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Audio Video News
Show Report: TAVES 2012
Al Griffin  |  Oct 02, 2012

Regional hi-fi shows are sprouting up all over North America. We now have the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver, T.H.E. Show in Newport Beach, AXPONA in Jacksonville, and NYC’s New York Audio and A/V show. And each year Montreal gets its own event, Salon Son & Image. Wouldn’t it be great if they also held one in Toronto?

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Vintage Gear
Quad ESL-57 Electrostatic Speaker
Steve Guttenberg  |  Oct 01, 2012
The Acoustical Manufacturing Company’s Quad ESL-57 was the world’s first production full-range electrostatic speaker. It debuted in 1957 when hi-fi speakers were big boxes and used moving-coil drivers, so the ESL-57’s flat-panel, downright minimalist design not only looked like a radical advance, its thin-film diaphragm’s low-distortion and lightning-fast transient response sounded truly revelatory to 1950s audiophile ears. The speaker’s introduction came not so many years after the transition from 78-RPM records to higher-fidelity LPs took place. The market was primed for a more transparent transducer technology, and Quad had the best-sounding speaker of the age.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Wrath of the Titans
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 01, 2012
Picture
3D-ness
Sound
Extras
Interactivity
Zeus, king of the gods, enlists the help of his half-human son Perseus in defeating Perseus’ brother Ares, who has allied with Hades in an effort to release Kronos, the leader of the Titans and the father of Zeus and the other gods. But Perseus just wants to be left alone to live as a human with his son.
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SmartStream
What is a Media Controller?
Barb Gonzalez  |  Oct 01, 2012
A media controller is not a device or a physical remote control. You can’t go to the store and buy a media controller. "Media Controller" is a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certification. Part of a home network streaming media solution, the media controller finds photos, music and movies on connected media servers, and sends (pushes) the media file to an enabled media player, Smart TV or other streaming device. Typically you’ll find that a media controller is an app on a smartphone, tablet or computer.

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Tech2
Review: Samsung DA-E750
Brent Butterworth  |  Oct 01, 2012

With so many audio connection technologies available now, it's gotta be tough to be an audio product manager. Smartphone fans want to connect via Bluetooth. iTunes enthusiasts want AirPlay. Computer audio nuts expect a USB connection. A few old-schoolers demand a hardware dock for an iPod. And there's that one guy who still owns a Zune and needs an analog input.

What to do? If you're Samsung and you're trying to make a "statement" product, you throw it all in. The $699 DA-E750 includes all of the above technologies - plus DLNA, plus a fold-out "dual dock" that works with Samsung Galaxy phones as well as iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

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Tech2
Review: Samsung DA-E750 Page 2
Brent Butterworth  |  Oct 01, 2012

With so many audio connection technologies available now, it’s gotta be tough to be an audio product manager. Smartphone fans want to connect via Bluetooth. iTunes enthusiasts want AirPlay. Computer audio nuts expect a USB connection. A few old-schoolers demand a hardware dock for an iPod. And there’s that one guy who still owns a Zune and needs an analog input.

What to do? If you’re Samsung and you’re trying to make a “statement” product, you throw it all in. The $699 DA-E750 includes all of the above technologies — plus DLNA, plus a fold-out “dual dock” that works with Samsung Galaxy phones as well as iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

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TV ReviewsLCD TV Reviews
Sony KDL-55HX850 3D LCD HDTV
Thomas J. Norton  |  Sep 28, 2012

2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $2,600 At A Glance: Deep, uniform blacks • Superb out-of-the-box color and crisp detail • Head-tilt 3D crosstalk

The most popular, current approach to designing an LCD HDTV with LED lighting is to position the LEDs around the periphery of the screen and rely on diffusors to spread the light out uniformly. Sometimes (but not always) the brightness of the LEDs is also altered dynamically to help the LCD pixels create deep blacks, where needed.

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Desktop Speaker Reviews
Giveaway: Paradigm Millenia CT 2.1 Speaker System
Michael Berk  |  Sep 28, 2012

You might have noticed that we were very enthusiastic about the Paradigm MilleniaOne speaker system - it did, after all, end up as our Product of the Year for 2011. Well, Paradigm's continued on developing that line, applying the MilleniaOne's tech to a couple of 2.1 systems (dubbed CT for "Compact Theater") meant to answer the challenge of the current crop of soundbars. And we've gotten our hands on one of them - the Paradigm Millenia CT - to give away to one of you lucky readers.

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Tech2
Review: Half-Life Returns With Black Mesa
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Sep 28, 2012

Reverence. That is what I, and most gamers, feel towards Half-Life. Released in 1998, it was revolutionary. More importantly, it was fun.

Playing now, though, is nearly impossible. Not because of any technological limitations (it was ported to Steam), but because the 14-year-old graphics make you want to weep.

At least they have until now.

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3D Blu-ray Player ReviewsBlu-ray Player Reviews
Panasonic DMP-BDT220 Blu-ray 3D Player
Kris Deering  |  Sep 27, 2012

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $150 At A Glance: Reference-quality Blu-ray playback • Full 3D support including 2D-to-3D conversion • Lots of streaming options

It will be interesting to see where the Blu-ray player market goes in the next few years. We reached a point of diminishing returns on the newer lines of players. The Bluray spec hasn’t changed since the adoption of 3D, so there’s nothing new to add, and just about every device out there has an insurmountable number of streaming features. But that could have been said about last year’s models. Prices continue to drop, along with the size of the players, yet there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go if you want something truly different from a player going forward. Maybe this is where the rumored 4K Blu-ray will make its entrance and reinvigorate the market. Still, the quality of player you can now get for just over a hundred bucks is impressive, and Panasonic’s latest is about all you can ask for if you want reference-quality Blu-ray playback and cutting-edge streaming features.

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