Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul-Aug-13 i Home Theater

For the last several years, our annual January pilgrimage to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show has been all about someone else’s toys. Handheld smartphones and tablets, wearable technology (now, what is that about?), fashion earphones, smart appliances, electric car-charging stations, streaming pocket-sized speakers, you name it. It’s been awfully quiet on the A/V front…until now. Much to everyone’s surprise, display technologies that have been promised for years were suddenly front and center again at this year’s show. We’ve got 4K Ultra HDTVs and content delivery services launching, and OLED, still just a promise as I write this in early May, is threatening to show its face. The two most impressive video demos I saw at CES belonged to Sony and Panasonic, each of whom showed its own version…

Sonus Faber Founder Franco Serblin passed away at age 73. His company’s loudspeaker creations continue to look as beautiful as they sound... A Glasses-Free 3D Spec has been adopted by Dolby Labs and Philips for program creation, delivery, and playback. The Dolby 3D format may extend its influence to TVs, smartphones, PCs, and tablets... Panasonic Denied the rumor that it is exiting the plasma business. While it did close a dedicated Chinese plasma plant, it continues to assemble sets at another plant that also handles LCD... Dragon TV Voice Recognition is featured in some of Panasonic’s 2013 smart TVs. Speak to it to trigger TV commands and Web searches and listen as it reads TV text content and options onscreen... U.S. TV Sales Will Drop for the second consecutive year…

Online streaming outfits are turning themselves into studios, bankrolling movies and TV series. Before you scoff, did you watch Netflix’s House of Cards? We did, blasting through all 13 episodes in the first month of availability. The series, with Kevin Spacey as a Machiavellian congressman, has made 86 percent of Netflix subscribers less likely to cancel, says a Cowen and Co. survey. We can’t wait for the second “season.” The latest trend is for streamers to take over series that made their debuts on broadcast or cable networks. Arrested Development won’t be renewed by Netflix past the initial single season. However, the Fox series made history as the first to migrate from broadcast TV to streaming. Now the involvement of Netflix has saved The Killing from an early grave. Originally,…

Startup now reaches 4.5 million viewers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Aereo has brought its live-TV-over-Internet service to the Boston metro area as of May 15, following a controversial launch in New York. The move expands Aereo’s reach to 4.5 million viewers spread over 16 counties in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. If the name Aereo doesn’t ring a bell, it’s the plucky little startup that streams over-the-air channels to the Web, using an individual thumb-size antenna for each subscriber. Fox and a consortium of other broadcasters have sued the Barry Diller–backed company, alleging copyright infringement, but so far, Aereo has prevailed in court. In fact, it is now in talks with the likes of AT&T, which might want to bundle Aereo service with broadband or wireless plans, and…

Ah, summertime. The smell of lavender wafts through the air. A warm breeze rustles through the trees while you kick back on the patio and savor the latest craft beer. It’s almost time to head inside to watch the Yankees take on Detroit. If only you could watch the game outside… Well, you can. In honor of America’s favorite season, we present 10 products that will add pleasure to your backyard experience. Read on, and you may soon be the envy of the neighborhood. Movies Under the Stars Mate a cheap projector and simple sound setup with one of Elite Screens’ Yard Master Series projection screens and transform your backyard (or campsite) into a drive-in—as in drive-in movie theater for you under-30 types who’ve never been to one. Available in…

PRICE: $1,299 AT A GLANCE: Reference-quality audio and video • HDMI and digital audio inputs • Built-in 192-kHz/24-bit audio upsampling Another Blu-ray Juggernaut They say that imitation is the ultimate form of flattery; I say if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. In the last few years, we’ve seen a few high-end Blu-ray players use the popular Oppo Digital Blu-ray player as the core of their design, with at least one manufacturer having even taken it as far as dropping a complete Oppo BDP-83SE chassis into a different cabinet with a new faceplate and charging $3,000 more for it (only to be exposed later). With the Azur 752BD, Cambridge utilizes only the core video components and transport, adding its own analog audio section and execution. So while my review unit…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: UNMEASURABLE All of the measurements here were taken in the Cinema 1 Picture Mode through an HDMI input. Unless otherwise noted, these results were for 2D operation. For a list of the settings used for this review, see the online version at HomeTheater.com. With the Backlight set to 2, the Picture (contrast) control at 90, the Brightness at 50, the Gamma at 0, and the LED Dynamic Control on Standard, the measured peak white level was 30.4 foot-lamberts and the black level 0.00 ft-L. This does not mean the set has infinite contrast, only that the LEDs turn off in the presence of a black signal, such as fadeouts between scenes. When a small bright spot appears, for example a pause bug from a disc player in…

AXIOM AUDIO EPIC MIDI 125 SPEAKER SYSTEM L/R Sensitivity: 85 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz Center Sensitivity: 88 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz Surround Sensitivity: 83 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing close-miking of all woofers) frequency response of the M2 v3 L/R (purple trace), VP100 v3 center channel (green trace), QS4 v3 surround (red trace), and EP125 subwoofer (blue 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 M2 v3’s listening-window response (a five-point average of axial and +/–15-degree horizontal and vertical responses) measures +3.07/–1.88 decibels from 200 hertz to 10 kilohertz. The–3dB point is at 76 Hz, and the–6dB point is at…

PRICE: $1,699 AT A GLANCE: Top-tier black levels and color accuracy • So-so 3D • World-class value Just Another Day in Bargainville Panasonic TC-P60ST60 3D Plasma HDTV 2D PERFORMANCE 5.0/5.0 3D PERFORMANCE 3.5/2.5 FEATURES 5.4/1.5 ERGONOMICS 3.5/2.5 VALUE 5.5/5.5 Last year, the number-one TV I recommended to friends, family, and anyone else who would listen was Panasonic’s ST50 series plasma. Although a serious enthusiast might have appreciated the superior black levels and more extensive picture controls of the company’s then top-line VT models, 2012’s ST50, like the ST30 models of the year before, delivered most of the VT’s performance and easily beat out all but the most expensive LED LCDs. It was simply an incredible value and was recognized as such in Home Theater’s Top Picks of the Year. The…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: 1,247:1 All the measurements here, unless noted otherwise, were taken in 2D on a 96-inch-wide, 16:9, Stewart StudioTek 130 G3 screen (gain 1.3), with the projector in its Cinema Preset Mode, calibrated and adjusted for the most accurate image. The Lamp Power was on Economic (low), the Gamma set to 2.4, the Contrast at 45, the Brightness at 51, and BrilliantColor was off. All measurements and viewing were done with over 130 hours on the projection lamp. The BenQ’s full-on/full-off contrast ratio (sometimes referred to as the peak contrast ratio, the sequential contrast ratio, or the dynamic range) is uninspiring relative to most of the recent displays we’ve tested. Note that the above result was from a measured peak white level of 22.44 foot-lamberts and a black…

PUPPY POWER Coerced into playing baseball by his father, Victor connects with the hit of his life and sails one over the fence. His beloved dog, Sparky, thinks it’s a game of fetch, races after the ball, is hit by an oncoming car, and dies. Terribly depressed and lonely, Victor is inspired by his science teacher to bring his dog back to life. Successful in his task, his home-sewn creature draws the attention of an evil classmate when he escapes, and Victor is forced to reveal his secret on how to raise the dead. All hell breaks loose when the town is suddenly overrun by reanimated pets, and it’s up to Victor and Sparky to save the day. Tim Burton was an acquired taste for me, and over the years…

THIS IS THE CLASS-A CONTENDER All of you know the taxicab scene from On the Waterfront in which Marlon Brando tells Rod Steiger, “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let’s face it.” But I’d bet not many have recently seen the whole movie—and never have you seen it looking as breathtaking as it does on this Blu-ray Disc, a wondrous collaboration between Sony’s 4K digital-restoration lab and the Criterion Collection’s special-features team. But first, a bit about Brando. Watch him play Terry Doyle, the conscience-struck dockworker who informs on his Mob overlords, and you’ll see where every rebel actor through the decades since—Nicholson, De Niro, Cage, Penn, Pacino—learned the stuff, and the remarkable thing…

FREEDOM COMES AT A PRICE Atenacious woman is in the forefront of the greatest manhunt in history. Jessica Chastain is Maya, a lead member of a CIA think tank assigned with the task of tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden. Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal both won Academy Awards for their work on The Hurt Locker. Now they’ve taken another stab at the turmoil in the Middle East with Zero Dark Thirty. The title refers to the military designation of half an hour past midnight, when it’s dark enough that no one can see you coming. I give Bigelow and Boal high marks for their unflinching depiction of CIA interrogation methods of torture in extracting information from Islamic detainees. Beatings, water boarding, sleep deprivation—it sure doesn’t leave…

Thorax Lowboard A/V Rack It’s not every day you come across an equipment rack made of concrete, but if you’re into industrial design, the stark, angular look of the Thorax Lowboard might be just the ticket. Made by Thorax of Bochum, Germany, the rack is modular and comprises a series of 3-inch-wide concrete squares held together by screws and 1-to 2-inch-wide stainless steel or aluminum brackets; each square weighs about 33 pounds and measures 20.4 x 20.4 inches with a thickness of 1.5 inches. Thorax offers three types of concrete building blocks—four-sided, three-sided, and three-sided with a component shelf in the middle—which makes possible a number of mix-and-match configurations: with or without component shelves, with the open area facing the front or side (pictured), and with the concrete elements aligned…

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 an 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. Darryl’s Still Gross, and You Suck, Too I enjoy Home Theater, and I learn something useful in nearly every issue. But…

Your favorite celebrities and movie characters need not be strictly relegated to the big screen in your home theater. With life-size cardboard cutouts, you have yet another choice when it comes to decorating ideas. Moviecutouts.com offers hundreds of options from categories such as TV, movies, history, music, sports, animals, and more. And with such a vast selection—from Luke Skywalker to Brad Pitt, Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber, and Elvira—you can make every member of the movie-viewing family happy.—Michelle McCarthy THE BAWL OF THE SMARTASS TV “Sometimes it’s depressing being so smart.” A customer walks into a showroom and the TV says, “Hey, big spender, come spend a little time with me.” The customer replies, “Of all the TVs on the wall, why should I spend any time with you?” The TV…

The war against Hopper—Dish Network’s zippy ad-skipping DVR—has taken a couple of new tacks. TV networks hate it because it enables viewers to breeze through brain-damaging ads. They’ve made their displeasure known by fighting Hopper’s AutoHop and PrimeTime Anytime features in court on flimsy copyright-violation grounds, apparently unaware that the Supreme Court sanctioned home time-shift recording in 1984’s Betamax Decision. The latest legal battle against the kangaroo-themed DVR is a suit filed by Fox in California district court. Rupert Murdoch’s minions are targeting the DVR’s Internet streaming and recording functions, which would effectively thwart Dish’s latest move to expand Hopper’s functionality. Meanwhile—and you’ll want to switch on your irony detector for this—the TV networks are refusing to air ads for Hopper. Apparently these are the only ads in the universe…

CINEAK STRATO PLUS HOME THEATER SEATING You’ll be hard pressed to find more luxurious seating than the handcrafted Strato Plus line from Cineak, a family-owned Belgian company founded in 1999 to right the wrong of mass-produced home theater/media room seating that is hideous looking and uncomfortable. By mixing and matching options, including chaises and a corner piece, you can assemble a fixed or motorized seating arrangement that fits your room. Style Meets Convenience: Strato Plus seating is available in a variety of high-quality leathers and fabrics with more than a dozen options, including cupholders, swivel trays, articulating headrests, swiveling iPad bases, custom embroidery, and even built-in actuators and motion controllers that bring tactile sensation to your entertainment experience. You’ll be the envy of the neighborhood. Price: $7,500 and up Cineak…

PRICE: $10,785 ($9,675 in standard finish) AT A GLANCE: Folded-planar magnetic tweeters • Treble and bass trim switches • Biwire and biamp capable Addictively Energizing Every company has its genesis story, be it the back of a napkin or something more grandiose. Apple, of course, is famous for starting out in Steve Jobs’s parents’ garage. Lutron’s backstory isn’t quite as well known, but its unassuming beginnings were in the bedroom founder Joel Spira and his wife intended to use as their first child’s nursery. (“Sorry, kid, you’ll have to sleep on the couch. Daddy’s got a solid-state dimmer to invent.”) Similar to Apple, Legacy Audio’s birthplace was in a garage; but this garage was far from Cupertino. Instead, it was located in the midst of the cornfield-filled upper Midwest where,…

CAMBRIDGE AUDIO AZUR 752BD BLU-RAY 3D PLAYER BD-LIVE: Yes, 1 GB internal storage BONUSVIEW: Yes, 1 GB internal storage FIRMWARE VERSION: 752BDCU-12-0305 3D: Yes AUDIO DECODING: DOLBY: Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD DTS: DTS, DTS-HD High Resolution, DTS-HD Master Audio OTHER: 7.1 PCM up to 192/24 HDMI VIDEO RESOLUTIONS: 480i/480p/576i/576p/720p/1080i/1080p/1080p24, 3D frame-packing 720p/1080p24, 4K x 2K COMPATIBLE PLAYBACK FORMATS: BD-Video, Blu-ray 3D, DVD-Video, DVDAudio, AVCHD, SACD, CD, HDCD, Kodak Picture CD, CD-R/RW, DVD±R/RW, DVD±R DL, BD-R/RE DIMENSIONS (W X H X D, INCHES): 16.9 x 3.3 x 12.3 WEIGHT (POUNDS): 11 PRICE: $1,299…

A New Breakthrough? In 2009 Sony used the term Triluminos to refer to its first red, green, and blue LED backlit displays. It dropped the term somewhere on the road to 2013 (as it minimized but did not entirely eliminate its expensive-to-produce, fullarray LED backlit designs). But now it’s back, though today it refers to something quite different than mere tricolor LED backlighting. Working with a company called QD Vision, Sony this year has incorporated that firm’s trademarked term Color IQ into its premium sets. Rather than using a full array of three-color LED clusters behind the screen, it uses edge-lit LEDs of a certain bandwidth to energize elements called quantum dots (the QD in QD Vision). What are quantum dots? According to a ScienceDaily article, “A quantum dot is…

PRICE: $1,050 AT A GLANCE: Molded reinforced polymer enclosure Vertically expanded Tractrix horn Conventional sub Heart of Stone Compact satellite/subwoofer sets are often affordable, mate well with budget receivers, allow more speaker-placement width than soundbars, lend themselves to wall mounting—and best of all, they don’t hog the room, even if you place them on stands (which would usually produce the best sonic results). What Justice Anthony Kennedy’s swing vote is to the Supreme Court, the spouse acceptance factor is to loudspeaker genres, and the elegant compactness of a sat/sub set just may be the tiebreaker, the factor that makes the difference between having or not having a surround system. Sat/sub sets continue to be the most underrated product category in home theater. Klipsch’s Quintet is one of the category’s all-time…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: 13,208:1 All the post-calibration measurements shown here and all the observations in the review itself unless noted otherwise were performed in the Cinema picture mode for 2D or Custom picture mode for 3D, through an HDMI input with the set adjusted as needed for the most accurate image in a darkened room. Measurements were taken with a Klein K-10A colorimeter using Spectra-Cal CalMAN 5 software and an AV Foundry VideoForge signal generator. The 2D contrast ratio was measured at a Contrast setting of 82, a Brightness setting of 2, a Gamma setting of 2.4, and Panel brightness set to Mid. The peak white level with these settings was 31.7 foot-lamberts, and the black level was 0.0024 ft-L. The pre-calibration RGB balance shown in the charts was taken…

PRICE: $100 AT A GLANCE: Remote control headphone jack • Global movie title search • Zippy processor for quick navigation and search Another (Better) Roku Box Roku 3 Media Streamer PERFORMANCE 5.5/5.0 FEATURES 5.5/5.0 ERGONOMICS 5.5/5.0 VALUE 5.5/5.0 Where other companies that make media players seem stuck in endless delays in the release of new models, it seems that Roku rolls out a new option every few months. I’m not complaining. Its newest release, the Roku 3, is my favorite so far. I use a Roku box with my bedroom TV because my tech-challenged partner can easily understand how to navigate its menus. Roku 3 has now added a headphone jack in the remote that mutes the TV when you plug into it. No longer do I have to endure…

LOVE BITES When Toy Story launched the digital animation genre in 1995, you just knew that every Hollywood studio would eventually set up its own department to cash in on the latest movie trend. Throw in vampires with the Twilight phenomenon and 3D with Avatar, and it was just a matter of time before all three concepts would be mixed together into one picture, hence we get this entertaining animated tale from Sony Pictures. Dracula is a single, overprotective father who has gone to great pains to raise his only daughter, Mavis, as far away from humans as possible. He orders the construction of the Hotel Transylvania in the middle of nowhere, and it’s a hot-spot destination for a host of monsters to get away from it all. On his…

YOU JUST CAN’T TRUST THOSE GUYS ON WALL STREET From the outside looking in, Robert Miller is living the American dream. He’s a Wall Street billionaire who lives a life of luxury, has a loving wife and family, and is financially set for life. Unfortunately for Miller, he’s living a lie, and the house of cards he’s built is about to come crashing down. The man who landed himself on the cover of Forbes is in dire straits to sell his company to an unsuspecting buyer before some financial shenanigans come to light. To cover up his financial missteps, Miller had to borrow $400 million from a friend to help hide his investment losses, but he’s overdue on the repayment and his investor wants his cash back—now! To add insult…

THE WOODMAN’S MASTERPIECE Hannah and Her Sisters is Woody Allen’s most novelistic film: a tale of crisscrossing plotlines, strewn by multiple narrators, each a fully drawn character locked in or out of love with one of the others, and seeking answers to human needs and darker mysteries. It’s also Allen’s most redemptive film. In the end, the strands are resolved, the needs met, the mysteries not solved but set aside for the sake of enjoying life’s pleasures. In this sense, it’s reminiscent of Fanny and Alexander, the similarly titled (and also atypically euphoric) film made four years earlier by Allen’s morose hero Ingmar Bergman. Both films begin and end with lavish holiday dinners, and both chart voyages of infidelity, doubt, and despair, before settling into a celebration of the good…

Hailed as a sleek “zero-glare” alternative to flat-panel TVs, the Black Diamond Motorized projection screen is ideal for minimalist décors and spaces that simply don’t have room for a huge screen. Hit a wall switch and, like magic, a slender tube descends from the ceiling and the screen unfurls, suspended from ultra-slim aircraft cable. The 4K-ready screen is designed to excel in bright environments thanks to SI’s proprietary light-rejecting technology, which is said to reject ambient light scatter by more than 75 percent. Black, dark gray, and silver screen material options are available with respective gains of 0.8, 1.4, and 2.7 and horizontal viewing angles of 90, 100, and 160 degrees; vertical viewing angles are 33 degrees for the 0.8 and 1.4 gain screens and 35 degrees for the 2.7…

Price: $299 At a Glance: Sinfully comfy • Artfully balanced frequency response • Lavish build quality boasts aluminum trim and real leather It wasn’t that long ago that Philips wasn’t the first name that would come to mind for audiophile headphones. Things picked up early last year when the company totally revamped its headphone lineup, and the Fidelio Series turned a lot of heads. Philips was in the big leagues and fully competitive with the majors. The all-new Fidelio X1 is Philips’ best yet, but I have to admit I was swayed even before I heard it. The luxurious look of the design appeals to a more adult crowd than any of the shiny plastic and bling-encrusted headphones crowding the market. The X1’s high-end aura is more than skin deep.…

Price: $299/pair At a Glance: Consistent off-axis response • Sub output • 20 watts times two “A Book of Verses Underneath the Bough/A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou.” So runs the most famous translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The essence of the quotation is we need only a few basic things to attain happiness, and the Persian poet seems to imply that the fewer, the better. So what does it take to make you a happy listener? Does an audio system invariably have to follow the traditional model of speakers, amp, and source components? For a reference-quality home theater system, the answer is still yes—but for desktop listening, bedroom listening, and casual listening of all kinds, we’re free to make other arrangements: A laptop, powered…

Placing a home theater into an open area, offering a more casual and inviting environment, has become popular over the last few years. A home theater among the stars offers these homeowners and their guests a wonderful, spacious, and tranquil environment for dining, entertaining, and conversation. Originally, this home’s pool was covered and surrounded by a pavilion, but during renovations, the homeowners decided to move the pool outside. They liked the openness of the newly available space and decided to create a unique outside area with a home theater, dining area, kitchen, and bath, while keeping with the home’s Mediterranean design. Football is important in this home, and the homeowners wanted to enjoy games without being stuck inside. They entertain their extended family and friends with college and NFL football…

LEGACY AUDIO CLASSIC HD SPEAKER SYSTEM L/R Sensitivity: 87 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz Center Sensitivity: 91 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz Surround Sensitivity: 90.5 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing close-miking of all woofers) frequency response of the Classic HD L/R (purple trace), Silverscreen HD center channel (green trace), Deco surround (red trace), and Metro subwoofer (blue 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 Classic HD’s listening-window response (a five-point average of axial and +/–15-degree horizontal and vertical responses) measures +3.96/–2.16 decibels from 200 hertz to 10 kilohertz. The–3-dB point is at 46 Hz, and the–6-dB point is at 41 Hz.…

Sony KDL-55W900A 3D LCD HDTV PRICE: $3,300 AT A GLANCE: Rich black level and good shadow detail New color technology Bright, punchy 3D 2K, but A-OK The new KDL-55W900A is Sony’s newest, topof-the-line, non-XBR set. All of the XBRs, going forward, will be Ultra HD (4K) sets, but the KDL-55W900A, as all of the KDL designs, is firmly in the standard HD, 1920 x 1080 camp. It’s an edge-lit design with local dimming, but its marquee feature has nothing to do with contrast and black levels. Color is the plot here, and Triluminos, a term Sony has used in the past (see sidebar), promises a wider color gamut. Normally, we’d take this claim with raised eyebrows, as most current consumer video sources (apart from a few camcorders) use the smaller,…

Axiom Epic Midi 125 Speaker System PRICE: $1,418 AT A GLANCE: Distinctive cabinet shapes Revealing voicing Sold factory direct Shape Is Destiny Merriam-Webster.com defines a cabal as “the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government),” or “a group engaged in such artifices and intrigues.” For the past 30 years, Axiom Audio has been part of a Canadian cabal of loudspeaker manufacturers secretly united in a plot to overturn bad sound—ironically, with government support. The Ontario-based company is one of several brands that sprouted from Ottawa’s National Research Council facilities where Axiom founder and president Ian Colquhoun learned the art and science of speaker design under the legendary Dr. Floyd Toole. Why do we say “secretly united”? Axiom is one…

KLIPSCH QUINTET SPEAKER SYSTEM Satellite Sensitivity: 87.5 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz Center Sensitivity: 90 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing close-miking of all woofers) frequency response of the Quintet 5 satellite (purple trace), Quintet 5 center channel (green trace), and SW-110 subwoofer (blue 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 satellite’s listening-window response (a five-point average of axial and +/–15-degree horizontal and vertical responses) measures +4.38/–2.60 decibels from 200 hertz to 10 kilohertz. The–3-dB point is at 120 Hz, and the–6-dB point is at 103 Hz. Impedance reaches a minimum of 5.03 ohms at 374 Hz and a phase angle of–37.41 degrees at…

PRICE: $1,000 AT A GLANCE: Stunning brightness • Good color and detail • Mediocre black level and contrast Brightness Is Its Business BenQ W1070 3D DLP Projector 2D PERFORMANCE 3.5.5/1.5.5 3D PERFORMANCE 3.5/2.5 FEATURES 4.5/1.5 ERGONOMICS 4.5/1.5 VALUE 5.5/5.0 While our subject here is the W1070 home theater projector from BenQ, there’s more than a little business projector DNA in its genes. How else to explain a single-chip DLP design that’s a third the size and weight of most dedicated home theater models, has built-in audio with grim but usable mono sound, is equipped with a “digital zoom” that magnifies the image within the frame set by the standard zoom control (just the thing for a close examination of that quarterly profit and loss spreadsheet), still offers an S-video input,…

Director Robert Zemeckis makes his dramatic return to live-action feature films with Flight after a decade-long foray into performance-capture animated films like The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol. His last live-action film before this was Cast Away with Tom Hanks in 2000, which either coincidentally or ironically also featured a crashing jetliner. Denzel Washington is on fire from start to finish here as Captain William “Whip” Whitaker, the alcoholic airline pilot who starts the morning of his fateful flight with a few lines of cocaine and a vodka and orange juice chaser. When the plane suddenly and inexplicably goes into an uncontrolled nosedive at 21,000 feet, Whip snaps into action. Completely toasted but otherwise cool under pressure, he instinctively executes an insane maneuver and inverts the plane to…

A BOND MATURES Half a century after the release of Dr. No, director Sam Mendes and a gifted team of screenwriters have managed to give audiences a James Bond film unlike any other. Skyfall is Daniel Craig’s third outing as 007, and yet the star is unafraid to show his advancing age, as we are reminded that the job of international secret agent apparently takes a heavy toll on all who dare to sign up for it. An enigmatic figure from MI6 boss M’s past has returned to wreak havoc on national security, having stolen and now slowly revealing a list of embedded anti-terrorist operatives. Bond may or may not be up to the task of stopping this strangely familiar new nemesis, but he will commit all of his considerable…

SUSPICION BREEDS CONFIDENCE Few films are worthy of a movie about the movie, but director Terry Gilliam’s 1985 dystopian fantasy Brazil is among the legendary few. A flawed but inspired masterpiece, the film remains a Hollywood cautionary tale for the standoff between Gilliam and Universal’s then-chief Sid Sheinberg, who refused to release the film and even ordered a sappy, discordant re-edit that excised some 40 minutes from Gilliam’s original cut. In retrospect, the heavy-handed efforts of Universal’s “black tower” to wrest artistic control from Gilliam only underscored Brazil’s anti-totalitarian satire and unwittingly aided its underground success. Brazil takes place in a totalitarian state that looks futuristic and laughably dilapidated at the same time. The consumerist regime and its well-to-do citizenry live under the constant threat of attack, but the only…

CHECK OUT THIS EXCLUSIVE LISTING OF OUR REVIEWERS’ RECOMMENDED GEAR FLAT PANELS ENTRY LEVEL FLAT PANELS ENTRY LEVEL Samsung UN40EH6000 LCD HDTV, $850 Reviewed June 2012 Vizio E601i-A3 LCD HDTV, $1,000 Reviewed February/March 2013 Samsung PN51E550 3D Plasma HDTV, $1,200 Reviewed January 2013 Panasonic TC-P60ST60 3D Plasma HDTV, $1,700 Reviewed July/August 2013 Vizio M3D650SV 3D LCD HDTV, $1,870 Reviewed February 2012 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 KDL-55W900A 3D LCD HDTV, $3,300 Reviewed July/August 2013 Sony XBR-55HX950 3D LCD HDTV, $3,500 Reviewed February/March 2013 Panasonic TC-P65VT50 3D Plasma HDTV, $3,700 Reviewed October 2012 Sharp Elite PRO-60X5FD 3D LCD HDTV, $6,000 Reviewed January 2012…