LATEST ADDITIONS

Tom Norton  |  Feb 13, 2025
This blog will be old-hat for many veteran Sound & Vision readers, but there are always newbies flummoxed by this whole LED vs OLED vs Micro LED business.

The oldest and most basic form of a flat screen television is the LCD, or Liquid Crystal Display. A layer of liquid crystals is sandwiched between two layers of polarizing filters. When an electric signal is applied to those filters (that signal being the source to be displayed) the liquid crystals align in changing patterns to produce the moving and (where needed) color image.

 |  Feb 04, 2025
Wicked
Video
Audio
Extras

I suppose we could Google the actual budget of Wicked, but it’s more fun to sit here and marvel, muttering, “This movie must have cost a fortune!” The production values are off the charts, with hundreds of impeccably costumed dancers hoofing their hearts out in brilliantly realized locales.

Chris Chiarella  |  Feb 04, 2025
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Picture
Sound
Extras

Incubus (1966)
Picture
Sound
Extras

The Cell (2000)
Picture
Sound
Extras

Arrow’s January slate of new 4K discs includes three eclectic films in elegant limited editions. We took them for a spin to see if they have the goods under the hood.

The news that Quentin Tarantino’s violent, brilliant World War II epic Inglourious Basterds was coming to Arrow 4K is, for me at least, a perfect example of mixed emotions...

Mark Henninger  |  Feb 03, 2025  |  First Published: Jan 27, 2025

Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value
PRICE: $599

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Excellent clarity and detail
Three-dimensional soundstage
Supports HDMI ARC and CEC control
Full-featured remote
Attractive and compact
Minus
Modest maximum volume when used without a sub
No phono input

The Verdict
If you’ve ever been burned by a soundbar that looked sleek but sounded like a tin can, the REN might just restore your faith in compact all-in-one systems.

I’ve spent a little over a month with a pair of Kanto REN active speakers in my living room setup, and I’ve enjoyed every single minute of it.

Mike Mettler  |  Jan 31, 2025

Box sets are investments. Not just in terms of their usually lofty SRPs, but also in regard to the amount of time and attention needed/required to listen to, enjoy, and fully absorb the multiple hours’ worth of music they hold. Read music editor Mike Mettler’s combo deep-dive review of five recent, cool music box sets you may have missed, and find out why they all belong in your collection as soon as your wallet allows. . .

Chris Chiarella  |  Jan 26, 2025
Jackie Brown (1997)
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Sound
Extras

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)
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Sound
Extras

Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)
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Sound
Extras

Newly arrived on Ultra HD Blu-ray from Lionsgate is this trifecta from the canon of auteur filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, all making their 4K disc debuts. Do they kill?

Jackie Brown 4K
For the longest time, I resisted watching Jackie Brown for the simple reason that I admire Quentin Tarantino first and foremost as a writer par excellence, and JB was him indulging his fondness of the great Elmore Leonard rather than conjuring wholly new realms as he had done with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction before it. The resulting adaptation of the book Rum Punch can rightly be considered lesser Tarantino...

Mark Henninger  |  Jan 23, 2025

Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value
PRICE: $4,999

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Exceptional Bass Performance
High-Quality Construction
Versatile and User-Friendly
Elevates Overall System Performance
Minus
No Built-in Room Correction
Price Point is high (but still a great value)

THE VERDICT
Look, I get that there's a ton of subwoofers out there. And some of them are probably pretty good. But the Perlisten R18s is in a league of its own. This thing is an absolute beast. But it's not just about raw power. The R18s is also incredibly musical. It blends seamlessly with your main speakers and transforms just about any speaker system into a full-range one.

I love deep bass and have spent exceptional amounts of time and money over three-plus decades pursuing its clean, accurate reproduction. I bought my first pair of subwoofers over thirty years ago. At AVS Forum, where the DIY section was a hotbed of bassaholics in the pre-Facebook group era, I discovered the joys of infrasonic bass reproduced at levels you can feel. It was a brave new world and no subwoofers available to consumers seemed able to perform the tricks that the DIY monsters delivered.

Barb Gonzalez  |  Jan 20, 2025

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $99

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Excellent Video Quality with Dolby Vision and HDR10+
Excellent Dolby Atmos Sound Separation
Backlit hands-free voice remote control with mute switch
Minus
No headphone jack on remote
Shortcut button can’t be programmed for specific apps
Search results favor Roku Channel offerings

The Verdict
The Roku Ultra 2024 uses the best video and audio formats for an excellent home theater streaming experience. Its backlit hands-free voice remote and improved Roku OS14 make accessing the content you want to watch easier.

Since 2016, Roku Ultra has been the flagship model of the Roku streamer line. Its emphasis has been on providing the best sound and video experience of any Roku device. This year's model fulfills that promise.

Mike Mettler  |  Jan 10, 2025

Kendrick Lamar is a busy man these days. Not only is the West Coast hip-hop superstar headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl LIX on February 9, 2025, at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans and prepping for the Grand National Tour with SZA for 19 stadium dates starting in April 2025, but he also found time to drop a surprise new album, GNX, on November 22, 2024, just six months after his majorly successful May 2024 release, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers—and it’s all in full-on, glorious Dolby Atmos at that. Read Mike Mettler’s review to find out if the Dolby Atmos mixes of two key GNX tracks, “Luther” and “TV Off,” make the 360-degree grade. . .

Mark Henninger  |  Jan 10, 2025
2025 may very well be remembered as a watershed year for in-cabin entertainment. The writing’s been on the wall for years, but it was impossible to ignore during the avalanche of news and announcements from CES 2025. Although I did not attend this year’s show, every report I’ve read and conversation I’ve had points toward one overarching theme: the car has become the new entertainment frontier.

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