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Speaker Tech
Frequency Response: A Show and Tell
Brent Butterworth  |  Oct 03, 2011

I often worry that people get the wrong idea when I praise a speaker for sounding "flat." By this I mean its frequency response is flat, which is a good thing. But if you ask the man on the street, I bet he'd equate flat sound with lifeless sound.

It's high time I explained what frequency response is and why flat frequency response is desirable in audio products. Not only will I explain why non-flat response is bad, I'll demonstrate it to you with some audio files I cooked up just for this article.

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Editor's Eye
How Home Theater Plays The Ratings Game
Rob Sabin  |  Oct 03, 2011
Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
A lot of consumer electronics editors and reviewers have a love-hate relationship with product ratings. The love side comes from knowing they make readers happy. Assuming the ratings structure is well thought out (that is, simple and easy to understand) and the ratings are applied with fairness and accuracy, they wrap the whole product up in a nice little ball and tell you, at a quick glance, whether it's a winner, loser, or in-betweener. Perhaps most important, a good rating, or a good rating coupled with a seal of approval like our Top Picks designation, is validation that the product is worthy of the money you plan to spend on it. Given the sea of black boxes, identically thin TVs, and similar speaker systems out there, we recognize that giving you this validation is really the essence of our job at Home Theater.
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AV Receiver Reviews
Pioneer Elite SC-57 A/V Receiver
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 03, 2011

Audio Performance
Video Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $2,100 At A Glance: Nine Class D amps that sound good • Most fun you can have with a remote smartphone app • Home networking champ, including Apple AirPlay

I’m usually suspicious of celebrity endorsements of audio gear (think Dr. Dre’s association with the Beats headphones bearing his name). But the Air Studios logo on the front panel of this attractive-looking, innovative flagship Pioneer Elite A/V receiver represents more than a casual association.

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Ask S&V
Setting the Backlight Control
Scott Wilkinson  |  Oct 03, 2011
What is the proper way to set an LCD TV's backlight? I have two calibration discs, and neither of them address this issue.

Jim Painter

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Editor's Eye
What's In Home Theater's Top Picks?
Rob Sabin  |  Oct 03, 2011
I’ve given a lot of thought lately to our Top Picks list and what it should take for a product to achieve Top Picks status. This is no small matter. Most of us on the edit staff have counted on magazines just like this one to help direct our purchases, so we take the responsibility seriously. Home Theater’s list of best products needs to reflect the highest standards we can apply—and to be presented in a fashion that’s intuitive and useful.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Beauty and the Beast 3D
David Vaughn  |  Oct 03, 2011
Belle (voiced by Paige O'Hara) is a bright and beautiful young woman who finds escape from her ordinary life by reading books. When her father is taken prisoner by a cursed young prince (Robby Benson), Belle comes to the rescue and agrees to take her father's place. With the help of the castle's enchanted staff, she sees beneath the Beast's exterior and discovers the heart and soul of a human prince.

Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture (plus five other nominations) and won two Oscars for Best Original Song and Best Original Score. The talent behind the voices includes Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts, Jerry Orbach as Lumiere, the candelabra, and David Ogden Stiers as Cogsworth, the mantel clock. The story is engaging and filled with adventure, but it's the score by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman that makes this film a classic.

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Wireless Multiroom Speaker ReviewsDesktop Speaker ReviewsPortable Player Reviews
B&W Zeppelin Air iPod Music System
Rob Sabin  |  Oct 02, 2011
Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $600 At A Glance: Excellent tonality • Good imaging • Cumbersome WiFi setup

I've never been a big fan of paying for brand names for their own sake. Build quality? Yes. Performance? Absolutely. Aesthetics? Sure. Ease of use? Certainly. Each of those has value, and it often makes sense to pay more, even a lot more, for any one of them. But sometimes, in the course of shopping for whatever, you encounter an entry from a well-respected or even elite brand that at first glance seems so outlandishly priced you have stop and wonder: what am I really paying for here?

Suffice to say that was me when Bowers & Wilkins first suggested I take a little ride with the Zeppelin Air, the company's $600 iPod dock...

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Audio Video NewsBlu-ray Movie Reviews
Bringing 7.1 Home with Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Michael Berk  |  Sep 30, 2011

We've been keeping you up to date on the progress of 7.1 in theatrical sound, and Brent Butterworth checked in last month with Dolby Labs Director of Blu-ray Ecosystems Craig Eggers, who gave us an update on some developments in 7.1 for the home - when we talked to Craig, he let us know that while there were some 225 titles available on Blu-ray in 7.1 mixes, most of those simply duplicated the theatrical mixes.

That's starting to change.

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Vote
How Important is 4K in the Home?
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 30, 2011
The appearance of 4K home-theater projectors from Sony (4096x2160, seen above) and JVC (which is really more of a "pseudo-4K" that upscales 1080p to 3840x2160) has sparked increased interest in super-high resolution for consumers, especially since 4K seemed like a far-off dream until now. But many argue that the benefits of higher resolution are not visible on any screen size intended for home use. In fact, most people can't see the pixel structure of a 2K digital-cinema projector on a much larger commercial screen when sitting at a normal viewing distance, so how could they perceive the increased resolution of 4K on a smaller home screen?

Then there's the issue of 4K content, which I believe won't be available for distribution to the home for quite some time, if ever. Yes, we might see 4K-capable media in the next year or two—for example, BDXL optical discs and RedRay servers—but the studios give relatively few movies the full 4K treatment, and I bet those same studios will be loath to release movies for the home market at 4K. Until they do, owners of 4K displays will be limited to upscaled 1080p, which isn't all that much sharper than the original and carries the risk of scaling artifacts.

So I wonder how important 4K really is in the home? What do you think?

Vote to see the results and leave a comment about your choice.

How Important is 4K in the Home?
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Ask S&V
Samsung UN55D8000 vs. Sony XBR-55HX929
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 30, 2011
I want to buy a LCD TV with LED backlighting. I am not a "ultimate" kind of guy because I do not have the money. I am looking for a 55-incher for $3500 or less. I've heard you say Samsung is the one to get. What the model would that be? I think it is the UN55D8000.

John Phillips

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