LATEST ADDITIONS

The lights will go out on UltraViolet on July 31 when the cloud-based movie-rights locker/library will be discontinued. UltraViolet’s demise became inevitable when Movies Anywhere launched in 2017 with a greater number of movie studio and streaming partners. While Movies Anywhere has most of the same partners as UltraViolet, users will still want to take steps to be sure all of their movies will be available after July.

PRICE $1,499

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Rich, full-range sound
Fine imaging
Great-looking and nicely finished
Minus
Center-channel not a perfect timbral match with towers
Subwoofer output and extension does not fully complement towers

THE VERDICT
This highly affordable Q Acoustics 5.1 package offers big, warm, dynamic stereo sound from compact towers, and good movie sound with or without the included sub.

Q Acoustics is a relatively new British loudspeaker manufacturer who has made a goodly amount of noise in the value/performance speaker arena for a dozen years now. I count the firm among the 21st-century flowering of affordable-speaker-makers catalyzed by partnerships with Chinese manufacturing firms and ever-more powerful and widely accessible computer-modeling design processes. The result of this confluence has been a bounty of excellent designs in the most competitive price ranges, from new and old names alike, that in the aggregate make the home-theater dollar go further than ever before.

MartinLogan announced the relaunch of its Installer Series of speakers at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) show that opened yesterday in Amsterdam.

My experience covering home video extends back to the early days of DVD. But of all the new technologies and formats I've covered in that time, none has generated as much confusion as high dynamic range (HDR). In this article, I will attempt to demystify the subject of HDR, a technology that I find to be the most significant development to hit home video in years.