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Audio Video News
Software Reviews
HT Staff  |  Jul 18, 2003
DVD: Basic—Columbia TriStar
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
John Travolta oozes duplicitous charisma, Connie Nielsen adds international gravitas, and Samuel L. Jackson shouts a lot in this confusing tale of a military exercise gone wrong, and its aftermath. Or was the entire fiasco was just an elaborate ruse? This labyrinthine-for-its-own-sake, utterly unsatisfying would-be thriller is too complicated to be entertaining and too much of a trifle for most audiences to care.
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Audio Video News
Coming Attractions
HT Staff  |  Jul 18, 2003
Apex
If you have the living-room space for a monster of a display, check out Apex's GB65HD12W 65-inch rear-projection TV. In addition to its 65-inch-diagonal, 16:9-shaped screen, this display offers features galore. A 3-D Y/C comb filter, scan-velocity modulation, dual-tuner PIP, automatic digital convergence, and 3:2-pulldown correction are all on board. This flexible display has an adjustable native resolution of 480p, 720p, or 1080i. The GB65HD12W's connection suite includes component, S-video, composite, and DVI video inputs, analog stereo inputs, monitor outputs, and an RF antenna jack. You get a whole lotta TV for the not-so-steep price of $2,000.
Apex
(909) 930-1239
www.apexdigitalinc.com
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Audio Video News
Panasonic's New DVD Recorders
HT Staff  |  Jul 15, 2003
Couch potatoes with an insatiable urge to record will love Panasonic's new DVD recorders. Announced July 14, the DMR-E100H and DMR-E200H both will feature 120GB and 160GB hard disk drives, respectively. With its 120GB hard disk drive the new DMR-E100H can record up to 160 hours of video in EP mode. The E-200H can record up to 212 hours of video on its 160GB hard drive. The recorders will also include slots for SD memory cards and PCMCIA slots for other types of memory. Both new machines will make their Japanese debut in August, with an autumn date set for the DMR-E100H's global debut.
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S&V Picks: Summer Travel Fun
Shannon Mccarthy  |  Jul 14, 2003

Driven to Extremes Take a road-trip refresher course with The Educational Archives: Driver's Ed (Fantoma Films, $25). This retro-cool DVD unspools ten classroom film shorts - with titles like "Joy Ride," "Alco Beat," and "The Last Prom" - that alert teens to the dangers of delinquent driving.

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Other Tech
TiVo Series 2 DVR
Michael Antonoff  |  Jul 14, 2003

Photos by Tony Cordoza

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Denon AVR-2803 Digital Surround Receiver
David Ranada  |  Jul 14, 2003

Photos by Tony Cordoza As much as we'd all like to own a flagship model receiver, they aren't for everybody. Though well equipped and high powered, they tend to be massive and extremely expensive. If you set your sights just a little bit lower - especially when it comes to power - you can get an awful lot of receiver for substantially less money.

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HDTV SetupHDTV Tech
Baby Steps to HDTV
Rebecca Day  |  Jul 14, 2003  |  First Published: Jul 15, 2003
The process may be painful, but the result is a bundle of joy.

Every year, I throw a Super Bowl party. This year I hosted an AFC Championship party instead because I wanted to show my friends championship football in HD. The only post-season game I knew I could receive in HD was CBS's broadcast of the AFC Championship, which I pulled in using an off-air antenna. My friends, predictably, were blown away by high-def football.

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Tower Speaker Reviews
Revel Performa F50 speaker system
Chris Lewis  |  Jul 14, 2003  |  First Published: Jul 15, 2003
Revel with a Cause: Innovative drivers are the core of Revel's next Performa generation.

A successful loudspeaker is, of course, the sum of all of its parts. As important as the cabinet, crossover network, and other elements are, though, drivers are the foundation. It's hardly surprising that the quest for the perfect driver began even before the debut of the first loudspeaker. The ultimate goal, for dynamic drivers at least, is getting the cone to act like a pure piston, preventing the diaphragm from changing form in any way as it moves in and out. Cone material is vitally important in several ways, not least of which is walking the fine line between having the low mass and speed necessary to respond to even the most subtle electrical cues and having the strength to endure punishment and the stiffness to avoid distortion-inducing cone breakup.

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Other Source Component ReviewsSurround Processor Reviews
Lexicon MC-8 Pre/Pro and RT-10 universal disc player
Chris Lewis  |  Jul 14, 2003  |  First Published: Jul 15, 2003
Lexicon's next generation arrives with a bang.

You can't please everybody, especially in the home theater world. Lexicon came close in 2000 with the release of the MC-12, an end-all pre/pro that carried on the company's tradition of performance but also addressed the few issues that people had with earlier Lexicon controllers like the MC-12's direct predecessor, the MC-1. Almost everyone, myself included, loved the MC-1's sound, tweakability, and just about everything else. As with any high-profile piece, though, people did raise questions about the MC-1—some legitimate, some not. The MC-12 directly addressed the important issues, like the lack of analog bypass and a six-channel input. (Remember that, when the MC-1 debuted, SACD and DVD-Audio were still just a twinkle in the audiophile's eye.) Even many of the peripheral issues, such as aesthetics, got some attention on the MC-12. The only remaining issue was price, as the MC-12 cost a few thousand dollars more than the MC-1. True, but Lexicon didn't replace the MC-1 with the MC-12; they simply provided the MC-12 as another option.

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Projector Reviews
Marantz VP-12S2 DLP projector
Kevin Miller  |  Jul 14, 2003  |  First Published: Jul 15, 2003
One giant leap closer to CRT.

Marantz's VP-12S2, the company's top-of-the-line one-chip DLP projector, has a native resolution of 1,280:720 and utilizes the latest Texas Instruments HD2 Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) chip. This new chip offers a significant increase in contrast ratio and black-level performance over last year's VP-12S1 model. The VP-12S2's video processing also incorporates Faroudja's proprietary DCDi deinterlacing for video-based sources and 3:2 pulldown for film-based material. In fact, Marantz uses the full Faroudja chipset, which includes the video decoder, the video enhancer, the 2D comb filter, and DCDi. The latest Marantz DLP offering is definitely one of the top performers in its category.

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