Darryl Wilkinson

Audio Video News
(Screen) Size Does Matter
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 04, 2004
While we can't vouch for the scientific nature of a recent survey conducted by Quixel Research at Best Buy stores in three different USA locations, the results do fill our hearts with gladness that the average consumer-type person (or at least the average Best Buy visitor) can tell quality when he or she sees it. At least that's how we interpret the results. Sponsored by "several major CE and component manufacturers", Quixel's survey team had "TV purchase intenders" compare Plasma TVs, LCD TVs, front projectors, and MicroDisplay rear-pro sets side-by-side. After careful evaluation in the retail store environment, the consumers then told the Quixel Research scribes what they wanted in a new TV and how much they were willing to pay for it. Quixel claims that the study "is the first of its kind to compare all the products side by side in a retail environment across the USA."
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Audio Video News
Hollywood Quality Video for Home Theaters
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Sep 27, 2004
It used to be that truly high-quality video, the pristine jaw-dropping images previously available only to the "Golden Eyes" of Hollywood post production and broadcast facilities (and anyone else with a spare $60,000 to spend), was simply beyond the bounds of the typical home theater. But Silicon Optix intends on changing all that with the introduction of their new Realta with HQV single-chip video processor.
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Audio Video News
Component Video Through Thin Air
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Sep 27, 2004
Wireless audio/video senders are nothing new, but until now such accessory devices were limited to the composite video outputs of your DVD player, cable box, VCR, or discretely positioned X10 camera. Belkin Corporation's new PureAV RemoteTV not only lets you send analog audio and video from composite or S-video sources wirelessly, Belkin claims it's the first to incorporate component-video connectivity.
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Audio Video News
Glass, Class, and Two Rooms of Home Entertainment
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Sep 20, 2004
Is it the seductively cool blueness of the analog-style wattmeters on the amplifiers or the allure of the full-front impervious-to-wear glass panels? Maybe it's the classic, great sound quality. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I've always had a soft spot in my heart for gear from American-born-and-bred McIntosh Laboratory, Inc. So it's no surprise that the unveiling of a trio of new home theater components from the Binghamton, NY-based company would cause the drool to start forming at the edges of my mouth.
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Audio Video News
Hertz So Good
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Sep 20, 2004
Seeing as how we tend to focus on "home" theater gear - hence the name "Home Theater Magazine" - it's not likely that you've ever heard us mention a twenty-some-year-old company called JL Audio. Although JL Audio has certainly a bigwig of boom for quite a while, they've existed pretty much under our radar because their main focus has been on car audio. (Unfortunately, the powers that be who write our checks won't let us cover events such as the Funkmaster Flex 2004 Celebrity Car Tour of which JL Audio is an official sponsor.) But all that is about to change.
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Audio Video News
Klipsch Horns in on Flat-Panel TVs
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Sep 15, 2004
If you're old enough to remember the extremely popular (and still produced!) Klipsch Heresy speaker, you'll probably be a bit surprised by the look and feel of some of the latest Klipsch loudspeaker introductions. On the other hand, if you're young enough that the first thing you think of when you hear the name "Klipsch" is one of their svelte ProMedia personal audio systems, then you'll probably just say, "Cool!" Either way, you can't fault the venerable 58-year-old company for focusing its engineering efforts on keeping up with the times.
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Audio Video News
The World's Most Gifted Home Theater Receiver?
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Sep 15, 2004
Denon calls it their "flagship" receiver; but if you want to fully carry out the nautical metaphor, you'd have to refer to the new Denon AVR-5805 as the biggest, baddest, boldest combination battleship/aircraft carrier/submarine/destroyer/frigate/(throw in some secret stealth technology reference here) ever to have floated on the home theater seven seas. Denon claims it's "the world's first A/V receiver with 10 built-in amplifiers and 16-channel output...[and] unprecedented multi-source and zone capabilities with perhaps the most comprehensive analog and digital audio/video switching configurations ever offered."
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Audio Video News
Hide-Away-Home-Theater Exposed
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Aug 30, 2004
Considering how focused they are on designing ways of incorporating high-performance home theater gear into the smallest amount of space possible, you might think that the folks at Ginni Designs spent their formative years growing up in one of the tinier regions of Munchkin Land. (Although they deny it, I suspect that Ginni Designs has at least one elf - or perhaps a couple of interior-design-oriented descendants of the Seven Dwarfs - secreted away in the back offices helping design their magical cabinetry. It's a "Small Eye for the Home Theater Guy" kind of thing.)
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Audio Video News
Home Theater Speaker Three-For-All
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Aug 30, 2004
Plasma, plasma, on the wall, who's the fairest speaker of them all? ("Fairest", of course, meaning "least visibly obnoxious while sitting next to one of those sleek, sexy, and usually silver-finish flat-panel TVs" with added elements of "gee, it'd be nice if it were easy to install - like maybe if the L, C, and R speakers were all one unit".) Boston Acoustics claims to have the answer with the new P400 slim theater speaker, a unique compound speaker unit that incorporates discrete left, center, and right front speakers in a single, thin chassis that's "designed to perfectly complement a 42-inch plasma or LCD television or monitor, a DLP rear-projection console, or a traditional screen."

Yes, Boston Acoustics knows all you plasma lovers out there hate speakers - or at least hate to look at speakers. (It's truly a love/hate relationship. You love to listen to good sound, but you hate to look at the speakers that are necessary to create it. My advice is that you should seek professional help about this, you know.)

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Audio Video News
Sex, Surveys, and Your Home Theater
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Aug 23, 2004
Having nothing better to do with their time after installing FlatTVs with Ambilight technology in George Clooney's (and other cast members') Hotel de Russie hotel room so he (and they) could live better than the average bear while filming the new "Ocean's Twelve", the friendly folks at Philips commissioned Harris Interactive to ask pointed questions about home entertainment of consumers in 13 countries. (Sorry, Iraq wasn't included.) The results of the Philip's Global Home Entertainment Survey are sure to be studied by generations of historians to come for the deep insights they provide into the shallow nature of humans all over the globe.
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