminent death of the disc isn’t yet in sight. The disc market is still profitable, and the studios haven’t yet slowed down churning out both new and older titles. Check out The Digital Bits website for their weekly lists of releases and then tell me that video discs are on life support. They may be limping, but as a wise man once said, “It ain’t over ‘till it’s over.”

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A/V Veteran
How to Use EQ & Measurements to Tame the Effects of Your Room
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 12, 2019  |  0 comments
Whether you live in a McMansion, a hovel, or something in between, the most influential component in your audio or home theater system is the room. A look at how it affects performance and what you can do to ensure the best possible sound.
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A/V Veteran
TV at CES 2019, The Sequel
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 29, 2019  |  0 comments
With apologies to Samsung and a few others who haven’t made the OLED plunge, and show no signs of doing so, OLED remains today’s hottest flat screen technology. But the battle continues as UHDTV manufacturers scramble to take the next big technological leap. That will likely be Micro LED...
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A/V Veteran
CES and All its Many New TVs...Without the Sore Feet
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 15, 2019  |  7 comments
A reported 180,000 eager retailers, custom installers, press, and assorted hangers-on descended on Las Vegas last week for the annual, trade-only CES. Even though I wasn’t one of them, I will still offer up my 2 cents on the many TVs introduced at last week's show.
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Double Feature: The Lion King (1994) and Prometheus (2012)
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 18, 2018  |  0 comments
An odd but strangely rewarding pairing of two movies on 4K Blu-ray, one of which left my jaw on the floor.
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Other TechA/V Veteran
How I Put Audyssey Room Correction to Work for Me
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 05, 2018  |  First Published: Dec 04, 2018  |  31 comments
Room correction is a process by which you eliminate (or I should say, attempt to eliminate) the nasty acoustic qualities of a small room. Many variables are at play, not the least of which are the acoustic characteristics of your room, but today’s room correction systems can be very helpful in improving room response. Here I share my recent experience with one of these systems.
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A/V Veteran
Black Friday Cometh
Thomas J. Norton  |  Nov 20, 2018  |  0 comments
I have little experience with Black Friday mania, having studiously avoided any contact with Best Buy, Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, or Targea on that frenzied day. Black Friday doesn’t mean a day of mourning, but is rather named for the day of the year when retailers anticipate their annual sales will finally go positive—out of the red and into the black.

And there’s no denying it to be an important day to people with plastic and a yearning for good stuff at fire-sale prices. For them it’s a Holy Day of Obligation. They line up outside at closing time on Thanksgiving (the day before the main event) to spend a cold night bundled up outside hoping to score that new flat screen TV (though Black Friday Vigil sales late on Turkey Day are now a thing)...

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A/V Veteran
Made in China: What it Means for AV Gear
Thomas J. Norton  |  Nov 06, 2018  |  7 comments
I don’t know if you’ve noticed (though how could you not) that a lot of the stuff we buy these days is made in China. It ranges from the remarkably cheap (like the lightweight, pleated jacket I bought last year in Walmart (for less than the price of a CD or Blu-ray) to the very expensive (such as Buick’s new Envision SUV—yes, that’s made in the PRC as well, the first U.S. car made there, by GM Shanghai). It’s difficult to buy anything today without encountering a product made in China as the only viable alternative. And even if it’s manufactured in the U.S., many of its individual pieces were likely sourced in China...
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A/V Veteran
IMAX Enhanced Home Theater Certification: What We Know So Far
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 30, 2018  |  0 comments
IMAX and DTS stirred up a bit of a hurricane at September’s CEDIA Expo when they announced the launch of a new home theater certification program called “IMAX Enhanced.” Here’s what we know…
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Speaker TechA/V Veteran
When Is a Subwoofer a Subwoofer?
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 16, 2018  |  8 comments
A recent product announcement from Amazon touted the launch of a “subwoofer” to supplement the response of Amazon’s popular Echo vocal assistant. Presumably it will work with the even smaller Echo Dot as well. But for me it raised a couple of eyebrows.

Given that the low frequency response of an Echo alone probably doesn’t reproduce any useful output much lower than 100 Hz (admittedly an educated guess), the Echo Sub certainly can't hurt. But given its size and its 6-inch driver, there's no way that such a product it can be considered a subwoofer...

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A/V Veteran
It’s a Jurassic World (After All)
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 02, 2018  |  1 comments
While the movers behind the Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek franchises aren’t at risk of losing sleep over dinosaurs just yet, the Jurassic worlds and parks do threaten to chomp on more than a few toes over the coming years.

When Jurassic Park debuted in 1993 it could have been a boom or a bust. Computer generated effects (CGI) were just coming into their own, but with a few exceptions (notably Terminator 2) they still hadn’t eaten the film business alive. Though keenly aware of his problems with the anamatronic shark in 1975’s Jaws, director Steven Spielberg was also aware that CGI, while still in its infancy, had significantly advanced the possibilities for special effects since the (on-set) practical effects of 1975.

So Spielberg went ahead. Using a brilliant combination of anamatronics and CGI he crafted a classic movie with effects that still hold up today. Four other Jurassic films have followed, three of them directed by others...

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