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Sweepstakes
Acemile's Theatre Box Sweepstakes
SV Staff  |  Jun 08, 2015
Register to win an Acemile Theatre Box (MSRP $299) we are giving away.

According to the company:

Acemile’s Theatre Box is the first the world’s first portable Bluetooth speaker that delivers a 360-degree surround sound audio experience from your smartphone, tablet, laptop or TV without complicated set-up, wires, or even an app. Theatre Box features four 2-inch full range drivers, one 3-inch powered bass driver and delivers up to 125 watts of power, so no matter your orientation to the speaker, you’re in the “sweet spot.”

[This sweepstakes is now closed.]

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Editor's Eye
Shanghai Diary: CES Debuts in Tomorrowland
Rob Sabin  |  Jun 08, 2015
Shanghai, for me, is literally halfway ‘round the world. Some 20 hours flying time from New York, it is 12 hours ahead in time zones and across the International Dateline: the very definition of “Tomorrowland.” The post-modern, sci-fi landscape of the Pudong section of China’s biggest trade center and most cosmopolitan city does little to deter that notion. Bound on one side by the 128-story Shanghai Tower and on the other by the Oriental Pearl, a futuristic, 1,500 foot broadcast tower, it looks like a bold experiment in animation made concrete, a slice of society that has, to date, only been imagined for amusement parks. On first sight I could only gasp at both the scale and shape of it, then grew silent with respect for not just the accomplishment, but the gutsy vision it must have took to start it.

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Apptitude
From Smug to Snug: VR for the Rest of Us
Michael Antonoff  |  Jun 08, 2015
Paul McCartney and Candlestick Park are more likely to be linked to endings (the last Beatles concert, 1966; the last big gig at the Stick, 2014) than new beginnings. But thanks to an innovative app that incorporates a 360-degree perspective from the stage of McCartney’s performance of “Live and Let Die” at the San Francisco ballpark, the man and place will now be coupled to the birth of an exciting way for everybody to enjoy music like never before.

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Tech2
Battlefield Hardline Review
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jun 06, 2015
I’ve been playing Battlefield Hardline and for the first time in the Battlefield series, I’m not sure I can recommend it. Not to Battlefield fans like myself.

Battlefield fans not like myself, maybe.

Here’s why.

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Soundbar Reviews
Phase Technology Teatro TSB3.0 Soundbar Review
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jun 05, 2015

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $738

AT A GLANCE
Plus
It’s like having three top-drawer speakers
Balanced performance
Passive design allows benefits of an AVR
Minus
Passive design requires an AVR

THE VERDICT
Phase Technology’s Teatro TSB3.0 soundbar dispenses with the fancy stuff and provides the performance you’d expect from three well-engineered and great-sounding speakers.

This might seem a radical concept, but what if a soundbar were just a speaker, or two or three? What if it had no internal amplifiers, just some really good drivers, a thoughtfully engineered crossover, and sets of speaker terminals, like any other quality loudspeaker?

Is this kind of soundbar a good idea? That depends on what kind of system you want—or, more specifically, whether you want a standalone audio/video receiver in your system. For some people, the AVR is like the guy you’d cross the street to avoid, someone who confuses and bedevils you. For others, the AVR is the key to a cornucopia of features, the cornerstone of a system that unlocks all your desires.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Judge
Anthony Chiarella  |  Jun 05, 2015
Picture
Sound
Extras
Uber-lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) has it all: a lucrative career defending crooked millionaires, a masterpiece home in suburban Chicago… and a dysfunctional family he hasn’t seen for 20 years. When his mother dies, Hank returns to rural Indiana to attend the funeral and grudgingly console his father (Robert Duvall), a stoic judge who had long ago thrown the book at him, sentencing his son to four years in reformatory. When the judge is involved in a hit-and-run accident, Hank must mount a defense, despite his father’s seeming desire to be found guilty. Along the way, we uncover not only the truths surrounding the accident, but the Palmers’ toxic family history as well. There’s also a rekindled romance between Hank and his childhood sweetheart (Vera Farmiga), the only individual who has flourished in this Hoosier backwater.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
John Wick
Guido Henkel  |  Jun 05, 2015
Picture
Sound
Extras
Action films come in various flavors: Some are more story-driven, others less so. John Wick is clearly on the low end of this scale, with no plot to speak of, instead relegating itself to a 100-minute nonstop shoot-out, a movie where taking a breath is as impossible as taking the film seriously. Playing unapologetically to a testosterone-addled, teenaged male demographic, the film is furious and explosive on the one hand, yet flat and characterless on the other. But if pure adrenaline-infused action is what you seek, John Wick may be right up your alley. Just don’t expect it to make any sense.
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Ears On
Closer to Music
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jun 05, 2015
I have been lucky enough to spend nearly all of my career explaining audio and video technology to readers. I'm just as lucky to have made Sound & Vision and its predecessor Home Theater my roost since 2001. But in a previous phase of my career, I divided my time between specialist publications like this one and other kinds: music and pop culture magazines, men's and women's and travel magazines and newspapers and more. It was while writing a story for Details that I racked my brain for a way to assert the relevance of audio technology to a young, hip, music-loving audience (not unlike myself at the time). Finally I stumbled upon the key that unlocked it all: the phrase closer to music. I've been using that phrase and its cousin—your relationship with music—ever since.

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Ask S&V
Can I Build a Dolby Atmos Theater Using All In-Ceiling Speakers?
Al Griffin  |  Jun 04, 2015
Got a tech question for Sound & Vision? Email us at AskSandV@gmail.com

Q I am new to the world of home theater, but I’m building a house soon and want to plan for the possibility of a home theater setup. I like the idea of having in-ceiling speakers running the surround sound. Is it possible to set up a Dolby Atmos system that exclusively uses in-ceiling speakers?—Jonathan Huizingh / via e-mail

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The Connected Life
Wi-Fi Pineapple: A Rotten Piece of Fruit
John Sciacca  |  Jun 03, 2015
While doing some research for an upcoming Connected Life column on Wi-Fi security practices, I stumbled across a practically rotten piece of “fruit” called the Wi-Fi Pineapple. And while the company that makes this, Hak5, says that it serves “penetration testers, law enforcement, military and government” the sub $100 device is available to anyone and is designed to “enable users to quickly and easily deploy advanced attacks.” With the Pineapple performing hotspot honeypot, man-in-the-middle attacks, a hacker could quickly and easily have access to all of the data and information from your browsing sessions. If you frequently connect to Wi-Fi hotspots when you’re out and about, here are some things you need to know about the Pineapple in order to better safeguard yourself.
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