LATEST ADDITIONS

Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 23, 2007  |  0 comments
The inverted bottle meets the custom virtuoso.

At some point in the evolution of home theater, someone noticed that the phrase includes the word home. At that point, weird and wonderful things began to happen. Speakers morphed into smaller, more rounded, and occasionally more imaginative shapes. The surround receivers that fed them maintained their black-box identities but moved discreetly into closets. Back panels began to sprout extra jacks, the better to interact with touchscreen interfaces, second zones, and other niceties that have become staples of the connected home.

Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 22, 2007  |  0 comments

Samsung was first to market with a Blu-ray player in mid 2006: the <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/706dsamsungbd/">BD-P1000</A>. While it's no secret that that player drew serious criticisms from us, and others, it's also true that the first batch of Blu-ray titles did it no favors.

Shane Buettner  |  Jul 21, 2007  |  9 comments

I don't know the degree to which interactivity will drive next-gen HD sales, but HD DVD is leading in this category, big-time. Already ahead with picture-in-picture driven features such as Warner's In Movie Experience and Universal's U-Control, Toshiba's latest firmware updates for all its players, including the first-gen players, have enabled web-based interactivity for broadband users that is now available on a few titles, with more to follow.

Shane Buettner  |  Jul 21, 2007  |  0 comments

<I>Blood Diamond's</I> IME feature goes farther than Warner's previous efforts in two respects. First, rather than having to wait for the PIP video material to come up, the user can hit the left or right cursors to skip to fro the chapters with IME material. Second, a gold disc icon appears during the film indicating "Focus Points," and hitting enter when this icon is on-screen removes the viewer to a more substantial, out of band feature rather than in band PIP. Not quite U-Control, but pretty cool. Previous IMEs haven't been icon-driven- you simply had to find them and couldn't exercise this much control over the experience.

Shane Buettner  |  Jul 21, 2007  |  0 comments

Bandai's <I>Freedom Vol. 1</I> offers up to cast/crew info by hitting the A button, storyboards using the B button, and up to seven bookmarks using the C button (all of which is explained by a handy tutorial readily accessible in the main menu). The storyboard feature here is awesome. I've got to admit that I'm not an anime guy, so this material didn't grab me as much as it might some of you. But, think of looking at storyboards and art in band with the movie with something like <I>Lord of the Rings</I>, or even Martin Scorsese's crude storyboards for <I>Taxi Driver</I> (oh wait, that's a Sony movie). Still, you get my drift.

 |  Jul 20, 2007  |  0 comments

Double Feature This vacation home is surrounded by the beauty of the Mexican Pacific coast and immersed in the latest A/V gear.

SV Staff  |  Jul 20, 2007  |  0 comments
Saw a killer Crowded House show last night in an intimate setting of about 300 people. It was one of those "secret show" deals that are never really all that secret - Paul McCartney did some of these recently himself in L.A. and NYC - but they're...
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 20, 2007  |  0 comments
In an attempt to reverse declining CD sales, one label has settled on the novel idea of actually offering consumers more for their money. Disney's Hollywood Records will soon take the wraps off a new CDVU+ format with an initial release by the Jonas Brothers.
 |  Jul 19, 2007  |  0 comments

CinemaNow on Wednesday released an upgrade to its Media Manager software enabling its movie downloads to play back over a networked Xbox 360 and its burn-to-DVD download service to operate with Windows Vista.

SV Staff  |  Jul 19, 2007  |  0 comments
Okay, I'm not trying to make fun of the deadly incident itself . . . But c'mon, folks, hasn't anyone noticed the eerie similarity between the steam-pipe blast in New York yesterday - alias "Midtown Volcano!" (NY Post) or, more...

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