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Audio Video News
Facebook Announces Streaming to TVs
SV Staff  |  Oct 14, 2016
Facebook has announced plans to enable its users to stream videos to their TV.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Dr. Strangelove
Fred Kaplan  |  Oct 14, 2016
Picture
Sound
Extras
Dr. Strangelove is one of the great American films: not just a savage anti-war satire but a jeremiad against the mechanization (and resulting dehumanization) that spawned the nuclear-war machine and might turn a burst of insanity into the death of all life on the planet. (The film’s subtitle: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”) It was an amazingly daring movie for its time: early 1964, the peak of Cold War tensions, barely a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the eve of escalation in Vietnam—and here’s Stanley Kubrick, joined by Terry Southern, author of Candy, The Magic Christian, and other naughty novels, portraying the top brass as mentally off, our political leaders as feckless, and the holy of military holies, the nuclear deterrent, as a Doomsday Machine. And it’s funny as hell!
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Allegiant
David Vaughn  |  Oct 14, 2016
Picture
Sound
Extras
With Erudite’s leader overthrown, Four’s mother is now in control of Chicago, and instead of getting on with their lives, it’s payback time for those who oppressed the people under the previous leadership. Tris wants no part of this, and she and Four lead a team of rebels on a daring escape beyond the wall where they face an even larger threat. Tris is then befriended by the mysterious leader, but Four’s spidey sense tells him to be on guard—and for good reason.
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Editor's Eye
The AVR Is Alive and Well...Thanks to Atmos
Rob Sabin  |  Oct 14, 2016
In last year's annual AV receiver issue, I pondered the future of the AVR and whether it might just become a relic; a big black box rusting in the heap at the Ol’ Tech landfill, its unruly interconnects and speaker cables still clinging on for dear life and aimlessly seeking terra firma, yet another reminder of those days when the good stuff still had wires attached to it.
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Audio Video NewsNew Products
Bragi Announces Voice-Controlled Wireless Earbud
SV Staff  |  Oct 14, 2016
Bragi, the German Kickstarter-launched company has announced The Headphone, a lower-priced follow-up to its first product, the Dash wireless earbud featuring an integrated gesture-controlled music player and heart tracker.
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Audio Video News
Ransomware Targets Smart TVs
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 13, 2016
You’re kicking back with your smart TV. Suddenly the screen locks up. Even more surreal, your TV claims to represent a law enforcement agency and accuses you of crimes you haven’t committed...
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AV Receiver Reviews
Arcam AVR850 A/V Receiver Review
Daniel Kumin  |  Oct 13, 2016
Audio Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $6,000

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Outstanding seven-channel power from uncommon amp topology
Dirac Live auto setup and room correction
Winning remote handset
Minus
Lacks wireless
connectivity
Premium pricing

THE VERDICT
Reference-grade seven-channel power, an unusual (and unusually effective) auto-EQ system, and refreshing simplicity and straightforward ergonomics in a pricey, albeit very attractive and well-executed package.

Arcam’s new flagship A/V receiver, the AVR850, is about the most expensive receiver you can buy today: $6,000 here in the Land of the Free(-ish) (not counting a slightly more expensive, similarly spec’d model sourced by Arcam for AudioControl). That’s a lot of simoleons for a box that, on the surface anyway, doesn’t do quite as much stuff as the big-brand models, doesn’t have as much claimed-on-paper power or as many colored lights or flashing displays, and which exudes a substantially simpler design aesthetic. So what do you get for your extra couple of kilo-clams?

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Audio Video News
HDR TV Shipments to Grow to 30 Million by 2020
SV Staff  |  Oct 13, 2016
Shipments of high dynamic range (HDR)-enabled 4K/Ultra HD TVs will reach more than 4 million units in 2016 and growth to more than 30 million units by 2020, according to new research from IHS Markit solutions.
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Throwback Thursday
Flashback 1980: Pac-Man Fever
SV Staff  |  Oct 13, 2016
Whether or not you’re old to enough to have lived through the Sixties and Seventies, here’s a momentous occasion in the history of electronic entertainment that takes us back to 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected president: Pac-Man makes its debut in U.S. arcades and goes on to become not only the first mega-hit video game in history but an icon in pop culture.

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Audio Video News
Bob Dylan Awarded 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature
SV Staff  |  Oct 13, 2016
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 goes to Bob Dylan, 75, for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
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