LATEST ADDITIONS

I spent a tense 30 minutes the other night huddled on the floor in the hallway outside my father’s hospital room. The National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for the area, and the hospital had gone into “Weather Plan 2” mode. Everyone in the building—even the patients who couldn’t get out of bed—had to gather in the hallways. My father was one of those temporarily bed-ridden patients, and I’m sure that the mind-twisting aftereffects of anesthesia coupled with post-op morphine made the hurried, bumpy rush from his room to a hall full of two dozen other patients seem even more surreal than it was for me. It became even more surreal after all the patients were returned to their rooms following an “all clear” announcement when, within minutes, the whole process was repeated (albeit with significantly more grumbling from the patients and staff.)

As I was busily texting and tweeting about the collective predicament we were in (it’s actually not true that I caused a small riot when I ran through the hallway yelling “Morphine for all!”), the flickering of the hallway lights during the height of the storm started me thinking about how incredibly dependent we are on technology - technology that most of us take totally for granted until it doesn’t work anymore...

Despite the name, this app does a bunch of cool tricks, sort of a nerdy catch-all for a bunch of little things that you might have wanted your phone to do.

After all, it’s got all these sensors in it, why can’t you use them all?

PRICE $2,773 (varies with size and configuration)

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Places center dialogue where it belongs
Good sound transparency
Minus
Light easily passes through it
Needs a bright projector to look its best

THE VERDICT
Acoustically transparent screens aren’t for everyone. None of them is totally transparent to sound, and all of them—this Seymour no less so than others—allow some light from the projector to pass through. But if your system demands such a screen, the Seymour is well worth a close look.

At the 2013 CEDIA Expo, many of the home theater demos used acoustically transparent screens. And a number of them—including those from Wisdom Audio, Datasat, and Digital Projection—used screens from Seymour-Screen Excellence.

PRICE $399

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Spacious bipolar sound
Ample bass for a desktop speaker
Stylish look
Minus
Slightly edgy midrange at high volume levels

THE VERDICT
Def Tech’s desktop speaker succeeds in bringing dynamic hi-fi sound to the home office.

Most early examples of desktop computer speakers were funny-looking, bad-sounding, cheaply constructed things. There were exceptions (models from Audioengine come to mind), but these tended to be rare. Although things have improved somewhat since then, any new desktop speaker trying to earn some respect still has its work cut out for it.