LATEST ADDITIONS

Bookshelf Speaker Reviews
Polk RTi A1 Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 30, 2010
Price: $1,410 At A Glance: Middle of Polk’s three main speaker lines • Cherry or black veneers at modest price • Remote-controlled subwoofer

From Baltimore with Love

Did you know that Baltimore was the second U.S. city to achieve a population of more than 100,000, after New York? It has given us great Americans as diverse as Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court, and John Waters, who will probably never serve on the Supreme Court, although I’d love to see him try. Barry Levinson based four movies in Baltimore: Diner, Tin Men, Avalon, and Liberty Heights. Six Fortune 500 companies reside in greater Baltimore. The city’s best known university is Johns Hopkins, which educated Polk Audio’s three cofounders: Matthew Polk, Sandy Gross, and George Klopfer. All of them have since moved on, although Matthew Polk maintained an active design presence until recently. Polk Audio is currently owned by DEI Holdings, which also owns Definitive Technology and the Directed Electronics car technology empire. It remains a Baltimore stalwart as well as one of the few truly distinguished speaker brands available to megachain shoppers.

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Audio Video News
Hollywood Rakes It In
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 30, 2010
The economy may be dead in the water but there's one industry boasting record revenues. And that's the movie industry.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Nanny McPhee (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Aug 28, 2010
Mr. Browning (Colin Firth) has seven children he's trying to raise by himself and they need some serious discipline. When the latest nanny quits the job because of their malfeasance, the frustrated father hears a mysterious voice telling him he needs to hire Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) whose magical ways will set the kids on the proper path and strange things start to happen whenever they make the proper choice.

Writer/star Thompson does an admirable job in both jobs, although the film isn't in the same league as Mary Poppins. I liked the message but the story falls apart midway through the second act with its slapstick humor and I began to lose my patience.

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Premiere Design
Focal Maestro Utopia Speaker
Scott Wilkinson  |  Aug 27, 2010
Just because a product isn't the company's most expensive doesn't mean it can't perform exceedingly well. Take, for example, the Maestro Utopia, which occupies the middle of Focal's Utopia III lineup.
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Audio Video News
Samsung BD Glitch Fix Coming
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 27, 2010
Owners of Samsung BD-PX600 Blu-ray players have been puzzled recently by discs from Universal and Warner that do not play. Good news: A fix is on the way.
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Audio Video News
Axiom announces "Customize Yours" options
SV Staff  |  Aug 26, 2010
Axiom Audio has just revealed a service that it claims makes it the "world's most customized loudspeaker shop." The company now offers the "Customize Yours" service, which lets customers dictate exactly how their speakers look. Instead of just a...
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Lost: Season Six (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  Aug 26, 2010
After five long years the fate of Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Sayid (Naveen Andrews), Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Locke (Terry O'Quinn), Jim (Daniel Dae Kim), Sun (Yunjin Kim), and Claire (Emile de Ravin) is finally revealed. These survivors of Oceanic flight 815 didn't land in a tropical paradise. Awaiting rescue they discovered polar bears, a smoke monster roaming the jungle, and the "Others" led by Ben Linus (Michael Emerson). Has it all been a dream? Did they all die in the crash and there in some sort of twisted version of hell? Who started the Darma initiative in the first place? Is it just me, or do all of these questions give you a headache?

Ending a popular show is a difficult under the best of circumstances, but when you take a show like Lost with its large ensemble cast, complicated story, and many unanswered questions. Is there a way to please everyone? Not a chance.

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Premiere Design
DCS Scarlatti CD/SACD Playback System
Scott Wilkinson  |  Aug 26, 2010
Last month, I profiled the Puccini CD/SACD player from British dCS, an all-in-one package and the company's least-expensive audio-disc spinner at a mere $18,000. At the other end of the scale is the Scarlatti, a 3-box system that costs—well, a lot more.
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Audio Video News
AT&T U-verse Gets Portable
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 26, 2010
AT&T is making U-verse subscribers an offer they may not want to refuse. A new U-verse Mobile App for iPhone and BlackBerry Torch can set up recordings for playback on home DVRs and, via cloud computing, on portable devices as well.
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Audio Video News
Rockstar Games releases Red Dead Redemption soundtrack, vinyl coming soon
SV Staff  |  Aug 25, 2010
Vinyl records are becoming a curious marketing tool for video game companies. Last year, Sega released the Mega Drive Ultimate Collection, a 6-track vinyl LP sold only in Australia and New Zealand and limited at 3,500 copies. It was produced to...
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