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Audio Video News
Added to the Archives This Week
 |  Apr 13, 2003

Fred Manteghian gets his paws on the <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/showarchives.cgi?107">MartinLogan Descent subwoofer</A> and is clearly ready to rumble. Has FM finally found the fat-bottomed match to his beloved Prodigys?

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Audio Video News
News Corp. Buying DirecTV
Barry Willis  |  Apr 13, 2003

More than a year of relentless campaigning to acquire DirecTV ultimately put EchoStar exactly back where it started, but patiently waiting in the wings has paid off handsomely for News Corp. and its CEO Rupert Murdoch.

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Audio Video News
Software Reviews
HT Staff  |  Apr 10, 2003
DVD: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets—Warner Brothers
Audio: 5
Video: 4
Extras: 5
I confess: I've read the books, and I couldn't wait to see Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Hagrid on DVD again. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has its share of problems, though, and most of them involve pacing. I found myself thinking, "This is the most exciting part of the book, so why am I bored?" The answer is that, at 161 minutes, this movie is simply too long. I can't imagine why this thing needed to go longer than two hours.
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Audio Video News
Coming Attractions
HT Staff  |  Apr 10, 2003
Morel
You can't deny the appeal of twins, and Morel's new high-end Octwin speaker is no exception. The Octave/Octwin Series is a modular loudspeaker system based around the Ocatve unit, which houses a 5.25-inch rear-vented woofer and a 1.12-inch tweeter. The Octwin is simply a combination of two Octave units, which you can arrange vertically (as shown here) or horizontally to form a center-channel unit. The Octave's cabinet is made of Corian, a material that resembles marble but incorporates the acoustic qualities of more-traditional enclosure materials. Available in a black or white piano finish, a pair of Octaves costs $4,400, and a pair of Octwins costs $8,000.
Morel
(800) MOREL-14
www.morelhifi.com
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Bookshelf Speaker Reviews
B&W DM600 Series 3 Home Theater Speakers
Daniel Kumin  |  Apr 09, 2003
Photos by Tony Cordoza For half a century, British speaker maker B&W has been very successful following a strategy of incrementally improving its designs year after year. Building on solid foundations is hard to argue with.
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Other Tech
Totally Tubeless
David Katzmaier  |  Apr 09, 2003
Photo by Tony Cordoza All diagrams by Dimitry Schidlovsky except for the LCD which is by Mark Schrieder. Given that cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) provide the best pictures, why are so many companies moving away from tubes and into new technologies? Because that's how they can make the thinner and lighter TVs everybody's clamoring for.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Copy Rights
Brian C. Fenton  |  Apr 09, 2003
I finally began to trust my 8-year-old son with my electronic equipment and software-he understands my warnings about disc care now that one of his favorite PlayStation titles got scratched so that it crashes at the same point every time. But now a DVD from my three-disc set of The Simpsons' first season has disappeared.
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Tracking Surround
Robert Ripps  |  Apr 09, 2003
Click here to view this article (PDF)
Tower Speaker Reviews
Polk LSi Speaker System
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Apr 09, 2003  |  First Published: Apr 10, 2003
Speakers everywhere: towering gloss-black monoliths in the front, triangles on the sides, and rectangles in the center and back. Polk's LSi speaker system can technically be a 7.3 system, as the powered towers can double as subs. If you're in the mood to count, this system has 27 drivers, including nine tweeters, with 465 watts spread between 40 inches of woofer. That's a lot of drivers. But don't be afraid; the inside isn't full of stars. This system is modular enough that you can break it down into as many or as few pieces as you—or your wallet—see fit.
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Samsung HLM617W Rear-Projection HD Monitor
Mike Wood  |  Apr 09, 2003  |  First Published: Apr 10, 2003
Samsung's HLM617W HD monitor combines rear-projection and DLP technologies in one fine display.

There's something ironic about a rear-projection DLP display. A front or rear DLP projector utilizes millions of microscopic mirrors that reflect light toward or away from the screen for each of the image's pixels. A rear-projection display reflects this projected image off of a large mirror, which bends the image so that it will fit within a shallow, confined space. Samsung's HLM617W makes good use of all of these mirrors in their first 61-inch rear-projection DLP monitor.

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