Five television stations have launched NEXTGEN TV service in Chicago, bringing more programming options and other enhancements to viewers who have a NEXTGEN-compatible TV or set-top box and antenna to receive TV over the air.
What a difference a year makes. In early 2023, I was thinking about ultra-short-throw (UST) projectors in the living room, but saw evidence that TVs would compete in the 100-inch size category. Now it’s a year later, and 100-inch TVs are multiplying like rabbits while prices continue to drop.
For the past few years, Epson has been on a crusade to call out brands that grossly overstate brightness specs in the advertising and product literature they use to promote the projectors they sell. AuKing is the latest brand to receive a public shaming for making deceptive claims regarding the brightness of the cheap projectors it sells on Amazon.
It may surprise you to learn that yesterday was not the past, and tomorrow will not be the future. In fact, it is the opposite. Yesterday will be the future, and tomorrow was the past. I would not make such a bold claim unless I have proof. And I have proof.
Call him the Thin White Chameleon. As pioneering as the late, great David Bowie was as a multitalented artist who came of creative age during the initial wave of the rock era, what comes across most prominently in Moonage Daydream — a provocative documentary helmed by multi-hyphenate director/producer Brett Morgen — is his deeply philosophical nature as a man constantly questioning norms, pushing social mores and cultural boundaries, and seeking cosmic truths.
In the waning weeks of 2023, our last few Top Picks included small and large sets of speakers from two well-known but very different brands and two superb TVs — a quantum-dot OLED and a mini-LED Google TV, both reasonably priced. As we kicked off the New Year, the hits kept coming with an audiophile-caliber streaming amp combo, a state-of-the-art AV preamp/processor that leaves little to the imagination, and a high-performing yet affordable streaming amp. Let’s take a closer look...
On January 29th, Amazon started running ads with its video-on-demand Prime Video streaming service. As announced in September 2023, Prime subscribers must pay an extra $3 a month to watch ad-free.
Marantz just put a cherry on the top of its AV receiver lineup with the Cinema 30, a new flagship model loaded up with the bells and whistles enthusiasts love and the same classy look introduced with 2022’s Top Pick-rated Cinema 50.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Balanced outputs for all channels
Supports four subwoofers
Audyssey MultEQ XT32 with Directional Bass
Dirac Live Bass Control
Easy on-screen setup
Minus
Antiquated front panel interface
Dirac features cost extra
THE VERDICT
An engineering marvel from
Marantz with just about everything
you could ask for in an AV
processor. Just add an amp and
speakers for total immersion.
The AV preamp and surround processor is the less well-known sibling of the AV receiver. The main difference being that processors don’t have built-in amplification. This is a reasonable approach because as a rule amplifiers last a rather long time, and don’t come obsoleted by things like new immersive sound formats or updates to HDMI standards. Going the AV separate route also lets you tailor the amplification to the speaker system whereas AV receivers are forced to split the difference between whatever speakers are connected to it and hope for the best.
I've commented before on finding interesting posts on YouTube. Though marred by incessant commercial interruptions (I keep my TV's remote close enough to exit the promotions as soon as possible) that service's offerings cover endless topics: sports, history, current events, music, and much more...Several recent British documentaries, for example, covered the hazards found in English homes of different eras...I recently discovered another far more serious entry. Running for 86 minutes, The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz (a German production with subtitles and translations where needed) covers the very different stories of two musicians during World War II...The maestro of the title here was Germany's Willhelm Furtwangler, arguably one of the most storied and feted symphonic and opera conductors of the 20th Century.