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Audio Video News
Poll Recap: Old AV Never Dies, It Gets Recirculated
SV Staff  |  Mar 24, 2014
John Sciacca offered a number of great suggestions for what to do with old equipment in his recent Old Electronics Get New Life column, which inspired us to pose this question to Sound & Vision readers: How do you get rid of old AV gear that’s past its prime.

Well, the results are in and 60 percent of the tally was a near toss up between 1) moving gear to another room, 2) giving it to a friend or relative, and 3) selling it at a garage sale or online through a site like eBay—all excellent ways to keep good used gear in circulation. Here’s the complete breakdown:

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Grace Notes
Review: Winegard FlatWave Amped HDTV Antenna
Leslie Shapiro  |  Mar 24, 2014
There are lots of ways to get television content into your home, and everyone makes it seem like it’s a simple matter of literally cutting the cord. Get your entertainment from online streaming, and use a pair of rabbit ears to get your local news fix. Easy, right? If you live in or near a big city, that may be true. But having recently left urbania for smalltown USA, I can attest that it’s not so easy after all when the nearest TV towers are miles and miles away. When Winegard announced FlatWave, a new line of flat, passive or powered HDTV antennas, I was all ears.

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A/V Veteran
A Harbor Cruise
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 21, 2014
Some time back I was in the South Bay area of Los Angeles to pick up some gear at our California headquarters in El Segundo, some 30 miles from my home in the Valley (that’s the San Fernando Valley, the pre- and near post- WWII home to hundreds of western movie shoots and, more recently, to freeways, mega suburbia, and Valley Girls). Even Angelinos may not be aware that El Segundo got its name from being the site of the second Standard Oil refinery built on the West Coast. As far as I know there’s no town immortalizing El Primero or El Tercero.

But I digress.

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Tech2
A Few Depressing Words on 4K Gaming
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Mar 21, 2014
One of the most common pro-4K arguments I’ve heard is in regards to 4K gaming. That with a 4K TV/monitor, one can just crank the resolution on their gaming PC and behold a new world of wonder.

Well… sort of. 4K gaming isn’t exactly what you’re dreaming about, especially if you think the new Xbone/PS4 are gonna do it.

More dreamcrushing after the jump.

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Streaming Device Reviews
TiVo Roamio Pro DVR
Al Griffin  |  Mar 21, 2014

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $599

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Slick, speedy interface
3-TB hard disk for seemingly limitless recording
TiVo iOS app streams content in or away from home
Minus
Primitive Amazon Instant Video app

THE VERDICT
TiVo’s next-generation DVR makes TV watching a truly connected experience.

Last summer, after a nearly nine-year relationship, I showed my cable company–supplied DVR the door. Our life together had become increasingly untenable. My main gripe was that its limited-capacity hard drive put me in the constant position of having to delete old recordings to make room for new ones. It also had no connection options to link to a wired or wireless home network. These days, any component that can’t link to the Internet and communicate with computers, phones, and tablets is as good as junk. (We’ll give turntables a pass—for now.) Furthermore, my old DVR whirred and wheezed like the geezer it was, often emitting its loudest groans during music-listening sessions where I had no choice but to pull the plug.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Nashville
Shane Buettner  |  Mar 21, 2014
Picture
Sound
Extras
Interactivity
Rebel director Robert Altman was buried and resurrected countless times in his long career, beating the system and making vital films right up to his death in 2006. 1975’s Nashville was his high-water mark, a great film and the zenith of his 1970s glory years. A musical, a political drama, a romantic drama, a country music mockumentary, and a tragedy, Nashville defies description as a story.
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New Products
Prescient Audio PATD12
Mark Fleischmann  |  Mar 20, 2014
Prescient Audio’s Paul Niedermann scowled at the trunk of his car. The supplied loudspeaker system took up too much space. He thought about it and came up with a solution: Prescient’s ThinDriver Technology, which fits a 12-inch subwoofer driver into an enclosure about one-third the conventional size.
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New Products
Meridian G65 Surround Controller
Bob Ankosko  |  Mar 20, 2014
Founded in 1977 by psychoacoustics expert Bob Stuart, Meridian staked its claim in the world of digital audio before the CD was even born and has lived on the cutting edge of digital technology ever since. In 1994, before the new Dolby Digital surround format (then known as Dolby AC-3) had even made its way into homes, the company introduced the world’s first digital surround controller and named it simply the 565. Twenty years later, the G65 surround controller represents the latest iteration of that iconic processor.
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Ask S&V
How Do I Get High-Res Audio?
Al Griffin  |  Mar 20, 2014
Got a tech question for Sound & Vision? Email us at AskSandV@gmail.com

Q I would like to get my feet wet with high-res audio, but don’t want to make a huge hardware investment. I’ve found some 192/24 tracks I’d like to buy from HDTracks.com. What would be the next step after I download these in ALAC format to my MacBook Air? Can I play them via my Mac’s optical output to the optical input on my preamp-processor (Emotiva UMC-1)? Can I stream them to said pre-pro via Apple TV or Airplay? Since the UMC-1 doesn’t have a USB input, do I need to buy a Dragonfly DAC or something like that? How about a USB headphone amp?  I obviously want a hardware setup that preserves the highest resolution. —Steve Burbidge / Minneapolis, MN

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SmartStream
Will Short Video Streaming Kill the Feature Film?
Barb Gonzalez  |  Mar 20, 2014
As the popularity of streaming short videos continues to grow, what will happen to feature film length movies, and TV shows? A panel at the Sun Valley Film Festival discusses the changing face of streaming content.
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