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A/V Veteran
Choice Films for Choice Guests: Guaranteed to Wow 'Em
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 16, 2019  | 
We've all encountered the problem: Guests who haven't yet seen or heard your home theater setup are coming over for a movie night. But which movie to choose? If you know the guests' tastes the choice should be easy. But that isn't always the case.
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Projector SetupProjector TechA/V Veteran
Choosing the Right Projector for a WOW! Experience
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 10, 2019  | 
Ready to create a WOW! big-screen experience at home but not sure where to start? No worries, I’ll guide you through the process.
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A/V Veteran
Christmas Blu
Tom Norton  |  Dec 22, 2010  | 
Come December 25, Santa will be slipping new Blu-ray players and discs under many a Christmas tree. But will those Blu-ray discs actually look better to you?

The Blu-ray format may be four years old, but I still see comments on various websites—not to mention in the mainstream (non-enthusiast) press—to the effect that those Blu-rays don't look any better than upconverted DVDs. When you read these comments, you need to ask a few questions about the commenter, questions to clarify the circumstances surrounding the observation. These questions may even relate to your own experiences…

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A/V Veteran
Christmas Movies: Ho, Ho, Ho!
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 23, 2019  | 
For those pining for Part 2 of my latest tome on projectors and screens, it will come soon enough. But posting it on Christmas Eve seemed like an invitation for me to plunge into the reindeer-and-chestnuts memory hole. With the biggest holiday of the year fast approaching as I write this (not counting Super Sunday), you'll likely be looking for relief from Uncle Harry's annual Christmas dinner ramblings: "when I was your age..." So fire up the old home theater and settle in for a movie or two — a movie about the holiday, on the holiday.
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A/V Veteran
Churchill on Disc
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jun 25, 2024  | 
Earlier this month the West honored the 80th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944. The ceremonies commemorated the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany's occupied Europe, which together with the then Soviet Union battering Germany from the east, would culminate in Germany's surrender almost a year later in May 1945. The war with Japan would end soon after, in August 1945.

Here are three recommended videos on Winston Churchill, a pivotal figure in the outcome of the War.

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A/V Veteran
Classic Films in 4K/HDR Keep the Blu-Ray Boat Afloat
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 20, 2021  | 
We've fretted a lot (or at least some of us have) over the growth of streaming because it threatens the survival of packaged media—having your favorite films readily available on Blu-ray or UltraHD Blu-ray, at the highest possible consumer quality, sitting on your bookshelf where no tools from a streaming service with cancellation orders can barge in and carry them away (at least not yet!).
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A/V Veteran
Cleanup On Aisle A/V
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 06, 2021  | 
Remember the scene in Oblivion where Jack cues up a record in his secret hideaway? I could expand here on the ratty condition of the record sleeves, but I'm referring instead to the clump of dust on the stylus—the "needle" for the analog-deprived. In the movie world, and in the absence of a proper stylus brush, he might use a finger swipe to clean it off (yikes!), but since he (and the movie's art director) has only recently experienced the vinyl enlightenment if at all, and in the absence of a proper stylus brush, he simply ignores it. The record plays nevertheless.

But this tome isn't about vinyl. It's about the sticky business of keeping our audio-video systems relatively tidy. Working on this should be at least an annual event for every A/V fan, and for the inveterate tweaker and/or reviewer it should happen even more often.

Begin with the equipment stand or rack...

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A/V Veteran
Cliché Alert-The Clock Has Stopped Ticking
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 19, 2008  | 

The ship has sailed. The hero is riding off into the sunset as the fat lady sings her closing aria. She sees the handwriting on the wall for her final curtain. The end is near.

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A/V Veteran
Color Commentary
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 05, 2007  | 

While I have decidedly mixed feelings about big-box consumer electronics retailers getting into the TV calibration game (see the following story on Best Buy, and an earlier story that also touches on Circuit City's calibration promotion) the commercial pull of these giants is already having at least one unanticipated benefit.

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A/V Veteran
Colors in Space
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 22, 2017  | 
When it comes to Ultra HD, we’ve heard endlessly about three different color gamuts: Rec.709, DCI-P3, and Rec.2020 (also called BT.2020). But exactly what is a color gamut?
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A/V Veteran
Coming Soon?
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 30, 2008  | 

It's already a month into 2008, but never too late to make predictions for the coming year or so—predictions of things that probably won't happen in the way we expect. If anything is certain, it's the uncertainty of the future. The volatile world of consumer electronics is no exception.

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A/V Veteran
Complex Is as Complex Does
Thomas J. Norton  |  May 17, 2016  | 
It hasn’t been that long ago that when I arrived back from the annual January CES, my desk looked something like the photo here, staring back at me with a “pick me, pick me” plea. But with all of the brochures and press releases and miscellaneous literature first transferred to CD-ROM, now to flash drives, and (in some cases) merely a cryptic card directing you to the manufacturer’s website, the reading material can now fit in a tiny corner of my suitcase.

Owners’ manuals were once like that, but with a fundamental difference. They were slender things that could be read and understood in an hour or two. But as products, particularly HDTVs and AVRs, became more complicated, their manuals grew larger, not to mention the need to produce them in 15 languages...

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A/V Veteran
Conventional Wisdom, Unconventional Results
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 23, 2009  | 

In the past, I've never actually tried using an ordinary wall as a screen for a video projector. Never really had to. Conventional wisdom states that a good screen is an equal partner with the projector in producing a great image. Or nearly equal, that is, if you're a projector manufacturer and not a screen maker!

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A/V Veteran
Countdown to Ultra HD Blu-ray
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 26, 2016  | 
We’re only a couple of months away from the scheduled introduction of Ultra HD Blu-ray players and the UHD discs to play on them. At CES both Samsung and Philips announced players due in March, and 17 titles are currently listed on Amazon for release March 1.
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A/V Veteran
Culling the Software Herd
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 27, 2014  | 
Reviewers (who are almost universally inveterate collectors) tend to accumulate more software—videos, LPs, CDs, and soon music and video files, than your average bear. Digital files take up little space, but the others can soon grow to enormous proportions. Not only does this create a storage problem, it also makes it difficult to find that special disc we want to enjoy now. Of course, we all organize our collections in some rational form, don’t we? In a classic line from the (must see) movie High Fidelity, a record store owner is reorganizing his personal LP collection. A friend asks him how he’s doing it: alphabetical, by artist, by label, by genre? His answer: autobiographical.

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