LATEST ADDITIONS

Custom Installation How-To
Invisible Speakers
Paul Scarpelli  |  Oct 21, 2006  |  First Published: Oct 22, 2006  |  0 comments
Considerations for choosing custom-install speakers.

In the early 1980s, as an audio salesperson for a Chicago-area A/V retail/custom-install store, I fielded a phone call from Godehard Guenther, the founder and president of a/d/s/. We were one of the largest dealers for their fine line of automotive speakers, and he wanted photos of some of our high-end auto-sound installations featuring a/d/s/. "We don't even have a car-stereo department," I responded, freezing him mute. "We're installing your speakers into the walls of homes." This brilliant former NASA engineer and one-time employee of Wernher von Braun was dumbfounded. Car speakers cut into the walls of houses—what a concept.

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Blu-ray Player Reviews
So. . .This Is Blu-ray?
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Oct 21, 2006  |  First Published: Oct 22, 2006  |  0 comments
Inside Samsung's BD-P1000 Blu-ray player.

It's rare that a product will get journalists from different publications all calling each other—and by rare I mean never. But that's what happened with Samsung's BD-P1000. There have been calls back and forth between different magazines, then different manufacturers. Even content providers have been keeping the phone lines busy for the past few weeks. At first, it was to see if everyone was seeing the same things, stemming from disbelief. Then, it was thoughts on what was going on. Next, it was trying to find answers. And it all started with this little DVD, er, Blu-ray player. (See my full review on page 126.)

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A/V Veteran
Mother Glass
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 21, 2006  |  0 comments

It all starts with the mother glass. That's the foundation for building an LCD panel. Everything else—the individual red, green, and blue elements of each pixel and the interconnects necessary to drive them—are grown on it.

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Ears On
Boltz CD600, CDEXP-T, CD600x2 CD Racks
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 20, 2006  |  0 comments
Buying a fancy CD rack may seem counterintuitive in the iPod era. After, even a drop-dead-gorgeous piece of industrial design like the Boltz CD600X2 still takes up space. Isn't it more elegant to rip everything and dump your discs?
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Fred Manteghian Blog
Sling Batter Batter!
Fred Manteghian  |  Oct 19, 2006  |  2 comments

Slingbox, makers of an internet aware media server of heretofore limited interest to our readers, has burst into the home theater aficionado market with their newly announced Slingbox PRO. How new? I tried to get one before I went to Japan, but that wasn't going to happen. (….turning to the audience for a soliloquy, Fred reveals that it often takes much time between an announcement and an actual product. Sssh . . . don't tell Bill Gates).

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Projector Reviews
Mitsubishi HC5000U Front Projector: On the Bench
Shane Buettner  |  Oct 19, 2006  |  0 comments
  • $4,500
  • 1920x1080 three-chip LCD
  • Key Connections: HDMI and DVI inputs, rest TBD
Features We Like: Three-chip 1080p at an outrageous price, Silicon Optix processing, dynamic iris for deep blacks, motorized lens shift and zoom, 5,000 hour specified bulb life
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Ears On
Some P2P Sites Hazardous to PC Health
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 19, 2006  |  1 comments
Lawsuits from the RIAA are not the only hazards for the intrepid file sharer. Simply downloading P2P software can pollute your PC with nuisance software. The most notorious example remains Kazaa, which paid more than $100 million to settle music-industry lawsuits, but is still listed as badware by stopbadware.org. That report is a few months old, but according to the McAfee SiteAdvisor, the Kazaa site still exposes PC users to what "some people consider adware, spyware, or other unwanted programs." In addition, it links to firstadsolution.com, "which our analysis found to be deceptive or fraudulent." SiteAdvisor gives similar warnings about BearShare. Limewire and Morpheus get a clean bill of health, but beware of other sites that offer free downloads of Limewire and Morpheus software—and that includes most of those listed as Google-sponsored links! By the way, the SiteAdvisor is a free plug-in for Internet Explorer or Firefox that festoons Google, Yahoo, or MSN search results with green- or red-light bugs to warn you of PC health hazards. Click on the bugs and they'll give you information like that quoted above. SiteAdvisor is totally goodware—it costs nothing to install and may keep you out of loads of trouble.
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Audio Video News
Big-Time Warner Classics To Debut On HD DVD
 |  Oct 18, 2006  |  First Published: Oct 19, 2006  |  0 comments

The big releases on next-gen HD media keep pouring in just in time for the holiday season and again, Warner is leading the charge by releasing one of the real treasures in its catalog, <I>Casablanca</I>, on HD DVD. The Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman classic joins the somewhere between camp classic and minor classic sci-fi flick <I>Forbidden Planet</I> starring none other than Robbie the Robot, and 1962's <I>Mutiny on the Bounty</I> starring Marlon Brando on HD DVD.

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Audio Video News
High-end Custom Install Preamp of the Future
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Oct 18, 2006  |  0 comments
Even if you thought custom installation was expensive before, the new Gryphon Mirage Control Amplifier from Gryphon Audio Designs of Denmark will likely give you a new frame of reference when it comes to how much you can actually spend on multiroom audio.
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Ears On
Universal Puts Old Wine in Virtual Bottles
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 18, 2006  |  0 comments
Brigitte Bardot's performance of "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" was a Top 5 hit when it was released in the 1960s, but until recently, the only way to add it to your music library was to rummage through secondhand shops. But it's back in circulation—not as a CD, but as a download, one of 3000 out-of-print tracks sold by the Universal Music Group over iTunes during the last seven months. More than 250,000 people downloaded a 2000 Christmas compilation by Nana Mouskouri, Les Plus Beaux Noels du Monde, during a period that didn't even include the holiday. Universal plans to follow up in November with 100,000 more albums, many previously released only on vinyl. Record companies have good reason to rediscover their back catalogue: Part of Amazon's success with the "earth's biggest selection" lies in brisk sales of o/p material by third-party merchants. "We are now able to respond to and quantify the appetite for more eclectic, diverse recordings from the past," Universal's Olivier Robert-Murphy told Reuters. The unanswered question: What, if anything, will artists or their estates get paid?
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