A/V Veteran

An in-depth look at Blu-ray parameters that can be sorted and studied in a variety of ways.

Unless you're accustomed to turning on your new set and never touching any of the controls beyond volume (and if you're reading this that's probably not you) Gamma is a control and a subject worth knowing more about.

A selection of discs and streaming content to watch during those lazy days of summer.

We go behind the scenes at Sound United's annual dealer/rep get-together in New Orleans.

Sony recently invited journalists to its New York City facilities to brief us on the company’s 2019 TV product strategy, along with comparative demonstrations against the best offerings of its key competitors.

I’ve long been a fan of the Titanic saga, well before the 1997 film. I loved that one, but mainly for the stunning effects and James Horner’s magnificent score, not the badly written soap opera that took up over half of its running time. This week it returned to my attention, partly because in a few days the 107th anniversary of the disaster will arrive (April 15, though no one typically commemorates such an odd number) and partly because last week I re-watched a story of the Titanic on Blu-ray as one of the sources I used for a product review.

The latter however, wasn’t James Cameron’s flawed but still compelling epic. Instead, Titanic: Blood & Steel is a 12-part mini-series, released in 2012 (the 100th anniversary of the sinking, about the building of the ship. It doesn’t address the sinking at all. In fact, it ends just as the ship steams out of Belfast, where she was built (A ship is always a she, and as the narrative makes clear, she’s a ship, not a boat!)

But there’s a lot more here as well...