Audio Video News

Video enthusiasts both amateur and professional will be able to hone their editing and production skills through a series of classes to take place at Creative Computers, 1505 Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica, CA, during the months of February, March, and April.

Hosted by DVDcreators.net, all courses will be taught by Larry Jordan, a well-known Final Cut Pro (FCP) expert and one of only a few instructors in the world certified by Apple to teach advanced FCP classes. All workshops (except the free preview) are completely hands-on, according to an announcement released in mid-February. All students will have their own Power Macintosh G5 workstations for the duration of the workshop.

Many home theater experts contend that the proper place for a center channel speaker is directly behind the screen, as in a commercial theater. Such arrangements require perforated screens that are acoustically transparent but visually reflective, an arrangement that can wreak havoc with some fixed-pixel projectors. Annoying moire patterns can result from the relationship between a projector's image elements and the holes in a perforated screen.

Warren Lieberfarb's "sell through" agenda for DVD pricing has had some unintended consequences. The former head of Warner Home Entertainment pushed hard for an industry-wide pricing policy that made movies on DVD one of the greatest bargains in the history of entertainment. For compact disc prices, movie fans can own archival copies of films that cost tens of millions to produce—a strategy that has had serious consequences for the video rental business.

Something that legions of science fiction fans have long hoped for will become a reality this September: the release of a four-disc set of George Lucas's <I>Star Wars</I> trilogy.

The Home Recording Rights Coalition (<A HREF="http://www.hrrc.org">HRRC</A>) supports the interests of all home theater fans&mdash;especially those early adopters who bought high-def displays prior to proposals to insert "broadcast flags" in data streams to prevent unauthorized recording of copyrighted material. Such flags are part of last year's so-called "plug'n'play" agreement between equipment makers and cable providers.

Pioneer
Fresh from CES comes the VSX-D814, one of Pioneer's new A/V receivers. This receiver features Pioneer's multichannel acoustic calibration, which lets you easily and accurately set up your speakers based on your room. The VSX-D814 delivers a rated 100 watts of power to each channel and offers component and S-video switching to allow both progressive and interlaced NTSC and HDTV signals to pass to your TV or monitor. It features the standard array of Dolby and DTS processing modes. The included remote features Quick Setup to produce easy, accurate sound depending on the size of your room and the number of speakers. You can have all this for $365; just set aside a dollar a day.
Pioneer
(800) PIONEER
www.pioneerelectronics.com

Sanyo isn't a name most Americans associate with home theater gear. That could change this year if the company's expansion plans come to fruition.