You might have thought that the best way to see the Summer Olympics was to brave long security lines, eat lots of calamari, down a few Mythos beers, and pay through the nose for the "cheap" seats at Athens Stadium. But InFocus Corporation thinks they have a better idea. They humbly suggest staying in the comfort of your own home and watching the hundreds of hours of HD Olympic coverage on a huge screen (up to 11 feet wide) courtesy of their newest High Definition home entertainment front projector, the ScreenPlay 5000.
A proud Polk Audio recently announced the birth of quintuptlets: four new RM Series six-piece, five-channel home theater speaker systems wrapped in swaddling plastic bags, protective styrofoam packing, and beautifully overprinted cardboard cartons. The new arrivals feature slim satellites and powered subwoofers. The cute and cuddly satellites in the new RM6800, RM6900,and RM7300 were selectively bred to be wall-, shelf-, or stand-mounted; and, for the very first time, this new RM Series includes a system (RM7400) with a pair of floorstanding front speakers.
LCD televisions are making great strides toward truly high-definition performance - in particular, the newest models in the Aquos line from <A HREF="http://www.sharpusa.com">Sharp Electronics</A>.
Steven Stone reviews the <A HREF="/accessories/604camelot">Camelot Technology Dragon 5.1 Plus DVD/CD jitter-reduction device</A>, explaining that "it promises to do for DVD players what the Audio Alchemy box did for CD players: make them sound a lot better."
Preamp/processors of the world: be scared...be very scared. Anthem Electronics is unleashing their newest preamp/processor/tuner - the AVM30 - on the audio/video world, and this baby is determined to kick plenty of posterior and take plenty of names. "What," asks you, the entertainment-hungry homeowner the AVM30 was designed for, "is so special about this three thousand dollar (actually, $2,999, but who's counting?) pre/pro/tuner (aside from the obviously gorgeous cosmetics which include a brushed-metal front-panel with a blue vacuum fluorescent front-panel display swimming with blue and red LEDs)?" Of course, I'd like to know why you ask such long questions, but we need to get back to the main story...
Jerry Goldsmith, the film composer who created the accompanying music to everything from radio shows to memorable films such as <I>Patton</I>, <I>Planet of the Apes</I>, <I>In Like Flint</I>, <I>Chinatown</I>, and <I>The Omen</I> (for which he won the Academy Award), died July 21 after an extended battle with cancer.
Thomas J. Norton reviews the inexpensive <A HREF="/videoprojectors/604benq">BenQ PE8700 DLP video projector</A>, explaining why it "has to qualify as the surprise product of early 2004."
ClearPix in the clear? On July 21, the US House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee voted 18-9 in favor of the "Family Movie Act." Passage by the full House, Senate, and President would free manufacturers of DVD filtering technology (such as ClearPlay, Inc.) from legal consequences as a result of violating movie industry copyrights. ClearPlay and other companies offering "clean up" technology for feature films have been criticized by members of the Directors Guild of America for violating the sanctity of cinematic art.
HDTV Forum 2004 will be bigger and better than last year's inaugural event, thanks to the addition of dozens of heavyweights from a cross-section of participating industries. Scheduled for August 24–26 at the Westin Century Plaza in Los Angeles, the theme of this year's confab is "Accelerating the HDTV Transition."
If you're the type who can't decide among all the disc formats (SACD, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, CD, MP3-encoded CD, and Laserdisc), Integra has just announced a six-disc DVD changer that's compatible with nearly every disc format on the planet. (Sorry, Laserdisc fans, but Integra didn't include compatibility with those venerable old 12-inch movie discs. Although you won't be able to watch your old disc collection in the new Integra changer, those discs still make great serving platters!) Integra's DPC-8.5 is built around a six-disc carousel tray that incorporates a unique blue illumination light, making it easier to see what's in the tray when the room lights are down low and you're trying to impress that special someone.
Ever had trouble matching a subwoofer to your main speakers and the room? Ever wonder, if Reese's can make peanut butter cups with the peanut butter on the outside, why can't someone make a subwoofer that's intelligent enough to make its own adjustments? If you have, then you can spend your life believing that Thiel Audio created their new SmartSub family of subwoofer products just for you. (The remainder of us will simply admire the technology in this collection that includes four new powered subwoofers, a SmartSub Integrator, and a pair of passive crossovers.)
The list of North American channels offering Dolby Digital 5.1 sound has just grown by four. In a press release dated July 19, <A HREF="http://www.dolby.com">Dolby Laboratories</A> announced that City HD, Encore HD, TNT in HD, and The WB will all offer programming in Dolby Digital 5.1. This brings the total number of networks featuring the surround format to the mid-20s (and the number of individual channels to somewhere in the 80s—Dolby is not being terribly specific about the precise numbers).