The Big Picture

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The Big Picture
Scott's Picks
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 09, 2011  | 
With so many products among our reviews that merit Top Picks status, I'd like to share with you my personal favorites from 2011. Of course, all of our Top Picks are worthy of your serious consideration, but these are the ones I'd buy if I was shopping for home-theater products in the entry-level, midrange, and high-end price ranges.
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The Big Picture
Self Defense
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 21, 2010  | 

I get lots of thoughtful, intelligent e-mail from our readers, which I greatly appreciate, even&#151;sometimes especially&#151;when they disagree with my positions. But once in a while, a real doozy arrives in my inbox. Normally, I ignore these rants, but I recently received one that I'd like to share, along with my responses. The original is mostly one very long, convoluted paragraph regarding <A href="http://blog.ultimateavmag.com/ultimate-3d/roger_ebert_hates_3d/">my blog about Roger Ebert's hatred of 3D</A>. I will break it up here and respond to each point in turn, and I'll edit for clarity, doing my best to retain the writer's intended meaning.

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Seoul Man
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 15, 2009  | 

<I>All photos by Scott Wilkinson</I>

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Audio Video NewsThe Big Picture
Shift Happens
Scott Wilkinson  |  Aug 25, 2010  | 
In the fast-paced Web world, nothing remains the same for long. So it is with UltimateAVmag.com. We decided it was time for a major makeover, and the result is now staring you in the face—welcome to the new UAV!
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Sign of the Times
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 12, 2009  | 

As I write this, I'm sitting at Gate 7 in the JetBlue terminal at JFK International Airport, awaiting my flight home after attending the first-ever CEA Line Shows, held June 10 and 11 across the street from the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan. I made the long trip to New York because I wanted to support the concept embodied by the event and encourage it to grow next year.

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The Big Picture
Sony BVM OLED Reference Monitors
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 13, 2011  | 
For outstanding blacks, nothing I've seen at the NAB show comes close to the Sony BVM-E250 25-inch and E170 17-inch OLED monitors ($26,000 and $17,000, respectively). One of the most amazing demos at the show was presented in a totally blacked-out room with three pro reference monitors—a BVM-L231 LCD, BVM-E250 OLED, and BVM-A25 CRT.
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The Big Picture
Sony F65 8K Camcorder
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 13, 2011  | 
With all the 4K digital video cameras at the show, I was surprised to find an 8K camera, the Sony F65. However, even though it has an 8K imager, it outputs 4K. So why use an 8K imager? Because capturing images at a resolution higher than they will be shown can result in better picture quality than capturing at the intended resolution to begin with. No pricing was announced, but I bet it will be six figures.
The Big Picture
Sony SRM-L560 4K LCD Monitor
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 13, 2011  | 
A short movie shot on the Sony F65 8K camera was being shown on the new 56-inch SRM-L560 4K LCD monitor. The detail was super-sharp, but the contrast was not great—the accompanying placard spec'd it at 1200:1, big whoop—and much of the movie consisted of fairly dark scenes. The same material looked much better from a Sony 4K digital-cinema projector on a 16x9-foot Stewart StudioTek 130 screen.
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Specsmanship
Scott Wilkinson  |  Nov 06, 2008  | 

Joel Hoekstra asks a couple of common questions about TV specs:

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The Big PicturePremiere Design
SRS Advanced Rendering Lab
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 08, 2010  | 
A few weeks ago, I visited SRS Labs in Irvine, California, to see—and hear—its new Advanced Rendering Laboratory (ARL). This facility is custom built to test any imaginable physical or psychoacoustic audio system—in other words, it's an audio geek's dream come true.
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The Big Picture
Star Wars 3D Falls Flat
Scott Wilkinson  |  Feb 16, 2012  | 
Last night, I saw Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D—RealD, not Imax, which was showing Journey 2: The Mysterious Island instead. That Dwayne Johnson vehicle looks pretty bad from the trailers I've seen, but I bet the 3D is better than it is in the new Star Wars release.
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Starting From Scratch
Scott Wilkinson  |  Mar 31, 2008  | 

I've been engaged in an interesting e-conversation with Steve Gutierrez, a builder/developer who won a Panasonic plasma at his workplace and wants to install a complete home-media system. Here's the gist of our dialog, but I welcome any comments from readers with suggestions I might have missed.

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The Big Picture
Steve Jobs: Never Enough
Scott Wilkinson  |  Oct 06, 2011  | 
A mere six weeks after stepping down as CEO of Apple and one day after the introduction of the latest iPhone, Steve Jobs passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. His incredible, indelible legacy will be discussed endlessly on TV, on radio, and online in the coming days, and I won't try to summarize it here. Instead, I'd like to share the impact his work has had on my life, both personally and professionally.
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Super 8
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 10, 2011  | 
It's been almost 30 years since Steven Spielberg brought tears to the eyes of moviegoers with E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. Now, J.J. Abrams tells a very similar story for a new generation in Super 8, which opens today. This movie is being shown in 2D only, and like X-Men: First Class, I didn't miss 3D at all.
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The Big Picture
The Dark Knight Rises
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 23, 2012  | 
Last week, I was invited to see a private preview screening of The Dark Knight Rises, three hours before the long-awaited midnight showings on July 20, 2012. The next morning, of course, I awoke to the news of a horrific shooting at one of those showings in Aurora, Colorado, in which 12 people were killed and nearly 60 were wounded, some critically. I have no idea how the movie figured into the gunman's plans—if at all—but the event has certainly cast a pall over what would have otherwise been just another Hollywood mega-blockbuster opening.
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