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Giving Movie Musicals Their Due
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 24, 2018  | 
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (that is, a sequel) opened in theaters this week. I didn’t realize that the first film, Mamma Mia! The Musical was a major hit when it was released in 2009, selling hundreds of billions of tickets to folks worldwide. I wasn’t of them, having a love/hate relationship with the Abba tunes featured in the film.

In fact I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with movie musicals. La La Land lost me after the first song and dance number from the otherwise appealing leads who could neither sing nor dance. And apart from that title and a few others (notably The Greatest Showman—a recent release now available on a spectacular UHD Blu-ray), the musical hasn’t received a lot of film love in recent years. But it was, for decades, a movie staple...

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8K in LA
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 10, 2018  | 
No, you can’t yet buy an 8K set anywhere, nor is there any 8k programming being streamed, broadcast, or engraved on a physical disc that a consumer can buy. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t being seriously discussed in R&D circles.

In the last week in June a well-attended, two-day seminar on near-future UHDTV display technologies took place in Hollywood, CA. Conducted by Insight Media (www.insightmedia.info), a company that both consults with companies in the video display industry and conducts media-related tech conferences, and sponsored by Samsung, the conference dove heavily into subjects such as 8K, Quantum Dots, and micro LEDs...

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Phones and Groans
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jun 25, 2018  | 
We rarely discuss smartphones here at Sound & Vision, but I suspect that most readers, if forced to choose which device they’d choose to keep if they had to divest themselves of all but one, would choose their smartphone. But that wouldn’t include me. I don’t check my phone 20 times a day, and Facebook and Twitter are strangers to me. In the past I’ve used my phone mainly for e-mails, news, Listen-In radio, and phone calls.

But my recent experience with a new smartphone offers cautionary lessons also applicable to our more house-bound entertainment goodies: televisions, AVRs, speakers, home assistants, home automation, and more...

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Video Projectors—The Short (Throw) Story
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jun 12, 2018  | 
I covered the pros and cons of choosing a projector or a flat screen set in a blog late last year. But a new candidate makes it worth a second look. That technology is the short throw projector, currently being heavily promoted by several manufacturers. Many of these devices are still pricey, but a few models that are at least competitive with premium flat screen sets are now available, with more sure to come...
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Infinity Cinema Now?
Thomas J. Norton  |  May 29, 2018  | 
Ah, summer movies. The summer blockbuster tradition is relatively new, but summer moviegoing likely became a big thing when air conditioning was new and “Air Conditioning” on a theater marque guaranteed an audience.

But as I sat in a nearly empty local theater last week watching Avengers: Infinity War (it was a weekday afternoon and the movie had been out for 2 weeks), I wondered if the now ubiquitous Marvel Universe has painted itself into a corner. There are now too many characters to squeeze into a single film, even if some of the lesser lights were sidelined in this one (on holiday, perhaps—after all, only the future of the universe was at stake). So you have a gaggle of actors, each one of which is expecting significant screen time by getting his or her own little slice of the pie. That means a few meaty and/or witty lines for each of them and then off to the next battle. And if there’s one thing this movie isn’t lacking, it’s a next battle. And the next. And the next...

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It Costs How Much?
Thomas J. Norton  |  May 15, 2018  | 
Every year there’s a major high-end audio show in Munich, Germany, held in a large convention-center type facility. By all reports it’s the biggest such event in the world, though it began as a modest hotel show in Frankfurt (also Germany, not Kentucky). I actually attended two of those 80s shows when I was stationed in Germany in the Air Force, an hour’s drive from Frankfurt.

But this isn’t about audio shows, though from what I’ve heard about the Munich event it’s more about viewing than serious auditioning. And since home theater isn’t nearly as significant in Europe as it is in the U.S., Munich is mainly about 2-channel audio. I have no issue with that; I’m a fan myself. But the high-end 2-channel market isn’t doing itself any favors with the current trend toward crazy pricing. While a new, $250,000 pair of monoblock amplifiers from an industry icon may be an outlier, it’s symptomatic...

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Rampage in A Quiet Place
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 24, 2018  | 
Back in the Jurassic age movie theaters routinely offered double features. That practice has long since disappeared, but you can recreate it by seeing two movies on the same day. It takes some doing to get the schedule right, with perhaps a half hour between the end of the first film and the beginning of the second—just enough time to see a man about a dog. Of course it will cost you for separate tickets, and you’ll want to be sure you can get good seats for both films.

Then there’s the challenge of making a good pairing...

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Does Oppo's Departure Signal the End of Packaged Media?
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 10, 2018  | 
The recent departure of Oppo from the new disc player landscape* has produced a flurry of “packaged media is dead” vs. “I want my video discs” chatter on the Web. It has also prompted me to ponder once again both sides of the question.

I don’t believe that Oppo’s decision has much to do with any sign that packaged media is likely to imminently disappear. Check the release schedules shown on a number of disc review sites (such as thedigitalbits.com) and you’ll see that dozens of titles are released each week. Some are new, some are re-releases, and many are unreleased movie titles dumped directly to video...

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Four Days in LA
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 27, 2018  | 
Elsewhere on this site I discuss my experiences at the press events I attended in Los Angeles (LG) and New York (Sony). Between these two events I elected to spend a few extra days in Los Angeles to pay informal visits to two manufacturers and also to check out the latest movies in good movie theaters—including one of the best in the country.
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Is it 4K Yet?
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 13, 2018  | 
Any flat screen TV advertised as 4K will actually display the full 8 million pixels in a 4K (3840 x 2160) source. You can't be certain about how well it will do a wider color gamut or high dynamic range—the other keystones of Ultra HD—but it will put 8 million discrete pixels on the screen. Whether or not the 4K source material is actually true 4K from the camera to your Ultra HD disc is a different issue for another discussion.

But with projectors there are two versions of 4K resolution...

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Sussing Out the Churchills & 2 Hidden Sci-Fi Treasures
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 27, 2018  | 
No, this not a list of Sci-Fi Movies about Winston Churchill, or Churchill movies with a Sci-Fi twist. I admit that these might make for a high concept movie or two. I'm not attempting to give Hollywood ideas here, but I'm open to a big payday for story credit. After all, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, not to mention Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter were huge hits! We might also enjoy Churchill and His Time Machine, perhaps, or has that already been done—though I don't recall Bill and Ted picking up Churchill along with Lincoln, Socrates (pronounced So-crates for you Philistines) Napoleon, Freud, and others in their time-travelling phone booth.

But enough of that. The first two of my Hidden Treasures are serious films about Winston Churchill, and the other two are light science fiction...

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A Reality Check on 'Brighter Projectors'
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 13, 2018  | 
At CES 2018 Philips demonstrated its ColorSpark HLD LED (High Lumen Density) technology, which appeared to have the potential to considerably enhance the light output of projectors, among other applications. While we didn't attend their demonstration, several business and research-related companies did, including Insight Media and Display Daily. A link to the latter's article may be found here.

One significant issue is that this lighting technology isn't new...

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Richard Shahinian R.I.P.
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 30, 2018  | 
We lost two greats in the field of high-end audio this past year: Arnie Nudell (co-founder of both Infinity Systems and Genesis Advanced Technologies), and Charley Hanson (co-founder of Avalon Acoustics and more recently of Ayre Acoustics). While neither will be as widely known as those whose name is attached to the companies they helped found (Bose, Marantz, Polk, and others) both left a lasting impact on the audio landscape.

But as the old-wives-tale suggests about things hitting in threes, we also lost a third...

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CES 2018: My Visit to Vegas
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 16, 2018  | 
My trip to CES this year didn’t begin or end well, but was fun in between. On arrival, my bag didn’t make it with me and didn’t show up for 18 hours. My return the flight from Las Vegas was late arriving in Dallas and I missed my connecting flight, resulting in a night layover in Big D, courtesy of American Airlines.

But despite a rainy first two days in Las Vegas, there was much to see...

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TVs, TVs Everywhere
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 19, 2017  | 
My first color TV, a Zenith (remember them?) was a 19-inch CRT that cost me somewhere around $350 and weighed a ton (or seemed to). Today, the only display devices you’ll find at that size are computer monitors; they’ll cost you considerably less and can be carried around under one arm.

I was reminded of that as I recently visited the TV department in my local Best Buy. Even with Black Friday firmly in the rear-view mirror, there were, quite literally, stacks of boxed TVs filling the aisles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many crowded into one space, perhaps not even at CES. And in an area with a population of roughly 100,000, that’s a lot of TVs to sell. Most of them, even the larger models, were well under $1000, reflecting the modest incomes of a primarily middle-class region.

But new TVs are always a hot item, and this is a prime time of year for TV sales...

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