LATEST ADDITIONS

"I was born in Budapest in 1919 into a music-loving family."

So begins George Jellinek's own account of his musical life, as it appeared in the January 1976 issue of our predecessor, Stereo Review - a magazine for which he wrote from 1958 to 1999.

As we noted in "Feedback" in our June/July/August 2010 issue, we are indeed sad to report the death in January of a man who covered classical music for this magazine for 41 years.

Sweet Silk Dome

The Dynaudio DM 2/6 monitor comes in a vinyl-wrapped mediumdensity-fiberboard enclosure. This is so traditional, it’s almost retro. At the audiophile end of the speaker market, the vinyl-MDF box is outclassed by tantalizing veneers. At the pragmatic end—which is where a lot of the innovation comes these days—the vinyl-MDF box has given way to sound-bars and sat/sub sets with curvy molded-plastic or extruded-aluminum enclosures.

More Than Just a Disc Player

LG Electronics has proven itself to be the most innovative manufacturer of Blu-ray players in the world. It was first to market with an HD DVD/Bluray Disc combo player (BH100), a player with Netflix streaming (BD300), and a player with 802.11n Wi-Fi (BD390). To continue its string of firsts, LG’s BD590 is the first standalone Blu-ray player to include a builtin 250-gigabyte hard drive. It provides storage for BD-Live interactivity and can store movies purchased from VUDU, plus you can rip your favorite CDs for easy access. The player also lets you access Gracenote’s vast database of movie and music metadata. You can look up information by pushing a button on the remote. Let’s take a look and see how the BD590 stacks up to LG’s previous efforts.