LATEST ADDITIONS

Audio Video News
Sony Standalone Blu-ray Player Delayed Again
 |  Oct 22, 2006

If things keep going the way they have been Toshiba's HD DVD format just might win the format war by forfeit. Reports began circulating around the web Friday that Sony's BDP-S1 standalone Blu-ray player would not only miss its scheduled debut on October 25th, but wouldn't appear until early December. Sure enough, the SonyStyle web site that is taking pre-orders for the players now shows its targeted availability as "on or about December 4, 2006."

Continue Reading »
The S&V Interview
HT Talks To . . . Morgan Spurlock
Chris Chiarella  |  Oct 21, 2006  |  First Published: Oct 22, 2006
The creator of Super Size Me continues to break new ground with his TV Show 30 Days, letting viewers see what life is really like in someone else's shoes.

For Super Size Me, the Academy Award–nominated documentary with a bold premise and the director as a guinea pig, Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days and limited himself to the minimal exercise of the average American. He miraculously survived, with quite a story to tell. His success brought the opportunity to try a variety of even edgier eye-opening, month-long sociocultural experiments, in some cases aided by thoughtfully chosen volunteers, for his series 30 Days on the FX channel. With season one now on DVD from Fox and season two underway, Spurlock gave us 30 minutes to chew the fat.

Continue Reading »
Custom Installation How-To
Invisible Speakers
Paul Scarpelli  |  Oct 21, 2006  |  First Published: Oct 22, 2006
Considerations for choosing custom-install speakers.

In the early 1980s, as an audio salesperson for a Chicago-area A/V retail/custom-install store, I fielded a phone call from Godehard Guenther, the founder and president of a/d/s/. We were one of the largest dealers for their fine line of automotive speakers, and he wanted photos of some of our high-end auto-sound installations featuring a/d/s/. "We don't even have a car-stereo department," I responded, freezing him mute. "We're installing your speakers into the walls of homes." This brilliant former NASA engineer and one-time employee of Wernher von Braun was dumbfounded. Car speakers cut into the walls of houses—what a concept.

Continue Reading »
Blu-ray Player Reviews
So. . .This Is Blu-ray?
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Oct 21, 2006  |  First Published: Oct 22, 2006
Inside Samsung's BD-P1000 Blu-ray player.

It's rare that a product will get journalists from different publications all calling each other—and by rare I mean never. But that's what happened with Samsung's BD-P1000. There have been calls back and forth between different magazines, then different manufacturers. Even content providers have been keeping the phone lines busy for the past few weeks. At first, it was to see if everyone was seeing the same things, stemming from disbelief. Then, it was thoughts on what was going on. Next, it was trying to find answers. And it all started with this little DVD, er, Blu-ray player. (See my full review on page 126.)

Continue Reading »
A/V Veteran
Mother Glass
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 21, 2006

It all starts with the mother glass. That's the foundation for building an LCD panel. Everything else—the individual red, green, and blue elements of each pixel and the interconnects necessary to drive them—are grown on it.

Continue Reading »
Ears On
Boltz CD600, CDEXP-T, CD600x2 CD Racks
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 20, 2006
Buying a fancy CD rack may seem counterintuitive in the iPod era. After, even a drop-dead-gorgeous piece of industrial design like the Boltz CD600X2 still takes up space. Isn't it more elegant to rip everything and dump your discs?
Continue Reading »
Fred Manteghian Blog
Sling Batter Batter!
Fred Manteghian  |  Oct 19, 2006

Slingbox, makers of an internet aware media server of heretofore limited interest to our readers, has burst into the home theater aficionado market with their newly announced Slingbox PRO. How new? I tried to get one before I went to Japan, but that wasn't going to happen. (….turning to the audience for a soliloquy, Fred reveals that it often takes much time between an announcement and an actual product. Sssh . . . don't tell Bill Gates).

Continue Reading »
Projector Reviews
Mitsubishi HC5000U Front Projector: On the Bench
Shane Buettner  |  Oct 19, 2006
  • $4,500
  • 1920x1080 three-chip LCD
  • Key Connections: HDMI and DVI inputs, rest TBD
Features We Like: Three-chip 1080p at an outrageous price, Silicon Optix processing, dynamic iris for deep blacks, motorized lens shift and zoom, 5,000 hour specified bulb life
Continue Reading »
Ears On
Some P2P Sites Hazardous to PC Health
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 19, 2006
Lawsuits from the RIAA are not the only hazards for the intrepid file sharer. Simply downloading P2P software can pollute your PC with nuisance software. The most notorious example remains Kazaa, which paid more than $100 million to settle music-industry lawsuits, but is still listed as badware by stopbadware.org. That report is a few months old, but according to the McAfee SiteAdvisor, the Kazaa site still exposes PC users to what "some people consider adware, spyware, or other unwanted programs." In addition, it links to firstadsolution.com, "which our analysis found to be deceptive or fraudulent." SiteAdvisor gives similar warnings about BearShare. Limewire and Morpheus get a clean bill of health, but beware of other sites that offer free downloads of Limewire and Morpheus software—and that includes most of those listed as Google-sponsored links! By the way, the SiteAdvisor is a free plug-in for Internet Explorer or Firefox that festoons Google, Yahoo, or MSN search results with green- or red-light bugs to warn you of PC health hazards. Click on the bugs and they'll give you information like that quoted above. SiteAdvisor is totally goodware—it costs nothing to install and may keep you out of loads of trouble.
Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
Big-Time Warner Classics To Debut On HD DVD
 |  Oct 18, 2006  |  First Published: Oct 19, 2006

The big releases on next-gen HD media keep pouring in just in time for the holiday season and again, Warner is leading the charge by releasing one of the real treasures in its catalog, <I>Casablanca</I>, on HD DVD. The Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman classic joins the somewhere between camp classic and minor classic sci-fi flick <I>Forbidden Planet</I> starring none other than Robbie the Robot, and 1962's <I>Mutiny on the Bounty</I> starring Marlon Brando on HD DVD.

Continue Reading »

Pages

X