LATEST ADDITIONS

Samsung The latest DLP big screens from Samsung are led by the HLR5688W, which measures 56 inches (diagonal) and boasts a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. Yep, that's enough for ultra-high 1080p (progressive-scan) resolution, folks.

In case you're just joining us, there's a whole new world of entertainment material to be enjoyed in your living room, beyond what you'll find in your DVD rack or emanating from your cable/satellite feed. Many folks like me are amassing quite a large collection of music, videos, and photos on the PC, and that there Internet has a lot to offer, too. The convergence of PC and home theater is certainly nothing new, but, until now, this union has been attainable only through a series of clever add-ons (not the first marriage to benefit from the use of electric appliances). What if the connection to the computer—and its many perks—was an integral part of your home theater gear, and it was wireless to boot?

Panasonic is among the many manufacturers that now make combo VHS/DVD recorders; one of their current models is the DMR-E75V. This unit includes a VHS hi-fi VCR and a DVD drive that records on DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs (but not on DVD-RW), and it plays these formats, as well as DVD-Video, CD, CD-R/-RW (recorded with either normal CD or MP3 audio), and videoCD. It can even play DVD-Audio discs, but it only outputs two channels. I found out that playing DVD-Audio involves some sort of downmixing, but I was unable to get any more specific details of the process.

There is a reason why we say a display product's color temperature should be 6500 kelvins. There is a reason why we say color points are "off." There is a reason video has set parameters that define what it is supposed to look like. The reason is that people a lot smarter than us figured out what looks the best and wrote down what a display should do to look that way.