Innholdsfortegnelse for Sep-12 i Home Theater

Regular readers have heard me espouse, maybe once or twice too often, my belief in a broad definition of what makes a home theater. At the risk of repeating myself, perhaps verbatim, it’s not about how many speakers you have, how expensive your electronics are, how big your screen is, or whether you own a front-projection system. Got a soundbar with a 40-inch LCD? That’s a home theater. If you’re listening to headphones while watching a movie or TV drama streamed to your computer monitor (and a lot of college students do just that), it’s a home theater. If you’re paying even minimal attention to the sound in an attempt to have a more engaging experience; if whatever gear you’re using enables you to get more fully lost in the…

Lenovo Launched Four TVs in China in sizes from 42 to 55 inches and with prices from $1,030 to $2,370. The smart TVs run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), access video on demand from a Chinese service, and feature interfaces that combine touch, voice control, air mouse, gravity sensor, smart keyboard, and remote control... Panasonic and NHK, the Japanese broadcast authority, have collaborated on a 145-inch Super Hi-Vision plasma display with a resolution of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels. Sorry folks, you can’t buy it, it’s just a prototype (we know you so well)... The Founders of Samsung and LG are among 10 inductees in the Consumer Electronics Association’s Hall of Fame for 2012. Also on the list are Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen, satellite radio inventor Robert Briskman, and Douglas…

You may already be paying an average of $86 a month for pay TV. Would you be willing to pay $123 a month by 2015? How about $200 a month by 2020? Those will be the going rates if current trends remain unchanged, says the NPD Group’s Digital Video Outlook. Whether the cable, satellite, and telco-TV industries can indefinitely support that kind of growth is debatable. Five million U.S. households have already cut the cord since the start of the mortgage crisis, joining the 16 percent who don’t subscribe. Many of them now depend on over-the-air TV, free Internet video, and subscription streaming. NPD Research Director Keith Nissen calls the existing pay-TV business model “unsustainable in the long term,” adding that competition among the cable/satellite/telco industries and Netflix-like streaming services…

If you’re the kinda guy who can recite classic movie lines like, “Leave the gun; take the cannoli” on command in between handfuls of popcorn, you may want a pop culture print, painting, or sculpture in your home theater with a little personality, right? What better conversation starter or way to warm up a cinema space than with an original masterpiece from David O’Keefe Studios (davidokeefe.com). The passionate pop culture artist—who has a solo gallery in Sarasota, Florida, but is based out of Tampa—nails it with his caricatures of everyone from his laugh-out-loud Animal House tribute, Knowledge Is Good, to his sepia-toned, spot-on, gun-toting Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, which by the way, is one of O’Keefe’s favorites and on the gallery’s most requested list. “Caddyshack is another staple for…

As home theater technology continues to advance and evolve, so must the accessories and accoutrements that add to the overall viewing experience. Whether you’re looking for more comfortable seating options, a better solution to hide your components, or a mount that can suit your family’s multiple needs, there are plenty of products out there to choose from. These 11 models represent a sampling of the latest and greatest home theater mounts, racks, chairs, and cabinets. THREE FOR THE ROAD Bell’O Triple Play TCP2133 ($400) The Bell’O Triple Play TCP2133 is a stand/shelf combo that provides three configuration options to fit your display and room demands. Attach it to the rear frame and swivel mounting system, use it as a three-shelf standalone table, or remove the mounting pole and hang your…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: 4,134:1 The above 2D result was obtained in the Expert1 Picture Mode with the Backlight on 32, the Contrast on 75, the Brightness at 53, the Gamma on 2.4, and the LED Local Dimming on High. The peak-white level for the above reading was 28.9 foot-lamberts, and the black level was 0.007 ft-L. The differences between the LED Local Dimming control’s High, Medium, and Low settings were small but visible on some material. But with local dimming off, the full-on/full-off contrast ratio decreased markedly to 876:1 (35 ft-L peak white, 0.04 ft-L black). The Color Tracking charts show how well a display adheres to the D65 standard white point; the closer the three primary colors’ levels, the nearer the result is to D65. The Pre-calibration results were…

PRICE: $10/month DVR fee (Joey or second Hopper $7/month) AT A GLANCE: 2 TB of storage • Records up to six prime-time HD channels simultaneously • Remote control locator The Dishiest Dish Yet I have a great deal of empathy for the cable, satellite, Internet, and cell-phone service providers. After all, this is a tough economy, and competition for subscribers is fierce. At the same time, technology keeps evolving, with startups lurking on the fringes, waiting for a chance to be the next big thing. I mean, really, my heart bleeds for the grossly underpaid civic-minded people running these companies. All they’re trying to do is feed their families and put gas in their cars by offering the ultimate in customer service and satisfaction for ridiculously low subscription prices. You…

PRICE: $600 AT A GLANCE: Denon entry-level AVR • Boston Acoustics sat/sub set • Acceptable performance From Japan to Boston Eliminating nonessentials sounds easier than it is. A year ago, I went through my clothes and filled six shopping bags with shirts and pants I knew I’d never wear again. Just a month ago, I repeated the exercise and darn if I didn’t fill another bag. If I’d exerted myself, I could have filled two. So I felt a certain respect as I cracked open the Denon DHT-1513BA carton and moved its contents to my rack and speaker stands—because I knew this system’s designers had made some tough decisions. They’re more hardheaded than a guy who decides to let his HD DVD promotional T-shirt survive another year. This in-a-box system…

By this point in its evolution, the action genre is fraught with many potential clichés, and Haywire seems to have fallen victim to almost every one. Mixed martial arts superstar Gina Carano stars as Mallory, a highly trained civilian operative coming off a string of successful high-risk jobs, generously bankrolled by the U.S. government. From there, the paper-thin plot can be summed up by a couple of the same old taglines: “She was set up and double-crossed, but they underestimated her. Now she wants the truth—and maybe a little payback.” Granted, along the way we do learn a bit about how private assassins are contracted, the story unfolds in an array of smart flashbacks, and brief moments of intrigue waft through. But part of the problem is that there’s just…

Seriously, wasn’t Sister Act—the musical dramedy about the behind-the-scenes bickering of a church choir with an identity crisis—a big hit, so much so that they adapted it into a Broadway show? Apparently Joyful Noise writer-director Todd Graff (Hippy from The Abyss) hopes we forgot all about it and that we will consider his painfully tired new movie a breath of fresh air. When the local choir director dies, quite literally while coaching his group to a semifinal victory on the way to a national competition, his singer wife, G.G. (Dolly Parton), is passed over for the position in favor of her rival, Vi Rose (Queen Latifah)—and the sass talking begins. Apparently everyone in the state of Georgia has a propensity to communicate in a series of down-home parables, especially when…

The practice of adapting classic European literature into present-day settings and scenarios is nothing new. Many of Shakespeare’s most notable plays have been transformed into popular entertainment like West Side Story, 10 Things I Hate About You, and The Lion King, for example. Writer-director Amy Heckerling, who scored a big hit with Fast Times at Ridgemont High in the ’80s, loosely adapted Jane Austen’s novel Emma into the high school comedy Clueless. Alicia Silverstone stars in her breakthrough role as Cher. What exactly she broke through to is still a matter of opinion, but she nevertheless paved the way for ditsy, blond, rich girls for years to come. At Beverly Hills High, Cher is unquestionably the most popular girl on campus—and she’s constantly aware of it. Her whole existence centers…

ARIZONA LMC HOME ENTERTAINMENT 15507 N Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale, AZ 85254 1231 W Warner Rd, Tempe, AZ 85284 htm@lmche.com • www.lmche.com McIntosh Platinum Premier dealer demonstrating 12 speaker lines including Wilson and Sonus-Faber CALIFORNIA DAVID VINCENT DESIGN*# Jim Zoyiopoulos, Owner Home theater and music systems showroom. Lighting control and whole home automation. 26384 Carmel Rancho Lane Carmel, CA 93923 www.davidvincentdesign.com info@davidvincentdesign.com Lutron, Kaleidescape, Crestron, Sony ES, Samsung, Denon, Paradigm, Triad, Sonance, Leon, Salamander, Fortress Seating, Speakercraft FLORIDA HOME THEATER INNOVATIONS/BOB’S TV. Hwy. 441 Ocala/Villages area Over 15 years experience Custom Designed Home Theater Automation/Home Audio (352) 245-2183, www.bobstv.tv GEORGIA GEORGIA HOME THEATER*# 23 Years of Excellence Designing Home Automation and Lighting Control for Atlanta’s Finest Homes. #1 Dealer in Georgia for B&W and Crestron 2534 Cobb Pkwy., Smyrna, GA 30080…

WE WELCOME QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS. E-mail them to editor@hometheater.com. Please note: Be sure to check the FAQ page on our Website (HomeTheater.com) to see if we’ve already answered any questions you might have. Questions about the features and functions of a particular product are best directed to the manufacturer. Questions about what product you should buy are best directed to a dealer who knows all the details of your system, your preferences, and your personal habits. All submissions are considered the exclusive property of Home Theater magazine and Source Interlink Media. Due to the volume of mail that we receive, we regret that we cannot respond to every letter. Just About Down and Out Here’s my question: Are downward-firing subwoofers better than front-firing subwoofers? Kevin Adair Audio technical editor Mark…

Ever wish you could connect your smartphone to the TV in your living room while you’re lounging around so you could browse your apps on the big screen or watch that hilarious video you shot of your buddy impersonating Ron Paul? Or maybe you’re on the road and want to kick back and stream a movie or watch a couple of crazy YouTube videos on the TV in your hotel room (assuming you’re not staying in a ’60s-era motel complete with the vintage Philco set). Or just think how cool it would be if instead of lugging your laptop to the boardroom, you could jack into the projector and run a PowerPoint presentation from your phone. If nothing else, you’d certainly impress the boss. These are the types of scenarios…

IP-based video is finally getting the attention it deserves from America’s favorite DVR company with two new products. The TiVo Stream set-top box transcodes video from a Premiere or Premiere Q DVR, whether live or recorded, and sends it to a secondary TV, tablet, or smartphone—even outside the home. It can stream or download shows simultaneously to multiple mobile devices without interrupting the main show on the primary TV screen. There’s also an IP set-top box that works with the TiVo Premiere Q to allow access to live or recorded TV, video on demand, and broadband-delivered content on every TV in your home. In other TiVo news, TiVo Premiere XL4 is the new name of the TiVo Premiere Elite. The company says this will “alleviate consumer confusion as they shop…

The Acoustical Manufacturing Company’s Quad ESL-57 was the world’s first production full-range electrostatic speaker. It debuted in 1957 when hi-fi speakers were big boxes and used moving-coil drivers, so the ESL-57’s flatpanel, downright minimalist design not only looked like a radical advance, its thin-film diaphragm’s low-distortion and lightning-fast transient response sounded truly revelatory to 1950s audiophile ears. The speaker’s introduction came not so many years after the transition from 78-RPM records to higher-fidelity LPs took place. The market was primed for a more transparent transducer technology, and Quad had the best-sounding speaker of the age. Even so, the ESL-57 was designed when monophonic sound was the only home format, so the electrostatic panels had to be modified to improve their dispersion for stereo (after the first 500 speakers were manufactured).…

I built my home theater in the attic and created a dramatic entrance and a vestibule. The vestibule’s reverse wall is painted like a women’s hat store circa 1910 Paris, with a travertine cobblestone street. Behind the windows, there are built-in shelves for DVDs and Blu-rays. The theater’s walls are covered in mahogany paneling over 2-by-6 framing, filled with fiberglass batt insulation. For acoustic treatments, I created fabric panels made from half-inch Homosote board, then stapled polyester batting and fabric onto it. The panels attach to the wall with commercial-strength Velcro, which makes them easy to remove. The 8-foot bar is split so it can be separated into two serving stations, which slide on felt. The soda fountain has a beverage cooler, freezer, popcorn machine, and shake mixer, along with…

PRICE: $7,197 AT A GLANCE: Wide and deep soundstage • Clear, uncolored midrange • Superb fit and finish Precious Stones The Wharfedale brand is one of the oldest and most widely respected in the loudspeaker business. Gilbert Briggs founded the company as the Wharfedale Wireless Works in Yorkshire, England, in 1932. While his name is less well known in the U.S. than, say, Saul Marantz, Avery Fisher, and James B. Lansing, Briggs was also clearly one of the founding fathers of the high-fidelity business that took off big time in the 1950s. Wharfedale (along with other well-known brands such as Quad, Mission, and Luxman) is now part of the International Audio Group (IAG) based in Shenzhen, China. While its products are manufactured there (many audio roads today lead to Shenzhen),…

PRICE: $250 AT A GLANCE: Elegant design • Plethora of streaming options • Fast startup and loading of Blu-ray Discs A New King Is Crowned Sony single-handedly won the format war with its timely release of the PlayStation 3. Up until the PS3 hit the market in November 2006, HD DVD was beginning to gain the upper hand with disc and player sales. But the vaunted game station changed the marketplace virtually overnight and signaled the beginning of the end for the red-laser format. Fast-forward almost six years, and the PS3 is still the most-owned Blu-ray player on the market, although the standalone units have closed the performance gap and in some cases, surpassed the powerful game system. A couple of years ago, Sony offered eight different models of standalone…

DENON DHT-1513BA HTIB Two channels driven continuously into 8-ohm loads: 0.2% distortion at 87.2 watts 1% distortion at 99.0 watts Two channels driven into 4-ohm loads: 0.2% distortion at 95.1 watts 1% distortion at 133.1 watts This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing close-miking of all woofers) frequency response of the MCS 160 satellite (purple trace), MCS 160 center channel (green trace), and MCS 160 subwoofer (blue trace). All passive loudspeakers were measured at a distance of 1 meter with a 2.83-volt input and scaled for display purposes. The satellite’s listening-window response (a five-point average of axial and +/–15-degree horizontal and vertical responses) measures +3.76/–1.46 decibels from 200 hertz to 10 kilohertz. The–3-dB point is at 131 Hz, and the–6-dB point is at 97 Hz. Impedance reaches a minimum of 4.60…

Stephanie Plum, a recently laid off lingerie saleswoman, needs a job in a bad way. She’s willing to do just about anything. When she hears her cousin Vinnie’s bail bond office is looking for a new bounty hunter, she convinces him to give her a shot. Her first assignment is to locate her ex-boyfriend Joe Morelli, a cop who’s on the lam for shooting an unarmed suspect. While she stumbles many times along the way, Stephanie discovers she has a natural talent for getting people to open up and feed her information. But will she be able to survive on the dog-eat-dog streets of Trenton, New Jersey? Because the movie is based on the hugely popular novels by Janet Evanovich, I thought this would be the first of many entertaining…

Daniel Radcliffe was a household name before he was a teenager because of his portrayal of Harry Potter. Finding success at such a young age can be a blessing and a curse. The tabloids are filled with former child actors who are whacked out on drugs and in trouble with the law. Fortunately, Radcliffe hasn’t fallen into that crowd and has begun his transition from child star to adult actor with his work on stage (Equus and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) and in feature films. In The Woman in Black he stars as Arthur Kipps, a late 19th century widowed lawyer whose personal grief after losing his wife in childbirth has put his career in jeopardy. His boss gives him one last chance to resurrect his…

Albert Nobbs is a butler and waiter at the prestigious Morrison’s Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. Years of servitude have helped him to cultivate a position of stature and respect in his profession; always dutiful, polite, and fastidiously neat. There’s just one catch: He’s really a she. In turn-of-the-century Ireland, where disease and poverty are ever present, jobs are scarce and coveted as if one’s life depended on it. And if you’re a woman, they’re even harder to find, let alone one with comparable pay. But Albert’s motives for masquerading as a man seem to go beyond that of retaining a good-paying job. In constant fear of being discovered, she tries to stay as invisible as possible and fade into the wallpaper, so to speak—always present but scarcely noticeable. She’s been…

German designer Helmut Brinkmann is on a never-ending quest for audio perfection, in this case with perhaps the most imperfect of music playback devices—the turntable. As he explains on the Brinkmann Audio Website, “Vinyl record playback is an exceedingly delicate and massively complex undertaking”—one he tackles with mastery in the flagship Balance turntable, which has undergone constant refinement since it was introduced 28 years ago. The goal is to achieve true high fidelity and come as close as possible to attaining the illusion of a live performance. As any vinyl connoisseur will tell you, it takes precision across many moving parts to reach sonic nirvana. In addition to an accurate tonearm/cartridge/stylus assembly that conveys the subtleties of complex musical passages, you need a drive mechanism that spins the platter at…

Mark Buff and his team at Greenwave Scientific in Raleigh, North Carolina, were doing just fine developing specialized antennas and other technology for the military. But when Buff realized it was time to start porting some of what Greenwave had learned in its Department of Defense work to the consumer space, Mohu was launched. Its flagship product is one of the most unassuming solutions I’ve seen for HDTV broadcast capture. To the eye, the paper-thin Leaf antenna ($36) is little more than a 9-by-11.5-inch plastic-laminated sheet with a cable coming off the bottom. It’s all white on one side and all black on the other, so if it’s not hidden somewhere, you can expose the side that best blends with its environment. If you laid the Leaf flat on a…

Don’t you just love hitting play on a Blu-ray Disc or DVD, only to be held prisoner by a lengthy copyright warning? How considerate of the studios to author discs so you can’t skip these life-affirming messages. And things are about to get worse. Disc releases will now feature two screens’ worth of threats. The first is the familiar FBI warning—“the unauthorized reproduction” blah blah blah. Alongside the FBI logo, there is now a scary-looking badge from the Department of Homeland Security: your terrorist-fighting tax dollars at work. Then comes a second screen with the badge of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, asserting: “Piracy is not a victimless crime. For more information on how theft harms the economy, please visit www.iprcenter.gov.” The movie studios say piracy costs the…

The television set is still the consumer’s favorite screen for watching video sources, reports the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) in its study “The Evolving Video Landscape.” Despite increasing competition from tablets and smartphones, the old-fashioned TV platform still entertains 66 percent of viewers. Laptops come in second at 62 percent, followed by 55 percent using desktop PCs, 33 percent using smartphones, and 17 percent using tablets—we rashly predict that last group will skyrocket in just a few years. However, TV viewers do more than just watch TV: 66 percent of them multitask with a smaller screen. Among those who expect to buy a new TV in the next year, 51 percent want an improved picture, 50 percent want a larger screen, and 48 percent are replacing a set that’s old,…

JSENNHEISER IE 800 EARPHONES When a company that’s been making headphones since 1945 announces that its latest earphones deliver “detailed lifelike sound” with a super-wide frequency range of 5 hertz to 46 kilohertz, your ears perk up. The heart of Sennheiser’s IE 800 “ear canal phones” is a miniature, 0.28-inch wide-range driver that’s said to eliminate slight jumps and delays in music reproduction that occur with the multidriver configuration used in some high-end earphones. Other sound-enhancing features include a venting system that reduces distortion (notice the tiny silver ports) and an absorber that prevents high-frequency resonances from masking quiet sounds in the midrange. For Any Ear: Sennheiser provides a selection of oval and round silicone adapters to ensure a perfect fit. Price: $787. Sennheiser • (860) 434-9190 • sennheiserusa.com MARANTZ…

PRICE: $3,600 AT A GLANCE: Superb detail, accurate color • Two-and 20-step calibration controls • Magic Remote tedious to use • Disappointing black level Back From the Edge The pick of the litter in today’s LCD HDTV designs is full LED backlighting with local dimming. Such sets first appeared in 2008, but the process of positioning clusters of LEDs behind the screen was, and is, expensive. While LCD sets with LED lighting have now become ubiquitous, most of them use edge lighting (sometimes with a limited form of dynamic dimming, sometimes without) in which a smaller number of LEDs are located at the borders of the screen. This both keeps the price down and enables slender, more stylish sets. LG recently launched a new range of local dimming models with…

WHARFEDALE JADE 7 SPEAKER SYSTEM L/R Sensitivity: 88 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz Center Sensitivity: 89 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz Surround Sensitivity: 86 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing close-miking of all woofers) frequency response of the Jade 7 L/R (purple trace), Jade C2 center channel (green trace), and Jade 3 surround (red trace). All passive loudspeakers were measured with grilles at a distance of 1 meter with a 2.83-volt input and scaled for display purposes. The Jade 7’s listening-window response (a five-point average of axial and +/–15-degree horizontal and vertical responses) measures +0.99/–3.18 decibels from 200 hertz to 10 kilohertz. The–3-dB point is at 52 Hz, and the–6-dB point is at 44 Hz. Impedance reaches a minimum…

PRICE: $180 AT A GLANCE: Includes Web browser • Connect to Slingbox via the Slingbox app • Direct access to movies from the Web, Vudu, or your own digital collection Your Media, Streamlined The Boxee Box is unlike any other media streamer or media player. From its cockeyed box shape that’s missing a corner and its froglike logo, to its menu organization and social video-sharing features, it’s easy to see that Boxee stands out. It seems that Boxee’s ambition is to be the box that controls everything you see on your TV. Boxee can access content from the Web, from online media-streaming services, from live TV, and from your home digital library via your network or NAS. Boxee has media streaming figured out better than any of its competitors, but…

Confederate Civil War veteran John Carter has lost everything, including his family and his country. Wandering in search of gold in New Mexico in 1868, he discovers a cave with mysterious wall etchings. A strange figure appears, there’s a struggle, and before you can say Mars Attacks!, Carter wakes up in a vast desert. He isn’t aware at first how far he has traveled, but his first clue is his super strength and ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Soon enough, he realizes he’s not in Kansas anymore, but rather on the planet Mars or, as it’s know to the locals, Barsoom. John Carter is based on the Barsoom series of pulp novels by early 20th century writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known for creating the iconic…

Aplane crash leaves a handful of oil-drilling roughnecks stranded in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, a place so remote that even modern technology offers little hope of a rescue. Ottway (Liam Neeson), a security guard of sorts hired to protect the workers from the vicious gray wolves back on the job site, quickly assumes a leadership role as they pull together to survive as long as possible inside the wreckage. However, the men soon learn the hard way that they’ve landed close enough to a teeming wolf den that they’re considered not just food but trespassers, and these fearless, merciless beasts will kill them simply for being in the wrong place. So the humans must make a break for the woods. But the cold, the thin air, hunger, and…

Based loosely on the true story of the Newsboys Strike of 1899 in New York City, Newsies follows the fictional character Jack “Cowboy” Kelly as he leads the young lads in a revolt against the newspaper barons—Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. They plan to increase profits on the backs of the newsies by raising the price of papers by a tenth of a cent, and Jack and his fellow newsboys won’t sit by idly. Inspired by the striking trolley workers, the boys around the city refuse to deliver the papers to show two of the most powerful men in the country where the true power lies. While I can certainly understand why writers Bob Tzudiker and Noni White would be inspired by the historical significance of the 1899 strike,…

FLAT PANELS ENTRY LEVEL Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30 Plasma HDTV, $900 Reviewed at HomeTheater.com Panasonic Viera TC-P50ST30 3D Plasma HDTV, $1,300 Reviewed September 2011 Samsung UN46D6000 LED LCD HDTV, $1,300 Reviewed at HomeTheater.com Panasonic Viera TC-P55ST50 3D Plasma HDTV, $1,700 Reviewed July 2012 MIDRANGE Panasonic Viera TC-P55VT30 3D Plasma HDTV, $2,500 Reviewed September 2011 SunBriteTV Model 4660 HD Outdoor LCD HDTV, $2,795 Reviewed July 2012 Samsung PN59D8000 3D Plasma HDTV, $3,000 Reviewed December 2011 HIGH END Sony Bravia XBR-55HX929 3D LED LCD HDTV, $3,500 Reviewed November 2011 Elite PRO-60X5FD 3D LED LCD HDTV, $6,000 Reviewed January 2012 PROJECTORS ENTRY LEVEL BenQ W7000 3D DLP Projector, $2,999 Reviewed August 2012 MIDRANGE JVC DLA-X30 3D LCOS Projector, $3,500 Reviewed May 2012 Sony VPL-HW30ES 3D SXRD Projector, $3,700 Reviewed December 2011 Digital Projection M-Vision…