LATEST ADDITIONS

Well-known British speaker company Mordaunt-Short is introducing a new 2-way bookshelf model called the Performance 2. Priced at $4500/pair, this little gem is designed to be a no-compromise speaker with a 6.5-inch aluminum mid/bass driver and 1-inch aluminum-dome tweeter with a transmission line behind it to allow much lower frequencies and more controlled resonance.

Long known for high-quality audio products, Cambridge Audio is introducing the Azur 650BD Blu-ray player, which joins the growing ranks of so-called universal players that can play DVD-Audio and SACD in addition to Blu-ray, DVD, and CD. In addition, it provides BD-Live functionality and 7.1-channel analog-audio outputs, and it can decode all the audio formats, including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, all for $750.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/fighting.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>This is a gritty story of a small town boy, Shawn MacArthur (Channing Tatum), who becomes a street-fighting star in New York City's underground circuit thanks to the help of scam artist Harvey Boarden (Terrence Howard). The first act showed some promise, but ultimately, continuity issues and poor plot choices knock out what could have been an interesting story. What kept me intrigued was the excellent VC-1 encode, with deep blacks, amazing dimensionality, and revealing shadow detail.