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3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Imax Under the Sea 3D (Blu-ray 3D)
David Vaughn  |  Jan 13, 2011
Imagine a world of incredible color and beauty. Of crabs wearing jellyfish for hats or of fish disguised as frogs, stones, and shag carpets. Journey into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef and other South Pacific realms and immerse yourself into 3D from the comfort of your own home.

Here's the first of many Blu-ray 3D reviews you'll be seeing at UltimateAVmag.com. For the sake of full disclosure, our household was divided about 3D. My wife and daughter have always enjoyed it, while my son and I haven't, with one exception—Avatar. Everyone enjoyed the 3D experience of James Cameron's blockbuster at our local theater.

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42,959 Steps
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 13, 2011
CES 2011 has come and gone, and by the end, my dogs were barking big time! Last year, my pedometer recorded a total of 15 miles during the show, a figure I beat by 33 percent this year—I walked 20.34 miles, which translates to 42,959 steps. Thank goodness for orthodics and support socks!

Stay tuned for more videos from the show as well as my wrap-up reports…

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CES 2011: The Speaker Report
Brent Butterworth  |  Jan 12, 2011

You might think that by now engineers would be out of ideas for speakers. After all, how many ways can you combine a woofer and a tweeter? But this year's Consumer Electronics Show proved there's still lots of life left in this category. In fact, I can't recall a past CES that showcased so many new speaker models, and this was the 22nd time I've attended the January show.

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Sonic Emotion 3D Sound
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 12, 2011
Swiss developer Sonic Emotion was demonstrating its 3D Sound technology in a smallish booth at the Convention Center using soundbars from Haier and Coby. Granted, these are hardly the type of "ultimate" products I normally feature on UAV, but the underlying technology is surprisingly advanced and worthy of coverage here.
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CES 2011
Paradigm
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 11, 2011
CES 2011
MartinLogan
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 11, 2011
CES 2011
Control 4
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 11, 2011
CES 2011
Mitsubishi TVs
Shane Buettner  |  Jan 11, 2011
CES 2011
Mitsubishi Laservision
Shane Buettner  |  Jan 11, 2011
CES 2011
Thiel SCS4T
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 11, 2011
The new Thiel floorstanding SCS4T (about $3700/pair), mentioned again further down in this report, is a modest speaker by Thiel standards. The single coaxial driver has the advantage of coincidence. That is, the tweeter is mounted coaxially with the woofer, so the two drive units do not produce comb filtering dips in the speaker's response at off axis angles. Coaxial drivers are also used in more upmarket models from Thiel, and also by KEF and Tannoy, but otherwise are relatively rare.

Yes, I heard more dramatically impressive sound at the show, but the Thiel room, one of the first I visited, sounded so honest and right that for me it represented the sort of value that most of the higher-end products could not manage. Of course, a pair of Thiel subwoofers were helping it along in the deep bass!

And unlike nearly all of the speakers heard at the Venetian, the SCS4T is ready for home theater. The older, stand-mount SCS4 (about $2400/pair, available in singles) should be a good match. It uses the same coaxial driver and can be used as a matching center channel, even mounted on its side (a trick that other non-coaxial 2-way speakers cannot do without sonic consequences.

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