The luxury video business is hard. Don’t believe me? Consider companies like Pioneer, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Runco, Escient, and ReQuest. And those are just a few brands that have either exited that market or no longer exist. One company that has consistently delivered the highest quality home theater experience since its inception 20 years ago is Kaleidescape.
Cognitive dissonance, that's what it is. When we are growing up, small and weak, we yearn to be big and strong. We naturally admire anything that dominates. And yet as adults most of us do not dominate. We must endure submission and we resent it. We root for the underdog. So, how do you feel about Sonos beating the tar out of Google?
It's the end of the world and Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) doesn't feel fine. He's unhinged and uneasy. He's been sleep- walking, waking up in the middle of golf courses, and experiencing waking daydreams. A jet engine has fallen from the sky and crashed into his bedroom and a giant rabbit named Frank is telling him the world will end soon unless he stops it. But how?
After almost a year-and-a-half in lockdown, I was honored to be the first member of the press to experience the KEF Music Lounge Theater. In late May, I visited the company's U.S. headquarters in Marlboro, NJ and received a warm—and long overdue—Jersey welcome from KEF VP David Kroll and marketing director Stephanie Scola.
Q Way back when surround sound at home was the new big thing, installing dipole surround speakers at either side of the main listening position was recommended. Are dipoles still the optimal surround speaker choice now that technology has transitioned to object-based audio formats like Dolby Atmos? —Steve Benoff, Beaumont, CA
In case you haven't noticed, big screen TVs are becoming almost affordable. And by big screen, I mean BIG, as in over 80-inches diagonal. I was browsing in Sam's Club the other day where rows of TVs in that size were on sale. If an 85-inch Vizio P-Series Quantum X at $2,900 isn't surprising enough, how about an 82-inch Samsung Crystal UHD 7-Series TU700D for $1,396?
Granted, both sets were 2020 models on closeout and not the latest 2021s. The Vizio was that company's best, or next to best, model for 2020, but the Samsung was in a 2020 budget range. But still, about $17 per diagonal inch for the Vizio and $34 per inch for the Samsung?
Monitor Audio, the British company that has been building high-quality speakers for almost a half a century, is putting the final touches on the seventh generation of the Silver Series it introduced 22 years ago.
EISA, or the Expert Imaging and Sound Association, is an organisation representing 60 of the most respected special interest publications and websites from 29 countries that cover Hi-Fi, Home Theater Video, Home Theater Audio, Photography, Mobile Devices, and In-Car Electronics. Every year EISA's Expert Group members, including editors from this publication, test a very wide range of new products from their field of expertise before comparing results and voting to decide the cream of every product category.
George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion premiered in London back in 1913. Loosely based on an ancient Greek myth, its plot involves a linguistics professor, Henry Higgins, teaching a bedraggled flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to speak proper English—not only well enough to pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball, but to "get her a job as a lady's maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English!"