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Custom Installation How-ToHome Movie Theaters
Terminator Theatre
DJ Gerling  |  Dec 10, 2010

You never know where a service call can take you. We were called out to install additional wiring to add satellite receivers to other rooms in the homeowner’s house. While there I happened to ask the owners if they had any plans for the room where they currently had a Sony projection TV. They said they wanted to replace it with a plasma and while a dedicated theatre interested them, they didn’t know the first place to begin. Well, that’s where we come in.

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Audio Video News
Buy a Blu-ray, Get Movie Money
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 10, 2010
If you're planning to go out and see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader or Gulliver's Travels, which open in theaters this weekend, you might want to stop by a Blu-ray/DVD retailer on your way and pick up one or more select titles from MGM and Fox. In the packaging, you will find a coupon for up to $10 (Blu-ray) or $7.50 (DVD) of Hollywood Movie Money toward a ticket for either flick. Just look for titles with one of the stickers depicted above.

Click below for a list of applicable titles.

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Audio Video News
Comcast Avoids Usage-Based Pricing
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 10, 2010
For months the debate between Comcast and net neutrality advocates has raged in the headlines of the business and tech presses. Even so, the company says it has no plans to implement usage-based pricing for its ISP customers.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Ocean's 11: 50th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Dec 10, 2010
Eleven WWII veterans reunite for New Years Eve to rob five Las Vegas casinos. Everything goes as planned until one of the men dies of a heart attack and Duke Santos (Cesar Romero) figures out their scheme and wants a cut of the action.

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Angie Dickinson, and Cesar Romero—what a cast! Unfortunately the entertainment value pales in comparison to the 2001 Steven Soderbergh remake. Sure, it's fun to see the rat pack strut around and witnessing the state of the Las Vegas strip 50 years ago, but the pacing is a tad slow (like most 1960s films) and the acting is laughable from some of the stars.

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Premiere Design
360-Degree 3D Camera
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 09, 2010
For those who think 3D on a flat screen is bogus, how about this? Swiss university École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is working on a camera that captures images in all directions at once—well, to be precise, all directions within a hemispherical pattern—and processes the resulting data to calculate the distance from the camera to each object in its visual field.

Update: This story now includes video of the inventor explaining the technology!

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Premiere Design
Cineversum Force One & Two 3D DLP Projectors
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 09, 2010
Home theater using Force One by Sphere Custom Design, South Africa. Photo courtesy of Christaan Beukes.

Last April, I profiled the magnificent Force One 3-chip DLP projector from French maker Cineversum. Now, just in time for the holidays, the company has announced a new model, the Force Two, and 3D capabilities for both.

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Audio Video News
Blockbuster Tries New Kiosk Pricing
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 09, 2010
Blockbuster isn't the first name you may think of in connection with video rental kiosks. Its name is on only 900 of them, as opposed to 25,000 for Redbox. But Blockbuster and its kiosk partner NCR are trying some new moves with two titles, Inception and Knight and Day, hoping to attract new customers.
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The Big PicturePremiere Design
SRS Advanced Rendering Lab
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 08, 2010
A few weeks ago, I visited SRS Labs in Irvine, California, to see—and hear—its new Advanced Rendering Laboratory (ARL). This facility is custom built to test any imaginable physical or psychoacoustic audio system—in other words, it's an audio geek's dream come true.
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Home Theater Geeks Podcast
Podcast 45: David Reisner
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 08, 2010
Digital-cinema consultant David Reisner discusses the transition from film to d-cinema and the differences between them, such as resolution, colorimetry, cameras, production, and delivery as well as the creation of the Standard Evaluation Material (StEM) and Camera Assesment Series (CAS) of images, which are used to verify the performance of d-cinema projectors and help filmmakers select the right digital camera for each project, respectively.

Run Time: 56:00

Click below to see some graphics from the show and a list of scenes from various movies that David uses as test material.

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Curtain Call
Focus, Group!
Michael J. Nelson  |  Dec 08, 2010
Being a home theater enthusiast can be a richly rewarding pursuit, but it’s not without its pitfalls. Nearly electrocuting yourself while you try to install surround speakers in bare feet on what turns out to be a damp basement floor is the most common—but let’s not dwell on my past. Another less-talked-about danger is that of becoming too insular as a group, of only speaking to those who already share our passions and opinions, either in person or more likely on Internet forums while wearing a bathrobe. That’s why every so often, I like to go out into the wider world and hold informal focus groups in order to take the pulse of the average Joe or Josephine and see what they think about this hobby of ours.
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