A/V Veteran

Thomas J. Norton | Oct 21, 2006 |

It all starts with the mother glass. That's the foundation for building an LCD panel. Everything else—the individual red, green, and blue elements of each pixel and the interconnects necessary to drive them—are grown on it.

A/V Veteran

Move It!

Thomas J. Norton | Feb 17, 2015 |

The communication advancements of the past few years have made it possible to do some types of work—such as evaluating AV gear and writing about it—from almost anywhere. So I’ve picked up stakes and moved from sunny Southern California to a far less crowded burgh along the Florida panhandle’s Gulf coast.

It wasn’t an easy decision, and a major move after 14 years in one place is worse than having major dental surgery (and far more costly!).

A/V Veteran

Movie Theaters: The Way They Were

Thomas J. Norton | Aug 04, 2020 |

We all have our own early experiences with moviegoing. My mother once told me that when I was two or three she took me to a movie about a dog. I apparently sobbed uncontrollably when the dog got lost and couldn’t find his way home. This probably left a lifelong scar; as the old saying goes, never follow a dog act. I’m not a cat person, perhaps because few movies have ever been made about a cat (well, there was at least one recently about a bunch of them, but let’s not go there!). There was never a Fluffy Come Home.

Once upon a time the movie on the screen was only part of a theater experience; the theater itself was often part of the show.

A/V Veteran

Movie Time in LA

Thomas J. Norton | Mar 11, 2006 |

Last time I mentioned a letter from a reader asking me to recommend great movie theaters he should check out on a visit to Los Angeles. I also suggested that out-of-towners visiting The Big Orange for our upcoming Home Entertainment 2006 show on June 2-4 (you are coming, right?) might want to include a visit to one or more of the best theaters in the world in their plans—particularly if they're from a theater-challenged part of the country. There are new multiplexes in LA <I>suburbs</I>, for example, that are likely better than any movie theater in the entire state of New Mexico (I know from experience, having lived in Santa Fe for 10 years and visited most of the theaters there and in nearby Albuquerque, the state's biggest city by far).

A/V Veteran

Movies for a Summer Night

Thomas J. Norton | Jun 16, 2020 |

We all suffer through choosing a film to play for friends and family on a movie night. This might invariably include Joe and Ann from down the block, the neighborhood’s premier movie fans (apart from you!) who claim to have seen just about everything. Of course, most of what they’ve seen might have been on a 40-inch set (or even an old 27-inch, low definition CRT), constantly interrupted by commercials. Or perhaps new neighbor Bob from across the street, who hasn’t seen a movie in 20 years on anything but his computer — or not at all.

A/V Veteran

Movies Here and There: Spoiled by LA's Superior Theaters

Thomas J. Norton | Feb 26, 2015 |

I lived in the Los Angeles area on two occasions prior to the most recent 14.5 years, each time long enough for me to recognize the superiority of its best movie houses. When I moved from Los Angeles to Santa Fe in 1990 to work for Stereophile, I often vacationed back in LA just to see movies there. Santa Fe’s theaters at the time were depressing at best, and nearby Albuquerque wasn’t much better. In a week in LA I might see 7-8 movies (on one occasion I recall seeing 10!), enough to satisfy my appetite for at least a few months.

These trips continued, and even escalated to twice a year after I began supplementing my writing for Stereophile with major work on the Stereophile Guide to Home Theater...

A/V Veteran

Movin' On Out

Thomas J. Norton | Nov 16, 2021 |

I wrote about moving cross country back in 2015, but there's always more to say on the subject, particularly as it applies to home theater fans with expensive gear to transport safely. No, I'm not moving again, but what with Covid and other incentives, more folks are moving today than ever — particularly out of a few big and management-challenged states such as New York and California.

Moving from the wilds of Glendale California to the (different) wilds of western Florida in 2015 presented me with a number of challenges. But that was nearly seven years ago. Those challenges are somewhat different now, but the basics haven't changed. Moving remains one of life's more disorienting experiences.

A/V Veteran

Moving Daze

Thomas J. Norton | Apr 21, 2015 |

Moving is never fun, and my move from southern California to northwest Florida was particularly challenging. The packing and unpacking were chores I don’t wish on anyone, though the actual transportation from point A to (a distant) point B was, thankfully, relatively uneventful. Some of you may be faced with a similar situation, as spring is invariably the busiest moving season. For the AV fan, with a likely collection of valued components and program software, it can be particularly traumatic.

A/V Veteran

Mummy Musings

Thomas J. Norton | Jun 20, 2017 |

I haven’t seen the latest Tom Cruise iteration of The Mummy. And with its crushing reviews I doubt that I’ll even invest in the inevitable UHD Blu-ray version that, judging from the current domestic box office returns for the film, should show up on Amazon in about two weeks.

The subject isn’t exactly a treasure trove of classic tropes, but has its fans. The original was, of course, the 1932 Boris Karloff classic (in Hollywood, anything that old is deemed a classic). Three other entries turned up in the ‘40s, followed by 1955’s Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy (the latter is definitely on my Bucket List). There was also a quadrilogy (did I just coin a word?) of Mummy movies in the ‘50s from Britain’s Hammer Films, and several animated versions...

A/V Veteran

Music by....

Thomas J. Norton | May 07, 2024 |

How often do you look for the music credit line in a movie you're watching or want to see? Probably not often if ever, unless the composer is one of the big names. That means, in all likelihood, names such as John Williams (essentially retired) or Hans Zimmer. Throw in a few other names you might recognize, such as Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings), the late Jerry Goldsmith (Alien, Tora, Tora, Tora, and countless others), and the also late James Horner (best known for Titanic but that's only one of his many memorable scores).

A/V Veteran

Music Hath Charms

Tom Norton | May 28, 2024 |

The quotation "To soothe the savage breast" from William Congreve (1629-1670) reads in its entirety, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. To soften rocks, or bend the knotted oak." Congreve might have been on to more than he realized.

A/V Veteran

Music, Movies, and the Classics

Thomas J. Norton | Aug 22, 2023 |

Inspiration for a blog can come from any number of places. In the August/September print edition of Sound & Vision, Ken C. Pohlmann writes about the issues involved in cataloging classical music for access on music streaming sites.

Classical music as a category is a catch-all term for compositions originally played in front of a live audience. Most such music is a century or more old, but adventurous composers are still writing it today. It's similar to modern "popular" music (rock, country, metal, and more) mainly in the fact that it's now experienced more from recordings than viewed and heard live. The late J. Gordon Holt, founder of our sister publication, Stereophile didn't, as far as I know, deprecate popular music, but was a strong proponent of well-recorded classical music, viewing it as the only genre fully suited for judging audio gear. Was he right?

A/V Veteran

Musings in HDMI 1.3 Video

Thomas J. Norton | Apr 15, 2007 |

HDMI 1.0 was introduced to the market in 2002. As a means of carrying both digital audio and video between the source and the display, it offered several advantages over competing technologies, the most prominent being IEEE 1393, commonly known as FireWire. HDMI carried both audio and video, and also offered alluring security advantages that appealed, in particular, to Hollywood.

A/V Veteran

Musings on HDMI Audio

Thomas J. Norton | Apr 22, 2007 |

Previously, on this blog (see below), I discussed the upgrades that HDMI 1.3 offered for video. Most of them, in my opinion, were nice to have as a hedge against future improvements in sources and displays, but did not offer any real benefits with present and foreseeable video formats, both standard and high definition. As far as video is concerned, then, I saw no reason to toss out your present gear or hold off a purchase until there's a wide range of sources, switchers, and displays with HDMI 1.3. That will likely be a long wait.

A/V Veteran

My Big Fat, Super-Duper CES Wrap-Up

Thomas J. Norton | Jan 11, 2017 |

Now that I have your attention…CES 2017 is in the history books. While I haven't yet heard the final attendance, I'm certain that somewhere north of 150,000 people were jockeying for position when I visited the Las Vegas Convention Center, the heart of the event. It's also supplemented by several other venues, including the Venetian Hotel, traditionally the site of the specialty (i.e., high-end) audio exhibits.

The video high point of the big show for me was Sony's CLETIS (Crystal LED Integrated System)...

Search form

A/V Veteran

Pages