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Sony 3D Glasses: A Tale of Two Pairs
Thomas J. Norton  |  Nov 09, 2012  | 
In our experience, most active 3D glasses are sensitive to head position or, more precisely, head tilt. With most of them, however, the effect is minor and limited to a slight darkening of the picture.

But Sony's active 3D glasses, up to now, have been different. When using the company's HDTV 3D glasses, a 3D image on the Sony displays we've tested doesn't darken as you tilt your head from side to side. Instead, the left and right images break up, producing significant 3D crosstalk or, as this artifact is more colorfully known, ghosting. In addition, the Sony's 3D color varies with head position, shifting reddish with a tilt in one direction from vertical and bluish in the other. The latter effect makes it impossible to do a reliable 3D calibration; one eyepiece of the 3D glasses has to be placed over the lens of the measurement meter for a 3D calibration, and even a slight tilt can affect the result. Fortunately, the Sony 3D sets we've tested recently have produced visually satisfying 3D color even without a 3D calibration, though it's unlikely to be accurate. Nevertheless, the head-tilt ghosting and color shifting are annoying.

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Sony Goes Flat
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 26, 2007  | 

With Sony's recent announcement that it is discontinuing production of all rear projection sets, both LCD and SXRD, in favor of its flat panel LCD Bravia line, the video display landscape is becoming noticeably thinner. Yes, many major companies—Panasonic, Samsung, and Mitsubishi among them, continue to turn out rear projection televisions. But is the handwriting on the wall for this type of display?

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Sony Quiets the Noise
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 06, 2017  | 
Sony brought along part of an airplane interior to the show. Well, not really, but they used this mock up to demonstrate the effectiveness of their MDR-1000X noise canceling headphones...
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Sony Springs Into 4K
Tom Norton  |  May 01, 2013  | 
Last week Sony put on its best April clothes and entertained the foreign press in Los Angeles. Consumer electronics scribes attended from the U.K, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, and likely others that I (with apologies) can’t recall. Only a few of local CE press were in attendance, including your humble reporter.
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Sony Stages Stunning Demos of its 2019 TV Lineup
Tom Norton  |  May 07, 2019  | 
Sony recently invited journalists to its New York City facilities to brief us on the company’s 2019 TV product strategy, along with comparative demonstrations against the best offerings of its key competitors.
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Sony Wows Showgoers with Crystal LED
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 06, 2017  | 
When Sony showed something they called Crystal LED at a CES few years ago, we all thought it looked intriguing. But then it disappeared. Apparently, however, Sony has continued work on this technology...
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Speaker Placement: Center, Surround, and Overhead
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 14, 2020  | 
My last blog was limited to placement of the left and right speakers in 2-channel system, or just the left and right speakers in a home theater setup. There’s a lot more involved with a full surround sound setup....The remaining speaker channels we haven’t yet discussed are the center, the surrounds, and possibly Dolby Atmos. I’ll limit this discussion to 5.X or 5.X.4 setups, both with and without four Atmos speakers (for newbies, the 0.4 in the 5.2.4 designation describes the number of Atmos speakers, and the X is a stand-in here for the number of subwoofers, most often one or two). There’s a wide range of additional possibilities, including front height speakers, two additional surrounds (7.X.4), more than four Atmos speakers (though we don’t know of any consumer Atmos sources that offer more than four discrete Atmos channels), or only two rather than four Atmos speakers. But I suspect that 5.1.4 or 5.2.4 (five main channels, one or two subs, and four Atmos speakers) will describe most readers’ setups....
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Split and Switch
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 21, 2008  | 

You're got two displays; perhaps a plasma on the wall for day-to-day viewing and a projection screen that drops down in front of it for serious movie watching. Or you want to feed HDMI video to a small screen on your equipment rack as a monitor. Or…whatever. Up to now, it's been difficult to find an affordable device that will split an HDMI source in two. There are a number of such products on the market from companies like Gefen, Key Digital, and PureLink, but they tend to be expensive solutions to a relatively basic problem, often providing more flexibility than you need.

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Star Date: 1997 - Lessons from the Past Still Apply
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 12, 2023  | 
In 1997 I was on the staff of Stereophile magazine as a consulting technical editor, and also a contributor to (and later the editor of) the Stereophile Guide to Home Theater, at the time a nascent publication subsumed into Sound & Vision in the mid 20-aughts (itself a very long story!)

In any case, we were visited that year by Phil Abbate, then a reporter for the AAS (Atlanta Audio Society, today the Atlanta Audio Club). Phil interviewed me during his visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico, then the headquarters of Stereophile. Whether that interview ever made it into the pages of the AAS (or onto the bits of the then also nascent Internet) I don't know. But during a recent effort to sort out my increasingly cluttered files I ran across a copy of that interview, which Phil had sent me shortly after it happened.

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Star Date: 1997 - Lessons from the Past Still Apply, Part 2
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 26, 2023  | 
Part two of an interview did I did more than 25 years ago reveals that not everything has changed when it comes to home audio.
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Stop Press
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 01, 2006  | 

The Blu-ray group has just announced that it is merging with the HD-DVD consortium to produce a consolidated format for high definition on a packaged disc.

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Stranger HDR Things
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 05, 2017  | 
High Dynamic range, or HDR, is perhaps the most exciting of the trio of improvements that Ultra HD brings to the table, the others being a wider color gamut and higher resolution. The images from a flat screen set pop off the screen in a way that the dimensional but often too dim 3D never could. And you don’t need special glasses to see it.

A flat screen set, capable of peak brightness levels of over 1000 nits (just under 300 foot-lamberts) can make the most of an HDR source. HDR program material is mastered for a peak output of either 1000 nits or 4000 nits, with most of that luminance reserved for bright highlights.

But not all displays can hit 1000 nits...

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Subwoofer Setup Steps
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 26, 2022  | 
Audiophiles have an inherent advantage over home theater enthusiasts: when it comes to setting up their systems, they need only make room for two loudspeakers plus a convenient location for the sources and amplifiers needed to drive them. For a home theater we need to find space for more, often much more. Those multiple speakers must also support the screen, and often there isn't much flexibility in where to put the latter—be it a TV or a projector with a separate screen. In any home theater setup the locations for the center, surrounds, and perhaps overhead speakers are then usually fixed by the placement of those front speakers and the main listener/viewer positions, with little room for deviations in a proper setup.

But positioning one or more subwoofers for the best results is a chore that takes time and patience. Subwoofers are relatively rare in 2-channel systems, which is unfortunate because they can achieve soul-satisfying bass while limiting the need for hulking, and expensive, front left and right loudspeakers.

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Subwoofering: 15 Movies with Killer Bass
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 24, 2015  | 
A recent article in the trade publication CE Pro surveyed several industry experts on the material they recommended to check out your subwoofer. I’ve now lost the article in preparing for my cross-country move—almost complete except for the small detail about getting the household furniture and goods delivered! But I do have some ideas of my own which may or may not overlap with that now missing article. I’ll concentrate here on movie soundtracks, in which the benefits of a subwoofer will be most obvious even with the largest main L/R speakers most listeners are likely to be using.
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Survey Suggests Media Rooms More Popular than Dedicated Theaters
Thomas J. Norton  |  May 16, 2023  | 
Home theater encompasses a range of possibilities. For most enthusiasts it's a DIY affair. For others, it's a matter of hiring a custom installation pro to do the job.
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