You need ear protection for a loud home project (or for use at work) but want to be able to listen to music or (Sound & Vision) podcasts rather than complete the job in (near) silence. What to do?
Yeah, we keep hearing how the awesomely versatile, stupendously well-performing, and tremendously high-value audio/video receiver is going away, soon to be replaced by all manner of soundbars and soundbases, self-powered tabletop wireless speakers, or perhaps just your old Aunt Matilda playing her kazoo from atop a stool in your living room.
Two-thirds of U.S. adults — 170 million people — are planning to spend an average of $478 on tech gifts this holiday season as overall tech spending reaches a record breaking $96.8 billion, according to the Consumer Technology Association’s 24th annual holiday outlook forecast.
A I own a Panasonic plasma TV and a Denon AV receiver. When I connect my sources directly to the TV, the picture looks great. But when I run my Oppo BDP-105 Blu-ray player, cable TV box, and Amazon Fire TV media player through the Denon using HDMI cables, the picture quality degrades. Is there a way I can work around the picture quality problems caused by my AVR? I want to continue using the AVR for audio switching and prefer to not have to connect sources directly to the TV. —Henry Yeboah / via e-mail
AT A GLANCE Plus
Excellent contrast
Superb color and resolution
Looks good from every angle
Unique panel-based sound system
Minus
No color management system
Some white clipping
THE VERDICT
While it might appear that OLED UHDTVs are popping up everywhere, the most visible supplier to date has been LG. But Sony, by acquiring OLED panels from LG and adding its own electronics, processing, styling, and unique features, has jumped into the fray, landing firmly on both feet with a solid performer.
Sony’s new OLEDs (the 65-incher reviewed here has a 55-inch sibling, and a 77-incher will be available by press time) haven’t yet taken pride of place at the top of Sony’s TV lineup. That honor belongs to the Z9D (Sound & Vision, January 2017 and soundandvision.com), now spruced up with the imminent addition (as I write) of Dolby Vision for 2017. But you might think of the OLEDs as stepping stones to Sony’s future in self-emissive displays—the spectacular, commercially oriented, and wall-sized CLEDIS LED display Sony demonstrated at the 2017 CES comes to mind. But that’s the future. Sony’s OLEDs are now. As of today, Sony’s OLED implementation uses a panel supplied by LG (but with Sony’s own secret processing sauce). At its press-time street price of about $4,000 in the 65-inch version, it was roughly comparable, if not a touch less expensive, than LG’s own like-sized C7P model.
It’s 1973, and a U.S. survey and mapping expedition, supported by an Army helicopter unit recently released from the wind-down of the Vietnam War, heads toward the previously unexplored Skull Island.
If they’d brushed up on their old movies, they wouldn’t have been gobsmacked, and soon simply smacked, when they spot and engage with a really big ape. Big enough to squish all previous versions of the character under his big toe. Big enough to easily challenge the helicopters and crews. I mean really, really big.
Discovering life on Mars would be the crowning achievement in any scientist’s career, so when a team on the International Space Station receives a care package of samples from the red planet, they can’t wait to begin their experiments. To their surprise, they discover there was once life on Mars after all, and they unleash a creature that evolves at an accelerated pace that has its eyes on the planet below them.