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Home Movie Theaters
Contemporary Aesthetics, Green Technology
Kim Wilson  |  Mar 12, 2014
Photos Simon Berlyb

When he set out to build his own home theater, it was this homeowner’s goal to achieve LEED Platinum certification (green home). Due to the sheer size of the residence—14,000 square feet—it was exceptionally difficult to achieve this status.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Jobs
Corey Gunnestad  |  Mar 12, 2014
Picture
Sound
Extras
Interactivity
In the opening scene, Apple Computer Company founder and CEO Steve Jobs enters a room filled with devoted employees like a rock star to thunderous applause. He is the undisputed master of the universe, and everyone knows it. But how did he get here? In the mid 1970s, the notion of a personal home computer was as realistic and practical as flying to the moon on a vacuum cleaner.
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3D Blu-ray Movie ReviewsBlu-ray Movie Reviews
Despicable Me 2
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 12, 2014
Picture
3D-ness
Sound
Extras
When we last saw Gru, our slightly dorky but lovable and (in his own mind) super-villain, he had softened up thanks to the trio of meet-cute orphans. Gru is now happily domesticated, has renounced his bad-guy role, and has converted his villain’s lair into a production facility for a range of delicious jams and jellies.
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Editor's Eye
DTS Studies Brainwaves to Prove Sound Really Matters
Rob Sabin  |  Mar 12, 2014
It’s been said that the sound associated with watching video is “half” of the experience. But is it really? Or is it actually more than half? Or less?

Answering this question was the goal of a clever study recently commissioned by DTS, with an eye toward promoting its new DTS Headphone:X technology. For those unfamiliar, Headphone:X has been at the heart of one of the more impressive CES show demos for the last two years running.

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The S&V Interview
Days of SQ Surpassed: Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 12, 2014
“I didn’t have the courage to go back to any of the masters and try to recreate those beautiful, real echoes,” says Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues about the surround-sound mixes he supervised for six of The Moodies’ “Classic Seven” albums: Days of Future Passed, On the Threshold of a Dream, To Our Children’s Children’s Children, A Question of Balance, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and Seventh Sojourn. (In case you were wondering, there weren’t any multitrack masters available for In Search of the Lost Chord.) All six of those 5.1 mixes — done by Paschal Byrne and Mark Powell and built on the original quad mixes supervised by producer Tony Clarke and constructed by engineer Derek Varnals — appear in Timeless Flight (Threshold/UMC), the band’s mighty, 50-year-career-spanning 17-disc box set. Yes, there is a more economical 4-disc version available, but the mondo box is the only way to fly in 5.1 — if you can find one, that is. “I think Universal needs to press a few more copies,” chuckles Hayward.
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Signals
Ken Gets a Beat Down
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Mar 11, 2014
Ouch! Thank goodness for the Affordable Care Act, because now I’ve got a pre-existing condition called Bruised Ego. Man, oh, man&mdashdid I get a beat down. Even after all the stitches and bandages are removed, I’ll probably always walk a little wobbly.

I made the cardinal error of dismissing two high-rez audio formats. You can tell a man that his wife is hot, you can tell him his horse is ugly, you can even tell him his car is slow. But you should never, ever, tell him his audio format is obsolete...

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LCD TV ReviewsTV Reviews
Vizio M601d-A3R 3D LCD HDTV
Al Griffin  |  Mar 10, 2014

2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $1,400

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Great contrast and screen uniformity
Good looks
Decent set of streaming options
Minus
Slightly inaccurate color
Unimpressive 3D performance

THE VERDICT
Vizio’s 60-incher combines very good value with above-average picture quality.

With the CES in the rearview mirror, it’s time to look ahead to the new TVs that 2014 will bring. Hold on: Was there something we missed as 2013 wound down? Sound & Vision lavished loads of attention on OLED, 4K, and other high-priced TV options in 2013, but what about the budget category? Anything happen there worth looking at?

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Audio Video News
Sharp Announces Availability of Aquos Quattron+ Series TVs
SV Staff  |  Mar 10, 2014
Sharp has announced the nationwide availability of its Aquos Quattron+ series of televisions it unveiled at the 2014 International CES in January. Q+ models accept native 4K signals and incorporate proprietary Revelation technology, which divides each subpixel in the display to create 10 million more subpixels than a standard 1080p HDTV for a playback resolution between standard HD and Ultra HD.
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Bluetooth Speaker Reviews
iLuv SyrenPro Portable Speakers with True Wireless Stereo
Leslie Shapiro  |  Mar 10, 2014
I’ll admit it. I’m over it. Or at least I’m just a little tired of the endless parade of portable Bluetooth speakers that claim to be “stereo.” Sure, if you hold your breath and keep your head positioned precisely in front of the 3-inch wide box, you can almost convince yourself there’s a slight impression of stereo imaging. Worse are systems that claim you can easily pair two devices for true stereo but it turns out that pairing is funky and frustrating and never seems to work. When did stereo become so disposable? The iLuv SyrenPro claimed to be different. Let’s just see about that.

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LCD TV ReviewsTV Reviews
Sony KDL-65W850A 3D HDTV
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 07, 2014

2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $3,300

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Excellent color and resolution
Good blacks and shadow detail
Satisfyingly bright 3D
Minus
Typical LCD off-axis limitations
Minor 3D flicker and ghosting

THE VERDICT
It may lack the headline-grabbing, 4K bling-zing of Sony’s XBR Ultra HD designs, but this 65-inch KDL series HDTV sits at the top of the company’s bread-and-butter line and offers more than enough features and performance to satisfy a wide range of buyers.

With all the ink spilled these days about the trendy but expensive Ultra HDTVs, a plain vanilla HDTV, with its resolution of 1920 x 1080, may seem a little ho-hum. But Ultra HD (4K, or more correctly, 3840 x 2160) is still consumer 4K content-starved with its specs not yet fully complete, and the jury is still out as to whether or not it will offer significant benefits in typical home screen sizes. Its price of admission also remains high. As a result, top-of-the-line, non-Ultra HDTVs, such as Sony’s new KDL-65W850A, remain serious players in the high-end video market.

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