A/V Veteran

When fishing around for a film to show on a movie night with friends, before Covid-19 rudely interrupted, I recommended The Court Jester. I had it on DVD, but I knew it looked good enough to satisfy non-critical viewers who likely also wouldn't be bothered by its 1950's mono sound. We passed on it that time around, but that old DVD has now taken its last spin. A spanking new Blu-ray of the film has just been released in a video transfer nothing short of stunning.

The movie was originally shot in VistaVision, a widescreen process used (mainly by Paramount) in the 1950's and 60's. It's long-since been dropped as a release format, but is sometimes employed for in-camera special effects created for non-VistaVision productions, particularly in the pre-CGI era. It was used, for example, in the creation of the effects for some of the early Star Wars and Star Trek films when CGI wasn't yet a thing.

If you were under 10-years old in the early twenty-aughts you might never have experienced a TV series considered by many to be one of the best, if not the best, science fiction series ever produced for television. Yes, the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica came along shortly after. Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis ran seemingly forever. And I risk permanent expulsion from the club if I don't mention everything Star Trek. There are others shows that have their fans as well. What, no love here for Lost or Game of Thrones (if we can include them in this category—sci-fi is often a big tent, to the dismay of purists). I love both of these in their own ways, but neither of them ended well.

One that did end well is my candidate for the best ever. Over the recent holidays I revisited the first season of Farscape on Blu-ray.

Anyone who has had more than a day’s exposure to home theater knows that the heart of any system is the A/V receiver or similar device(s). This doesn’t necessarily mean basic sound quality per se (more on that below). But it’s at the center of the system where everything comes together—the sources at its inputs and the speakers and room at its outputs. The A/V electronics can make or break any system with regard to its ultimate capabilities— its convenience in use, the number of channels it offers, its ergonomics, its features, and much more. It’s also the component that’s most likely to be overtaken by new developments, putting it behind the times even if it’s still functional. It might last a decade or more and still produce satisfying sound, but if things keep moving as fast they have in the recent past there could well be new features that eventually render it functionally obsolete. At least one manufacturer, NAD, builds its AVRs with removable modules for later upgrades, but even so there might be future developments beyond its reach. There’s no such thing as absolute future-proofing (if there were, the company offering it might well go out of business!).

But before you consider any of these things you’ll need to decide between a A/V receiver (AVR) or a preamp-processor (pre-pro)...

The other day I was fiddling with my car radio in an attempt to find an interesting station, not an easy exercise in my end of the woods. I landed on a real estate broadcast. I’m not in the market to buy or sell property, but I stayed with it rather than dial while driving. My car doesn’t have one of those all-singing, all dancing, voice activated in-car entertainment systems—”Alexa, play soft jazz.”

The subject being discussed was what sort of home improvements homeowners were investing in these days. In the current environment it may seem odd that some folks are putting in swimming pools, adding bedrooms, and remodeling here and there. But if it keeps contractors in business and their workers employed I’m happy for them. One question asked of the commentator was if these upgrades included an uptick in home theater installations. Given the current (non) status of commercial movie theaters, this seemed logical. The answer given, however, was a definite no. With the ability to now watch and listen on portable devices such as smart phones and tablets, the responder claimed that some current home theater owners are even converting their entertainment spaces to home offices or other more pressing needs. Yuck.

I sort of expected it when I moved to Florida 5+ years ago, so when the eye of hurricane Sally struck about 100 miles west of here last week, it wasn’t really a surprise. It was Tuesday when the heavy rain started, and it continued through midday Wednesday. There was some wind, enough to drop a few trees within a mile of me, but heavy rain caused much of the damage. Over 20 inches fell in this area. They could have used that 20 inches on the west coast to kill the fires there; that’s something like eight years of rain at my former Los Angeles address! I hope no readers were seriously impacted by storms or wildfires on either side of the country.

Recently I completed one of my all too infrequent efforts to cull the herd of old magazines more than three years old; anything earlier worth finding is almost certainly available on-line. A few key older issues were kept for various reasons, and a complete set of the long-defunct Stereophile Guide to Home Theater is still hiding somewhere in the garage. But by accident I ran across my only remaining issue of Video Theater. Never heard of it? It was a magazine begun in the late ‘80s by J. Gordon Holt. Holt is best known as the founder of Stereophile magazine, which inspired a whole raft of competitors anxious to fill a pent-up demand for information on how equipment actually sounds, not just how it measures.

But Gordon was not only an audiophile. He was passionate about video as well in an era when home video hadn’t yet moved much beyond the 21-inch, CRT color TV. Video Theater was short lived, but was well served by Gordon’s unique observations and take-no-prisoners words. But the issue I found also had some pithy editorial observations about the road home audio had travelled, in Gordon’s estimation, and how this might predict the future of video beyond when these words were written, in mid-1990. Here they are: