What Did You Think of the Oscars?
Posted Tue Mar 9, 2010, 3:10 PM ET
On Sunday, March 7, the 2010 Academy Awards were handed out at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, California, and like 41.3 million other viewers around the world (including 3.1 million New York Cablevision subscribers who almost didn't get to see it due to a dispute with ABC), my wife and I watched the spectacle live as it unfolded only a few miles from our house. Well, okay, we didn't watch it live, exactly—we waited a couple of hours so we could skip through the commercials and acceptance speeches thanks to TiVo. So what I'd like to know from you is...
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Calling All Panny Owners
Posted Mon Mar 1, 2010, 11:02 AM ET
This whole Panasonic plasma black-level thing really bugs me, and I'm not alone. Shoppers are shying away from Panny plasmas because they just don't know if the black level will increase significantly after months or years of use, and frankly, neither do I. In an effort to learn as much as possible about the phenomenon, I turn to you, our readers, for help. To anyone who owns a 2008 or 2009 Panasonic plasma, I pose the following question:
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Panasonic's Black Eye
Posted Fri Feb 12, 2010, 5:12 PM ET
It's been a bad week for Panasonic. A report of suddenly rising black levels in its 2008 and '09 plasmas gained some serious traction throughout the A/V community over the past few days, even though it's been brewing since July 31, 2009, when AVS Forum member Orta (who I assume is male) posted that his TC-P50G10 doubled its black level literally overnight, with measurements to prove it. As you might imagine, this led to a flurry of concern, to which Panasonic finally responded with this official statement:
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Welcome to My Podcast
Posted Fri Feb 5, 2010, 4:17 PM ET
To paraphrase The Firesign Theatre, we're all A/V geeks on this bus. We can't get enough about Blu-ray players, high-def displays, receivers, speakers, room acoustics, content creation and distribution, and all the other elements that contribute to an exceptional audio/video experience. To feed that need, I'm delighted to introduce a new feature to UAV—Home Theater Geeks, a weekly, hour-long podcast in which I chat with the most important and influential technical experts in our industry about all things audio and video.
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Ladies' Night
Posted Tue Feb 2, 2010, 4:45 PM ET
Last Sunday, my wife and I joined 25.8 million of our closest friends to watch the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards on CBS. So why am I writing about it here? Because this is Ultimate AV, and the Grammys are all about the best in audio and video. The audio part is obvious—this is "music's biggest night" honoring the best recording artists, and all the performances are live, a technological tour de force in its own right. But the show is no less dedicated to video, both on stage and in the home.
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3D or Not 3D?
Posted Wed Jan 20, 2010, 3:13 AM ET
As I watched demo after demo of 3D at CES this year, I kept wondering if 3D is something that consumers really want or if it's being pushed on them by the studios and manufacturers in their quest to sell more products. So I decided to conduct a purely unscientific survey here on UAV. To participate, all you have to do is post a comment on this blog with your responses to any of the following questions, especially the first one:
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Drinking From a Fire Hose
Posted Wed Jan 13, 2010, 0:23 AM ET
I must be a glutton for punishment. After spending five grueling days at CES, I decided to stick around Las Vegas for THX's Home Theater 2 training course. I've already taken the Home Theater 1 and Video Calibration courses, so I figured why not complete the training offered by THX? At least I'd be sitting most of the time.
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Home-Theater Harbingers
Posted Mon Jan 4, 2010, 12:42 PM ET
Now that we've entered the "tweens" of the 21st century, we finally leave the "aughts" behind. It was an eventful decade for home theater, and I could wax rhapsodic about how far we've progressed in the last 10 years, but I'd rather focus on what's to come, especially since CES starts this week. What home-theater harbingers might we see in Las Vegas?
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Avatar Rising
Posted Fri Dec 18, 2009, 3:28 PM ET
Last night, I attended a special preview screening of Avatar, one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the year. Presented a few hours before the movie opened to the general public, the screening was hosted by 20th Century Fox, which gave 50 tickets in the front-most section of the theater to Panasonic for its contribution of equipment during production. Fortunately, I was near the front of that line, so I was able to sit in the last row of that section—still a bit too close, but very immersive. I'm going to give you my impressions while minimizing any spoilers, though I found no surprises in this movie other than the incredible 3D imagery, which is certainly no secret.
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Seoul Man
Posted Tue Dec 15, 2009, 2:41 PM ET
All photos by Scott Wilkinson
I just returned from three jam-packed days in Seoul, South Korea, spending almost as much time in transit as I did on the ground! Samsung invited a few US journalists, including Tom Norton and me, to visit some of its many facilities and meet with executives and engineers from its Visual Display Division, the part of Samsung Electronics that's responsible for TVs, Blu-ray players, and other home-theater products.
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Planning for Retirement
Posted Thu Dec 3, 2009, 7:25 PM ET
After years of waiting, I plan to purchase my home-theater dream system. I would like a screen in the 80-inch-and-larger range. I'd been looking exclusively at projectors, in particular something like the JVC DLA-RS25.
Then I saw the review of the Mitsubishi 82-inch rear-projection TV in Home Theater. I could get that TV for probably a bit over $4000, while the JVC option including a Stewart screen would most likely cost in excess of $8000. But I wonder how much I might be giving up in performance.
Movies are my number-one priority, then sports and a fair amount of TV. I'm not rich, but at age 54, I'm divorced and a lifelong media junkie, so watching movies and sports is my prime source of entertainment after a long day of work. This is a major investment for me that will carry me into my retirement years (that is, if I'm ever able to retire!), and I want to make the best decision I can.
Jim Hartill
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In Praise of Plasma
Posted Wed Nov 25, 2009, 2:53 PM ET
I've always been a bit bummed that plasma TVs hold such a small market share compared with LCDs. And it doesn't help when companies like Vizio and Pioneer drop out of the plasma business altogether. Yet when I visit my local CostCo, I can see why—the LCDs on display are definitely brighter than the plasmas, which is why they fly off the shelves while the plasmas languish.
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Blu State
Posted Mon Nov 9, 2009, 2:00 PM ET
Now in its fourth year since the format was launched, Blu-ray remains a bit enigmatic. Of course, most early adopters and movie enthusiasts eagerly embrace it, and rightly so—Blu-ray provides the best picture and sound quality you can get from a home-theater source. But its success in the mass market is less clear, at least so far. To assess this and other issues related to the state of Blu-ray, the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), an industry-funded, non-profit organization that promotes various types of home entertainment, hosted a day-long conference last week at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, calling it Blu-Con 2.0.
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Tripping the Light Fantastic
Posted Fri Oct 16, 2009, 5:16 PM ET
With all the hoopla surrounding President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the other 2009 Nobel Prizes have gotten a bit lost in the shuffle. In particular, I want to acknowledge the winners of the Physics Prize, which was awarded to three scientists for their work in fiber optics and digital imaging. But whereas the Peace Prize seems to have been awarded based on potential, the Physics Prize honors work done four decades ago that has had a fundamental impact on our lives today.
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What's the Diff?
Posted Sun Sep 20, 2009, 10:24 PM ET
I have heard you and Leo Laporte discuss the merits of 1080p versus 1080i signals. You both agreed that both methods are almost indistinguishable from each other, but neither of you seemed clear as to why they were so close. Well, I believe I may have the reason, but please correct me if I am wrong. The essential feature is their respective frame/field rates. 1080p is 30 true frames or complete pictures per second, whereas 1080i is 60 fields per second, but because it is interlaced, it also results in a true 30 frames per second. Thus, both formats generate the exact same number of true frames or pictures per second, which is why their ultimate picture qualities are identical.
Ronald Surprenant
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Hotlanta, Here I Come
Posted Mon Sep 7, 2009, 11:31 PM ET
As many of you know, the CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) Expo is this week, so I'm on my way to Atlanta, Georgia, which, by all accounts, will be hot and muggy the whole time—yuck! Oh well, the show must go on. I'll be blogging throughout the convention, but before I start, I thought I'd preview a few of the trends I expect to see there...
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Old Family Recipe
Posted Mon Aug 24, 2009, 6:23 PM ET
If you've been reading about home theater for any length of time, you've probably heard of Stewart Filmscreen, the company that represents the lion's share of the consumer and commercial projection-screen market. Recently, Stewart conducted its first-ever factory tour for about 20 members of the press, which was an eye-opening—and, at certain moments, eye-watering—experience.
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Manual Labor
Posted Thu Aug 6, 2009, 3:25 PM ET
I purchased an SPL meter to level the speakers in my 5.1 surround system. I read an article in Home Theater magazine about how to use this device, but I'm still not sure how to do it. For example, I'm not sure where to put the dial—do I start at 80 or 120?
John Krause
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One Giant Leap for Videokind
Posted Tue Jul 21, 2009, 11:35 AM ET
As anyone who watches TV, listens to radio, or surfs the Web knows by now, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the Moon and humanity's first footfall on a celestial body other than the Earth. I remember watching with rapt attention as the grainy, fuzzy, black-and-white video was accompanied by the authoritative voice of Walter Cronkite, who was so overcome with emotion at that moment, he paused, removed his glasses, and chuckled in amazement. (BTW, anyone who believes the moon landings were staged must watch the Mythbusters episode about it. Busted!)
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Man in the Mirror
Posted Wed Jul 8, 2009, 2:06 PM ET
A friend of mine is a correspondent for KCET, the Los Angeles PBS station. A few days ago, he told me that he had been assigned to cover the Michael Jackson memorial held yesterday at Staples Center and that he was not looking forward to it at all. Aside from the logistical nightmare of getting through the traffic jams and police barricades, he didn't get what all the fuss is about. "Sure, Jackson was a good entertainer," he said, "but was he really important enough for all this?" He also wondered why so many people can become so active over Jackson's death—showing up at the gates of Neverland Ranch and the Jackson family home, signing up for tickets to the memorial—but not over much more important issues such as health care.
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