Mark Fleischmann

AV Receiver Reviews
Onkyo TX-SR575 A/V Receiver
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 08, 2007  |  Published: Sep 08, 2007  |  0 comments
Getting Sirius—and XM.

Having hefted more than a few surround receivers into the spare berth on my equipment rack, I've earned the right to be blasé. This feeling usually turns to annoyance when I have to figure out which button on the remote control will get me into the setup menu. But all of these predictable emotions vanish when I hit my universal disc machine's play button and music starts coming out of five speakers (and a sub) in the Dolby Pro Logic II music mode. As someone who was weaned on stereo, surround still seems like something of a miracle. By the time I get around to playing a movie, I feel like a kid again.

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Audio Video News
Sling Media Goes to New Places
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 08, 2007  |  0 comments
Sling Media is best known for the Slingbox, which ferries your a/v fix from any home device to any computer in the home or over the net. This well-received technology is now multiplying into new uses in the wake of Sling Media's acquisition by EchoStar.
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Audio Video News
Copying Is Stealing, Says Sony BMG
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 05, 2007  |  0 comments
Buying a CD doesn't give you the right to copy it, a record-company attorney testified in a trial that pit the recording industry against a Native American woman in Minnesota. The single mother of two was successfully sued for using peer-to-peer file sharing to violate numerous copyrights. What may ultimately come to matter more than the verdict were some of the details that emerged along the way.
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Audio Video News
iCompetition Heats Up
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 04, 2007  |  0 comments
Look out, Steve Jobs. Two (other) large corporations are looking to eat your lunch. Cue famous Steve Jobs scowl. Thank you, sir.
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Ears On
Book Experiences Seven-Year Itch
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 03, 2007  |  1 comments
Once a year I quietly go berserk updating my book Practical Home Theater: A Guide to Video and Audio Systems. Adding new content and revising old content forces me to review what I know about the subject, often prodding me into becoming better informed. And of course it gives me a chance to capture more of your hard-earned nickels and dimes. The 2008 Edition is number seven. It comes in a handsome cream cover and is now available from Amazon in both the U.S. and the U.K. As I often tell people, don't read it all at once or it'll make you violently ill. But this strapping little volume does make an excellent answer book for all the questions a non-engineer might have about how HDTV and surround sound really work. Knock yourself out!
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Audio Video News
HD Ads Sell Better
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 02, 2007  |  0 comments
Viewers who watch high-def commercials are more likely to remember brands, buy stuff, and have a good time than viewers of standard-def commercials, according to a recent survey.
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Audio Video News
MGM Lion to Roar in HD
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 01, 2007  |  0 comments
DirecTV will get a leg up on the Dish Network this fall with the launch of the MGM HD channel, reports Broadcasting & Cable. The lion will roar 24/7.
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Audio Video News
Will Zune Acquire Auto Download Magic?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Sep 28, 2007  |  0 comments
Zune may be about to start making download decisions for you. The name of the Microsoft patent application in question is "Automatic delivery of personalized content to a portable media player with feedback." That says it all, doesn't it?
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Audio Video News
Burn DVDs the Legal Way
Mark Fleischmann  |  Sep 27, 2007  |  0 comments
Burning a DVD with copyrighted material is about to become legal--under the right circumstances. The DVD Copy Control Association has approved CSS Managed Recording for burning of commercial DVDs.
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Ears On
Rack Attack VI: The Denouement
Mark Fleischmann  |  Sep 26, 2007  |  1 comments
Finally peace settles over the rack. I know what my Pioneer BDP-HD1 and Toshiba HD-A2 can and cannot do. Am I satisfied? It's great to know I'll have access to Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus, even converted to high-bit PCM, but irksome to realize that firsthand experience with both forms of DTS-HD at full res will lie in the future. And what about the future? At the recent CEDIA I saw players that move forward into new territory, offering bitstream outputs of the new surround codecs for decoding in a receiver. Pioneer introduced the second-gen BDP-95FD ($1000). Of Toshiba's three new third-gen players, only the HD-A35 ($399) outputs the bitstream, and I'm shocked, shocked! that the other two don't. The HD-A35 is also the only Toshiba with a full set of analog-outs. At CEDIA there were many compatible receivers from Denon, Integra, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, Yamaha, et al. Got one in the rack already, with another waiting in the wings, but how tantalizing it is to realize that the full surround capability that would transform my work as a reviewer is still two player swaps away--waiting for the next generation of rack attacks. In the meantime, I've never seen a better picture.
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