<I>The <A HREF="http://www.he2006.com">Home Entertainment Show 2006</A> is only weeks away, running June 1–4 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles. Here is a sampling of some of the giveaways and special events that will take place at the Show. Several of these should be of particular interest to home theater enthusiasts.</I>
The Home Entertainment Show 2006 is only weeks away, running June 1–4 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles. Here is a sampling of some of the giveaways and special events that will take place at the Show. Several of these should be of particular interest to home theater enthusiasts.Ladies' Day XM Satellite Radio–Oprah's digital radio home–would like to invite all women to the show. It's Ladies' Day on Sunday. All women get into the show for free with any regular adult admission on Sunday, June 4 from 10am–5pm.
<I>UAV</I> Editor Tom Norton recently reviewed the DNP Supernova screen. At the same time as Tom was looking at the Supernova, I was evaluating the Screen Innovations Visage screen, which licenses the screen material technology from DNP.
HD DVD is here, sort of, and Blu-ray Disc is to follow early this summer. While there are a still a lot of ifs, ands, or buts that will only be answered once we've seen a good deal of hardware and software, now is as good a time as any to tell you what we know about the two formats so far.
You order a DVD, then it's custom-made and shipped. That's the beauty of the new DVD on Demand service from Amazon, partnering with CustomFlix. Producers send DVD or tape masters, which are then placed on a secure server for ordering from the Amazon or CustomFlix sites. "Customers receive professional-quality DVDs in overwrapped, Amaray-style cases with full-color covers and lacquer-coated disc faces," says CustomFlix. There are two levels of distribution service: Independent Media Gateway for indies with fewer than 50 titles, and Enterprise Media Gateway for the big guns. The latter include NBC, PBS, A&E, the History Channel, and the Biography Channel. You'll be able to order Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show from NBC and Nova from PBS, among other announced titles. Current releases are standard-def but in the future CustomFlix will support HD DVD, Blu-ray, and WMV-HD DVD. On-demand distribution systems generally trade a greater manufacturing cost per copy for the flexibility of replicating one unit at a time, so they're most suitable for small projects, like DWL Video's lovely epic on the 17 Year Cicada. A parallel cottage industry has grown up around on-demand book printing, including both my home theater guide and my restaurant guide.
HD DVDs are going to continue to trickle into stores over the next few months from Warner and Universal in particular, and French distributor Studiocanal has announced it will release 20 movies on the format this year. There's a surprising lack of coordination on the part of studios and retailers regarding the release dates of the titles.
It's here, but only just. On April 18th Toshiba launched the HD DVD format with the release of the $499 HD-A1 player. On the same day Warner released The Last Samurai and The Phantom of the Opera on HD DVD, and those two titles were joined by Universal's Serenity. Warner's Million Dollar Baby, also scheduled for the launch, was delayed initially but is in stores now. These were joined on April 25th by additional titles, including what is the easily best film released on the format so far, Apollo 13.
Last Sunday I blasted Philips for their technology initiatives to confute the human instinct for avoiding unpleasantness in all its forms (i.e. lame TV commercials) in my blog called
<a href="http://blog.ultimateavmag.com/fredmanteghian/042306Philips/" target=new>The Perfect Philips Screwdriver</a>. Apparently, the company did have a statement on their website that I had not been able to find that sought to "clarify" the issue from Philips point of view (thank you Gary Kaye of rave.com for finding it). I don't know about you, but I'm sick of companies and politicians trying to cover up their poo in fragrant roses. I'm going take a few minutes to rub their noses in it.
While the flood last week wasn’t nearly as bad as the one in October, we decided to do what we should have done that time: The carpets in our testing lab were ripped out, and the floor painted a lovely shade of gray. So the lab looks a whole lot better, and there isn’t the worry about mold and such. The downside, all the computers, test equipment, phone lines, Ethernet lines, and the myriad of other cables that connected gear to gear and gear to stuff, all still need to be run and plugged back in. The bottom picture is our temporary storage (as in, the listening room). Despite the mess, that was only half the amount of stuff in the lab. Spring cleaning indeed.
