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Audio Video News
Sony's Akio Morita on Norio Ohga
Mark Fleischmann  |  Apr 29, 2011
You've probably read elsewhere that Norio Ohga died last week at 81. As chairman of Sony from 1982-95, he got the company into the motion picture and music businesses. An accomplished musician and music lover, Ohga was the guy who insisted the Compact Disc format should hold at least 74 minutes to accommodate Beethoven's Ninth Symphony without flipping. See obituary.

Perhaps the person best suited to reminiscing about Ohga would be the one who wooed him away from his career as a performing musician, Sony's legendary founder Akio Morita, who died in 1999. Following are some passages from his 1986 book Made in Japan. He starts by describing Ohga as "the young music student who asked so many audacious questions of our salesmen in 1947 that they finally brought him around to the company to talk to the engineers."

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A/V Veteran
Analog vs. Digital Connections
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 28, 2011
When I read Stephen Beney's questions regarding the best way to connect his Oppo BDP-95 player to his Denon AVR-4308CI receiver and Scott Wilkinson's reply, I thought Scott's advice was good. But there are some other points I want to make about how to hook up that player for the best audio results—points that could apply to any universal disc player with claims of superior audio quality.
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Movie Test Scenes
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 28, 2011
I am unable to find the show notes for episode 45 of Home Theater Geeks. I am interested in the list of movie scenes that David Reisner uses to highlight and identify problems.

Philip Cottle

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Premiere Design
Shape Audio Organic Harmony Speaker
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 28, 2011
When I came across the Organic Harmony speaker from Shape Audio, I was astounded, not only by the gorgeous design, but also by the staggering price—which, of course, I'll reveal at the end of this blog.
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Music Reviews
CD Review: Emmylou Harris
Rob O'Connor  |  Apr 28, 2011

Hard Bargain features the trio of Emmylou Harris, producer Jay Joyce, and multi-instrumentalist Giles Reaves alone in the studio. However, this isn’t a rustic, back-to-basics album. Rather, it has a pleasantly lush sound, made with the complete understanding that people come to hear Harris sing.

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Projector Reviews
Digital Projection HIGHlite Cine 260 HC DLP Projector
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 28, 2011
Price: $29,995 At A Glance: Outstanding resolution and color • Bright—even on a 10-foot screen • Black level and contrast well short of cutting edge

DLP Hangs Tough

Digital Light Processing (DLP) may have jump-started the whole digital display revolution in the late 1990s, but to the consumer, the technology might look like it’s fallen on hard times. Only one major HDTV manufacturer—Mitsubishi—now makes DLP rear projectors. And since DLP is a projection technology, there are no DLP sets that can project an image across a distance of 2 inches or less to compete with today’s popular flat panels.

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Audio Video News
YouTube to Do More Movie Rentals
Mark Fleischmann  |  Apr 28, 2011
YouTube is planning to move further into movie rentals, enlarging a small existing operation to include more major titles.

What, you didn't know YouTube does movie rentals? The Google-owned site started renting indie films in partnership with the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010. But now the push is on to make YouTube's rental service more of a mainstream operation like Netflix or iTunes.

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Bias Lighting, JVC PJs, Legacy Components
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 27, 2011
Does bias lighting improve the viewing experience? How do the current JVC projectors compare with previous generations? What are "legacy components"?
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Music Reviews
CD Review: Steve Earle
Rob O'Connor  |  Apr 27, 2011

Named after the last single that Hank Williams released before his death, I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is swamped in Steve Earle’s contemplations of mortality. His father died weeks after Earle began writing the album.

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16:9 on a 21:9 Screen
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 27, 2011
Vizio is introducing ultra-widescreen LCD TVs with an aspect ratio of 21:9. I believe their screen sizes will be 50, 58 and 71 inches. Can you provide the formula that reveals how large a 16:9 unaltered picture will be on such a screen? I’ve read elsewhere that a 50-inch ultrawide would produce an unaltered 46-inch 16:9 image, but I have no idea how 46 inches was arrived at.

Carl King

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