LATEST ADDITIONS

I am an avid reader of Home Theater Magazine and have been for over 10 Years. I have been in the industry for 10 Years and within the last year started my own custom installation company in the Chicagoland area, Monarch AV Design & Automation. In 2009, we had the great opportunity to change an ordinary "blah" basement into a rustic and old-world getaway for the homeowner to enjoy a Pearl Jam concert, a game of pool, or just to enjoy a movie with the kids. Working with interior designer and general contractor, Phillip Sassano, we helped design a space that would be both visually stunning and meet the high expectations of the homeowner for musical and theater performance.

No matter how much data storage is available in any medium, people always want more. Take Blu-ray, for example—one might think that 25 or 50GB would be plenty for just about any storage requirement, but some applications need even more. To address this insatiable demand, the Blu-ray Disc Association this week announced a new high-capacity recordable format called BDXL as well as a new hybrid format called IH-BD.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/lotrbd.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>In case you've been in a coma for the past 10 years, Peter Jackson adapted the popular J.R.R. Tolkien novel with amazing results. Arguably, it's one of the greatest movie accomplishments of all time with 15 Academy Awards, over $1 billion in US box-office receipts, and nearly $3 billion worldwide.