At its Summer 2007 press conference today, Denon Electronics (a division of D&M Holdings) announced an all new line of A/V Receivers and its first entry into next-gen HD with an exciting new Blu-ray Disc player.
If you follow S&V with any regularity, you know that I'm a HUGE fan of satellite radio. So I was quite pleased to see yesterday's reports of the possibility of a la carte pricing plans for Sirius and XM in hopes of pushing the proposed merger...
THX is about to take its home theater involvement to a new level with a new program whose working name is Blackbird. If the THX folks pull it off, Blackbird could resolve several issues that plague home theater buffs.
This story would be hilarious if it weren't for the pain and suffering inflicted on a hapless jogger toting an iPod. Caught in a thunderstorm, the Vancouver resident was struck by lightning and sustained serious injuries when the iPod and its cables conducted current into his body.
While the in the end, Samsung's first foray into the Blu-ray world wasn't the major culprit in said format's poor picture quality (turns out most of the early discs just didn't look very good), it was still rather lackluster. It didn't upconvert DVDs very well, it didn't offer a 1080p/24 output, and it didn't decode any of the new audio formats. With its second-generation offering, Samsung has fixed most of these shortcomings. Most.
Founded in early 1972 by Ivor Tiefenbrun, Scottish manufacturer Linn Products has consistently been on the cutting edge of audio development and delivered products that have enamored many audiophiles. Just think of the Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, the Sondek CD12 compact-disc player, or even the Komponent speaker system that Michael Trei reviewed in these pages (in the March 2006 issue). Linn has routinely pushed the boundaries and treaded ahead of the manufacturing pack. Case in point: the Chakra range of amplifiers, which rely on switch-mode power supplies, plus other proprietary developments on the audio-circuit side.
At some point in the evolution of home theater, someone noticed that the phrase includes the word home. At that point, weird and wonderful things began to happen. Speakers morphed into smaller, more rounded, and occasionally more imaginative shapes. The surround receivers that fed them maintained their black-box identities but moved discreetly into closets. Back panels began to sprout extra jacks, the better to interact with touchscreen interfaces, second zones, and other niceties that have become staples of the connected home.
