Innholdsfortegnelse for Feb-Mar-13 i Home Theater

I love the walk down (short-term) memory lane that accompanies the preparation of our annual Top Picks of the Year feature. At the forefront of that is the great pride I take in revisiting all the hard work our reviewers and edit/art staff have put in throughout the prior 12 months. To our superb and talented editors and contributors scattered about the country, many of whom squeeze their evaluations and writing into the scant intervals found between demanding full-time jobs and family obligations, you have my unending thanks and, I am sure, that of our dedicated and passionate readers. That group includes our largely unheralded audio technical editor Mark Peterson, who performs all of our audio measurements and fact-checks every audio review, and John Higgins, who handles logistics and equipment…

PlayMG is the first dedicated pocket-size app-gaming system for the Android market. The Wi-Fi-connected device is targeted at the estimated 52 million 5-to 18-yearold kids who don’t have smartphones... Apple’s Lightning Interface for the iPhone 5 will carry stiffer licensing requirements for manufacturers making Apple-approved “Made For” iOS accessories—and at press time, Apple hadn’t certified any manufacturing facilities. Our advice: Be careful what you buy... Yamaha Aventage A/V receivers are the first to offer a Kindle Fire control app. That’s in addition to the iOS and Android apps, of course... McIntosh, the venerated American high-end audio brand, has changed hands from D+M Group to Milan-based Fine Sounds. That puts the patron saint of the volume meter in good company with Audio Research, Sonus Faber, Sumiko, and Wadia... Microsoft’s Xbox Music…

4 K x 2K video with to-die-for resolution now has an official name. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has decreed that it will be called Ultra High-Definition or Ultra HD. Thelatter rolls trippingly off the tongue, doesn’t it? Try it a few times. Ultra HD sets must have at least 8 million pixels, 3,840 horizontal x 2,160 vertical, with an aspect ratio of 16:9 or wider, and at least one digital input must provide that minimum resolution without upconverting. The decision came from a working group based on consumer research showing that the Ultra HD moniker rated highest in helping consumers understand the technology and describe the viewing experience. But there’s at least one dissenter: A day after CEA unveiled the new name, Sony announced that it would continue to…

So desperate are the networks to keep you cuffed to their shows that they’ve been launching apps for the second screen. Made for the tablets and smartphones to which viewers’ eyes keep darting—often at the expense of the TV screen—these apps are intended to boost fan loyalty. Unfortunately, the best way to enjoy most TV shows is to never, ever download the accompanying app from iTunes or Google Play. However, there are a few exceptions: Mad Men Cocktail Culture To quote from this 99-cent app, “Think you can make an Old Fashioned as good as Don Draper (or a Tom Collins as deftly as daughter Sally)?” After you’ve made a virtual cocktail, you tilt the screen toward your mouth and play the bubbly going down. Your retina display may turn…

PHASE TECHNOLOGY PENDANT SERIES HANGING SPEAKER When there’s no place to put the speakers, hang ’em high. Designed for use in open-ceiling areas or outdoors, Phase Tech’s Pendant Series speaker uses broad-dispersion drivers housed in a glass-fiber-reinforced plastic enclosure with ceramic input terminals and a powder-coated aluminum grille. There are five models, four of which are available in black or white: 4.3-inch diameter with a 3-inch full-range driver ($120, white only), 7.5-inch diameter with a 4-inch coaxial driver ($184), 10-inch diameter with a 6.5-inch coax ($276), and two 12.8-inch-diameter models, each with an 8-inch coax ($376 and $490). Hanging and safety cables are included. Sound All Around: The top-of-the-line model uses a high-sensitivity compression horn driver for superior high-frequency dispersion in large spaces or outdoors. Phase Technology • (913) 663-9770…

For the picture settings used in this review, go to HomeTheater.com. The 2D measurements below were taken in the Custom Picture Mode, through an HDMI input. With the Backlight set to 4, the Picture (Contrast) control at 70, the Brightness at 53, the Gamma on 0, and the LED Dynamic Control on Standard, the peak white level was slightly below 36 foot-lamberts. The black level was unmeasurable with our Minolta LS-100 light meter—resulting in the unmeasurable full-on/full-off contrast ratio above. With the LED Dynamic Control on Low, the full-on/full-off contrast ratio measured 11,977:1 (peak white 35.93 ft-L, black 0.003 ft-L). With the LED Dynamic Control off, the corresponding results were 1,797:1, 35.94 ft-L, and 0.020 ft-L. After about 10 seconds, the latter dropped dramatically to roughly the same reading obtained…

PRICE: $1,999 AT A GLANCE: Wireless subwoofer with horizontal or vertical orientation • Three HDMI inputs • Only 2.38 inches deep A Slender Bar with a Big Behind History is so yesterday. After all, there’s no reason to learn about it when we can do nothing and watch it repeat itself. Still, I oftentimes get sucked into watching documentaries and other fanciful re-creations of people and what they did in the past. The other day, for instance, I saw an episode of Nova called “The Secrets of the Viking Sword.” Evidently, over a thousand years ago, a certain privileged few Vikings wielded their era’s ultimate weapon: the Ulfberht sword. Made from a very high-carbon steel, known as crucible steel, the blades of these swords bent rather than broke when stuck…

AUDIO DECODING: DOLBY: TrueHD, Plus, Digital 5.1, II/IIx DTS: DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, DTS 5.1, ES, 96/24, Neo:6 OTHER: Cinema DSP, Cinema DSP 3D, Silent Cinema, Virtual Cinema DSP, DSD/SACD, MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, WMA, DSD 3D: Yes THX CERTIFIED: No NUMBER OF AMP CHANNELS: 7 RATED POWER (WATTS PER CHANNEL): 110 watts into 8 ohms, two channels driven SPECIFIED FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 10 Hz to 100 kHz, +0/-3 dB) VIDEO PROCESSING: Proprietary AUTO SETUP/ROOM EQ: YPAO DIMENSIONS (W X H X D, INCHES): 17.13 x 7.13 x 17 WEIGHT (POUNDS): 33.3 PRICE: $1,200…

Going to the Edge Full LED backlighting with local dimming, when properly implemented, is the gold standard for achieving the best black levels in an LCD HDTV. But such a set also requires a lot of gold to acquire. LED edge-lit designs, needing fewer LEDs and less complex processing, cost less. While LG makes fully LED-backlit local-dimming sets (its LM9600 Nano designs), the company’s premier, edge-lit LM8600 offerings also include local dimming. Local dimming, even in an edge-lit set, is usually better than none at all, but it’s less comprehensive and in theory less effective than the fully backlit variety. We reviewed the 55LM9600 Nano back in our September 2012 issue. But the 55LM8600 now lays down a strong challenge to its pricier sibling. Description Unlike the Nanos, the two…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: 4,700:1 For the above result, the Backlight control (small c) was set to 48, the Contrast to 60, the Brightness to 51, and Adaptive Luma and Backlight Control (capital C) both off. The measured peak white level under these conditions was 32.9 foot-lamberts, and the black level was 0.007 ft-L—the latter one of the best readings we have yet seen from an LED-lit LCD set without local dimming. Increasing the Backlight control to its maximum, with the other settings unchanged, produced a peak white level of 73.8 ft-L. In the Vivid picture mode’s default settings, the peak white level measured 90.9 ft-L. Delta E is a figure of merit that indicates how close the color comes to the D65 HD color standard. Values below 3 are generally…

THEY’RE GONNA NEED A BETTER BOAT How do you make a blockbuster film based on the all-too-familiar tale of the doomed luxury liner Titanic? Try giving it a context of modern-day exploration and discovery, weave in a resonant theme of class struggle and the folly of ambitious men, and put at its heart a romance that epitomizes the sweet stupidity of young love. And don’t forget to execute it all with an unprecedented technical genius. Not one but two Blu-ray 3D platters are dedicated solely to the three-hour-plus movie, with no bonus material, for a superior presentation. The high bitrate afforded by this configuration and the switch to a 16:9 aspect ratio for this stereoscopic version yield a jaw-dropping level of detail. It’s evident in ancient heroine Rose’s (and “young”…

GET ON WITH IT ALREADY! Tom and Violet had the makings of a beautiful relationship. They met at a New Year’s Eve costume party in San Francisco, and exactly one year later, Tom popped the question on a rooftop building with the lit-up Bay Bridge in the background—only in the movies. While in the process of picking a wedding date, Violet gets a chance to study for a year with a noted professor of psychology at University of Michigan. Tom puts his career on hold to allow his future bride to further her education. Her initial study was only supposed to last one year but turns into a permanent position when the professor has ulterior motives. Can their relationship survive? Judd Apatow is considered one of the hottest producers in…

CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, WHAT’S YOUR FUNCTION? Kicked out of his band and desperate for work, Dewey Finn intercepts a call meant for his roommate and lands an extended gig as a substitute teacher at Horace Green Elementary, a $15,000-per-year private school in the Northeast. The school’s uptight principal suspects something is amiss when the new teacher is less concerned about the students and is more interested in when the school day ends, but he gets the gig anyway. Dewey’s attitude changes when he hears the kids in their music class and realizes they have some serious potential if he can take them under his wing. He forms his own “classroom band” and involves the entire class with a costume designer, backup singers, security, and even a band manager with two goals…

Gibson has its famous Flying V guitar, the high-end audio community has Aragon’s signature V-notch power amp, introduced 25 years ago in Mondial’s Aragon 4004 amplifier and resurrected in the Iridium Monoblock, flagship of the recently revived Aragon brand. This distinctive powerhouse is a direct descendant of the highly acclaimed Mondial Palladium Monoblock, says Rick Santiago, co-founder and CEO of Indy Audio Labs, which acquired the brand a few years ago. Iridium remains true to the audiophile legacy of Aragon’s fabled designs and has been updated with “the latest low-noise, high-voltage discrete semiconductors” as well as state-of-the-art control features, including Ethernet and RS-232 connections and a 12-volt trigger for integration with custom A/V systems. When connected to a home network, the stately behemoth goes a step further, accessing a proprietary…

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. Framed Again I have read many places, including in this magazine (November 2012, Sony KDL-55HX850 review), that movies must be in…

For the past year, you’ve watched some of the best (and worst) Hollywood has to offer. Now it’s time for the Academy Awards. What better excuse to host a party? But you can’t just invite a bunch of friends over and pass the chip bowl. On a night that celebrates glitz and glamour, why not follow suit and roll out the red carpet? Here are some tips on how to throw the ultimate Oscar-viewing party. SET DESIGN We weren’t kidding about the red carpet. Make your guests feel extra-special as they enter your home by welcoming them with a red carpet runner. You can purchase one from a party supply store for less than $20. And while you’re there, pick up a few clapperboards, life-size celebrity cutouts, and silver, gold,…

Price: Included with Toshiba HDTVs At a Glance: Netflix, Vudu, Cinema Now apps stream most available TV shows and movies • Complete Web browser At first, it seemed like the Toshiba 47L7200U smart TV I sampled to check out its streaming options offered only the bare bones. When I opened the ePortal app home page, there were only the basic media streaming apps like Netflix and Vudu. Unlike Samsung or LG, Toshiba doesn’t have an app store. Also, it can only play a few basic digital file formats. But its Web browser goes beyond the basics. It’s unrestricted from most streaming Websites and easy to use. While you may still want an external media streamer, the Toshiba offers enough streaming options for users who only stream online video. Movies, TV,…

Conventional circuit boards and their metallic tentacles may be on their way out—someday. Scientists at Oxford University have developed a new kind of sealed “metaboard” by embedding copper coils into a conductive layer. This metaboard can transfer data and power using magneto-inductive waves instead of wires. The Guardian, the British daily, explains: “Taking the science behind the Pentagon’s cloaking device, they came up with a technology that replaces the solder, pins, and wiring of the conventional computer with Lego-like blocks of silicon stuck to a Velcro-like metamaterial board that can wirelessly transmit both data and power.” Metamaterial, in case you were wondering, is any artificial material with properties not found in nature. A demonstration at Oxford proved that data from a small solid-state memory device could be detected with a…

Well, here we go again—time for another round of the best of last year’s best. As you’ll see (and forgive the old cliché), it was a year that was more evolutionary than revolutionary, but we were delighted to see the cost of excellent HDTVs and projectors continue to come down while the quality of some emerging categories, like soundbars, started to come up. And we enjoyed relishing those few special products that, with the benefit of hindsight, seemed to rise up just a little higher than the other TPs we identified and recommended throughout the year. As before, each of the items that follow has its own reason for being here, whether it’s a notable technology advance, overall great performance, or amazing value. The picks represent the 2012 calendar year,…

PRICE: $1,599 AT A GLANCE: Outstanding value • Powerful deep bass response • Built-in parametric EQ More Boom for the Buck Since I was a little kid, I always loved going to the movie theater. I guess it started in 1976 when I watched Star Wars for the first time in Modesto, California (yeah, the place where George Lucas grew up—nice coincidence). Over the next 20 years, you’d find me at the theater at least once a week enjoying the latest blockbuster with a few friends and a bucket or two of good popcorn—the stuff that was popped in coconut oil, not the crap they sell today. Fast-forward to 1996 as I was walking through my local Circuit City and witnessed a demo of the Twister DVD on a 50-inch…

This graph shows the quasianechoic (corrected for boundary gain and employing close-miking of all woofers) frequency response of the SoloCinema XTR soundbar (purple trace). The left channel was measured with the grille at a distance of 1 meter. Please note: Our standardized measurements require that all spatial and surround processing be bypassed. As that function isn’t provided on this model, special firmware was required on the sample tested here. The SoloCinema XTR soundbar’s listening-window response (a five-point average of axial and +/–15-degree horizontal and vertical responses) measures +5.24/– 3.23 decibels from 200 hertz to 10 kilohertz. The –3-dB point is at 174 Hz, and the –6-dB point is at 137 Hz. The matching subwoofer’s close-miked response, normalized to the level at 80 Hz, indicates that the lower –3-dB point is…

Two channels driven continuously into 8-ohm loads: 0.1% distortion at 113.5 watts 1% distortion at 129.2 watts Five channels driven continuously into 8-ohm loads: 0.1% distortion at 63.9 watts 1% distortion at 73.2 watts Seven channels driven continuously into 8-ohm loads: 0.1% distortion at 57.0 watts 1% distortion at 65.1 watts Analog frequency response in Pure Direct mode: –0.06 dB at 10 Hz –0.02 dB at 20 Hz +0.11 dB at 20 kHz –2.49 dB at 50 kHz Analog frequency response with signal processing: –0.23 dB at 10 Hz –0.08 dB at 20 Hz –0.12 dB at 20 kHz –64.25 dB at 50 kHz This graph shows that the RX-A1020’s left channel, from Audio1 input to speaker output with two channels driving 8-ohm loads, reaches 0.1 percent distortion at 113.5…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: 28,710:1 All the measurements that follow were made in the Expert 1 picture mode. The above 2D full-on/full-off contrast ratio was obtained with the Backlight at 42, the Contrast at 80, the Brightness at 56, the Gamma at 2.4, and LED Local Dimming on Medium. The peak white level for the above reading was 28.71 foot-lamberts and the black level 0.001 ft-L. The differences among the High, Medium, and Low settings of the LED Local Dimming control were significant. Though no control settings were changed for these measurements, the Medium setting of the LED Local Dimming control was the only one with a measured peak white level under 30 ft-L. In High (the setting used for the viewing tests), the black level was unmeasurable. In Low, the…

There was a time long before the Twilight era when vampires were stylishly suave, spoke with heavy European accents, resided in palatial gothic stone mansions, and didn’t get their wardrobes from Abercrombie & Fitch. Based on the popular cult soap opera from the late ’60s that ran for more than 1,200 episodes, Dark Shadows tells the story of a young 18th century aristocrat, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) who foolishly spurns the love of a vindictive witch ironically named Angelique (Eva Green). Proving that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Angelique places a curse on him and his entire family line. After witnessing his beloved fiancée take a suicide plunge off a seaside cliff while under a spell, Barnabas is condemned to be a vampire and then promptly sealed…

DUDE, THAT CRAZY STONER WAS RIGHT! What a swift kick in the ass! Co-written and produced by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly on TV, The Avengers), The Cabin in the Woods is the most self-aware and gleefully gory comedy-horror flick since the Scream series devolved into a parody of a parody. As I write this, there are probably forums of fanboys aflame, identifying and exchanging the horror movie references throughout. Its plot practically defies description, but the elevator pitch would be Evil Dead meets The Truman Show. A handful of late 20-to 30-something “teenagers” led by Thor (Chris Hemsworth, in a high school varsity jacket while allegedly going to college) go to a clone of the Evil Dead cabin and, of course, are served up to untold…

THE BEST JAZZ MOVIE EVER Chico & Rita is a wonderful movie, a valentine—poignant, sweet, but never sentimental—to Cuban jazz, bebop, and the street scenes of 1940s and ’50s Havana and New York. It’s a sophisticated animation, drawn in an evocative sketch-edged style similar to that of Waltz With Bashir. (It’s based on a graphic novel, a few pages of which are reproduced in the Blu-ray box’s booklet.) The story follows Chico, a brilliant jazz pianist, as he navigates the club scene in Havana, moves north to Manhattan, gets sent back on trumped-up drug charges, languishes after Castro’s revolution, until, decades later, he’s rediscovered and celebrated worldwide (shades of the Buena Vista Social Club documentary). The tale runs parallel to his lusty romance across the decades with Rita, a gorgeous…

FLAT PANELS ENTRY LEVEL Samsung UN40EH6000 LCD HDTV, $850 Reviewed at HomeTheater.com Vizio E601i-A3 LCD HDTV, $1,000 Reviewed February/March 2013 Samsung PN51E550 3D Plasma HDTV, $1,160 Reviewed January 2013 Panasonic Viera TC-P55ST50 3D Plasma HDTV, $1,700 Reviewed July 2012 Vizio M3D650SV 3D LCD HDTV, $1,870 Reviewed at HomeTheater.com MIDRANGE Sony KDL-55HX850 3D LCD HDTV, $2,600 Reviewed November 2012 SunBriteTV Model 4660 HD Outdoor LCD HDTV, $2,795 Reviewed July 2012 LG 55LM8600 3D LCD HDTV, $2,900 Reviewed February/March 2013 HIGH END Sony Bravia XBR-55HX929 3D LCD HDTV, $3,500 Reviewed November 2011 Sony XBR-55HX950 3D LCD HDTV, $3,500 Reviewed February/March 2013 Panasonic TC-P65VT50 3D Plasma HDTV, $3,700 Reviewed October 2012 Elite PRO-60X5FD 3D LCD HDTV, $6,000 Reviewed January 2012 PROJECTORS ENTRY LEVEL Mitsubishi HD7800D 3D DLP Projector, $2,995 Reviewed at HomeTheater.com BenQ…

Procella Audio, a Swedish company specializing in high-performance speakers for home theaters, professional studios, and screening rooms, prides itself on building speakers that can play 24-bit/96-kilohertz program material at THX reference levels with full dynamic range. Its latest model—the P6V—can be used for main-channel applications in small-to medium-size rooms 10 to 20 feet deep and is rated to produce a maximum continuous output of 110 decibels, 116 dB peak. Impressive, considering the P6V is only 18.5 inches tall, 11.4 inches wide, and about 5 inches deep, which also means it can be mounted on a wall (brackets included) or, when used as a surround speaker, concealed in an architectural column. The P6V, $1,599 each, draws on a simple two-way, sealed design with a 6.5-inch woofer and high-frequency driver to deliver…

The new Kindle Fire HD tablets have a big plus that’s in danger of being overlooked. And that’s Dolby Digital Plus. When Amazon’s literature boasts about “exclusive Dolby audio and dual stereo speakers for crisp, booming sound without distortion,” Dolby Digital Plus is what it’s talking about. This lossy surround encoding format is newer and much more sophisticated than its elder brother, Dolby Digital. And while it isn’t a lossless format like Dolby TrueHD, at its best, it’s very good. And it’s capable of functioning in a wide range of data rates, including the modest ones used in video streaming. Netflix and Vudu both support Dolby Digital Plus. Dolby Digital Plus scored another coup with its adoption by UltraViolet, the studio-supported ecosystem for cloud-based entertainment storage. Dolby Digital Plus is…

If you’re used to plugging your unencrypted basic-cable feed directly into your TV’s QAM tuner, you might want to sit down. We’ve got some bad news: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has caved in to decades of cable-industry lobbying and will now allow cable operators to encrypt basic-cable service—the bottom tier consisting mostly of broadcast channels—in digital cable systems. In-the-clear cable service, mandated 20 years ago by an act of Congress, is all but dead. Basic-tier subscribers must now obtain either a set-top box or a CableCARD from their cable systems, though the FCC requires operators to wait two years before charging for it. The no-charge period is one year for those who subscribe to a higher level but use the basic tier on a secondary set. Medicaid recipients can…

Magnavox brought the first Laserdisc player, the VH-8000, to market in late 1978, but Pioneer was the company that put the format on the map. Its first player, the VP-1000, debuted in the U.S. in 1980, and later in Japan. I doubt Pioneer ever thought Laserdisc would threaten VHS and Betamax’s dominance in the mass market; Laserdisc was targeted to high-end buyers. They looked like giant CDs, but Laserdisc started as a purely analog video and audio format. Digital audio was added in 1984 when Pioneer’s CLD-900 incorporated uncompressed linear PCM digital stereo and Dolby Surround; players with Dolby Digital and DTS arrived a few years later. LD was the first random-access format, and that seemed like a radical advance at the time. Those first generations of players used helium-neon…

PRICE: $3,500 AT A GLANCE: Plasma-quality blacks • Near flawless color • Bright, vivid 3D Bright Lights, Dark Shadows All LCD HDTVs require some form of backlighting. The LCD panel’s pixels modulate the light and provide filtered color, but without backlighting to shine through the panel, you’d have no picture. Recently, LEDs (lighte-mitting diodes) have replaced the fluorescent backlights used in older flat-screen LCD sets. LCDs aren’t perfect in blocking light (which is why so many early models had poor black levels), but if you can shut off or dim the LEDs on demand, the LCDs’ light-blocking chores become far more efficient. And LEDs can do this; they can be shut off and turned back on almost instantaneously in reaction to the signal coming in. When this is done in…

This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing close-miking of all woofers) frequency response of the SB13-Ultra subwoofer (blue trace). The SB13-Ultra’s close-miked response, normalized to the level at 80 hertz, indicates that the lower –3-decibel point is at 25 Hz and the –6-dB point is at 21 Hz. The upper –3-dB point is at 160 Hz with Low Pass & High Pass set to Disabled and EQ set to Disabled. on the web Visit our Website for a detailed explanation of our testing regimen, plus a list of our reference gear.…

PRICE: $1,200 AT A GLANCE: Top-flight build quality • Clean and detailed sound • Second-zone HDMI Back to the Fundamentals Sing me a song. Come on, it will cheer me up. Hey, that’s good. Can you sing while juggling? Here’s the fruit bowl, let’s see what you can do. Wow, that was great. Now do the singing and juggling while standing on one foot. That was amazing! Can you sing and juggle while hopping on one foot? Incredible, although I must say the hopping affected your vibrato a little. Now let me see you sing, juggle, and hop on one foot while rotating—hey, where are you going? You were just starting to amuse me. We ask a lot of the people who design audio/video receivers. We want their products to…

INPUTS: VIDEO: HDMI 1.4a (8), component video (4), S-video (4), composite video (5) AUDIO: Coaxial digital (3), optical digital (4), stereo analog (9), phono (1), 7.1-channel analog (1), ADDITIONAL: Ethernet (1), USB (1) AM (1), FM (1) OUTPUTS: VIDEO: HDMI (2), component video (1), S-video (2), composite video (2) AUDIO: Optical digital (1), stereo analog (2), 7.2-channel preamp (1) 0.25-inch headphone (1) ADDITIONAL: RS-232 (1), 12-volt trigger (2), IR (in/out), DC accessory out (1)…

Big Picture, Small Price It’s long been true that if you wait long enough, the price of technology will drop down to meet your budget. Flat-screen HDTVs are prime examples. We’ve recently seen manufacturers respond to the current global financial malaise by squeezing their beans hard enough to produce decent sets for around $1,000. While it’s difficult to say if this trend is due to economic conditions or pressure from price-aggressive new manufacturers, Vizio has been in the vanguard of the young guns making life difficult for traditional HDTV companies. And the company’s not standing still. Exhibit A: Vizio’s new $1,000 E601i-A3. Like its big brother, the 70-inch, $2000 E701i-A3, it’s a true budget buster, but for a change, the budget they’re busting isn’t yours. East Side, West Side The…

TEAM SPIRIT When Marvel Comics’ gang of superheroes—Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye—get together after the first four of them starred in their own movies, you know something big is up. And it’s no surprise that Loki, Thor’s adopted brother, who teamed up with an army of nasty aliens, is behind it. A slam-bang, action-loaded extravaganza, The Avengers grabbed last summer’s box office and ran away with the receipts. Fans ate it up and made it by far the biggest smash hit of 2012. At almost 2.5 hours, some viewers may find the film a little exhausting. The action rarely flags, but when it does, we get arguably the best parts of the movie, including almost any character-driven scene with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man,…

THE JOHN HUGHES TIME CAPSULE Everything worth knowing about teenagers in the 1980s is found in John Hughes’ 1984 directorial debut, Sixteen Candles. This is a perfect movie, capturing it all in just two days in the life of 16-year-old Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald). Sam’s 16th birthday is the day before her older sister’s wedding, and it starts out anything but sweet. Her entire family is so consumed with the wedding details, they forget. Sam heads to the back-to-school dance saddled with her grandparents’ Asian exchange student Long Duk Dong, in love with impossibly sweet campus hunk Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), and chased by relentless freshman geek, Farmer Ted (Anthony Michael Hall). Hilarity, revelations, and romance ensue. These characters remain cultural icons to anyone who was a teenager in the…

THE EMPEROR WAS STARK NAKED ON THIS ONE Oliver Stone practically had to sell his soul to get Platoon made at a time when no movie studio wanted to revisit the Vietnam War. After that film won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1986, however, it kicked open the floodgates, and suddenly movie theaters everywhere were inundated with Vietnam War films like Hamburger Hill, Casualties of War, and Full Metal Jacket, and all paled in comparison with Platoon. With Full Metal Jacket, legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick examines the ritualistic dehumanization of the American Marine through rigorous boot camp training and transformation into a remorseless killing machine. The question he poses to us is: When you strip a man of his humanity, what’s left? Matthew Modine stars as Private Joker, a…

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 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 (770) 955-8909 www.GHTNet.com B&W Speakers, McIntosh, Crestron Automation & more. NEW HAMPSHIRE ENSEMBLE MUSIC SYSTEMS & HOME THEATER # 166 Daniel Webster Highway, Nashua, NH 03060 Tel: (603) 888-9777, Fax: (603) 888-9555 info@ensembleht.com • www.ensembleht.com Aerial, ARCAM, Anthem, Atlantic, AudioQuest, Audience, BDI, Bryston, B&W, Classe, Clearaudio, Control4, Denon, Elite TV’s, Epson Projectors, Furman, JVC Projectors, McIntosh, NAD, Olive, Parasound, Paradigm, Pioneer Elite, Pro-ject, PSB, Rotel,…