LATEST ADDITIONS

New Products
New Gear: The Ultimate Insider's Guide to High Performance Home Theater
Michael Berk  |  Jul 16, 2012

Home theater equipment choice and setup. It's confusing, we know (and we do our best to help). But sometimes it's helpful to have a field guide at your fingertips, and luckily for all of us Rotel's just brought out the third edition of its Ultimate Insider's Guide to High Performance Home Theater, available directly from the company as a downloadable PDF for $19.95.

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Tech2
Go Further with Ford
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jul 16, 2012

Ford hosted a bunch of non-car journalist and blogger types in Dearborn for a conference where the talk was about pretty much everything but the cars themselves.

Instead, the focus was on technology. It was a pretty cool event, the most fascinating part for us Sound+Vision folks being the push for more user-friendly in-car communications and entertainment.

Talk to your car, and have it talk back, after the jump.

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Vote
Do You Prefer Subscription or Pay-As-You-Go Streaming?
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 13, 2012
Based on previous poll questions, I know that most readers of HomeTheater.com strongly prefer the quality of Blu-ray over the convenience of online streaming. I share this preference, but I still find streaming to be useful for non-critical watching or things that aren't available on disc.

Streaming services provide content using one of two business models—a flat subscription fee for unlimited access to their entire library (e.g., Netflix and Hulu Plus) or paying for each title you watch (e.g., Vudu and iTunes). Which approach do you prefer, and why?

Vote to see the results and leave a comment about your choice.

Do You Prefer Subscription or Pay-As-You-Go Streaming?
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Out Of The Blu
Being Flynn, Down By Law, Metropolitan
Chris Chiarella  |  Jul 13, 2012
Robert De Niro returns in of his more serious dramatic leads in years, while two new Criterion Blu-rays serve up a pair of late-'80s independent gems.
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Tech2
Comic-Con 2012: A Blending of Worlds
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jul 13, 2012

Never in the history of humankind has there been such a gathering of nerds, dweebs, freaks, geeks, dinks, dorks, techies, trekkies, wookiees, weirdos, waldos, and wonks like the event that is Comic-Con.

Clearly, these were my people.

Shockingly, this was my first time attending. Shockinglier, it will be my last.

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Surround Sound System ReviewsBookshelf Speaker Reviews
Orb Audio People’s Choice Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 12, 2012

Performance
Build Quality
Value
Price: $1,297 (with updated X Series models)
At A Glance: Dual orbs in front, single orbs behind • Full-range drivers in steel enclosures • Rod or pedestal stand

Spherical loudspeakers are perhaps too easily dismissed: “Oh look, it’s round. Cute gimmick. Next…” That box speakers are easy to build certainly doesn’t guarantee sound quality. In fact, designers of quality speakers are constantly rebelling against the limitations of rectangular enclosures. To curb cabinet resonance, designers build bracing into the box and stuff the interior with damping material. They curve the sides to stop standing waves from developing between parallel walls. But rather than tweak boxes, some do away with them altogether. So if you think the spherical steel shells of Orb Audio’s People’s Choice satellite speakers are mere gimmicks, think again.

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Streaming Device Reviews
Western Digital WD TV Live Streaming Media Player
Barb Gonzalez  |  Jul 12, 2012
Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $99 At A Glance: Great picture and sound quality • Wi-Fi-enabled • Clean, easy-to-use menus • Variety of streaming content services • Quirky difficulties with file indexing

The WD TV Live streaming media player has much in common with its predecessor, the WD TV Live Hub. When the WD TV Live Hub came out, I thought it was the best network media player and streamer on the market. It has a clean menu system; can play movies, music, and photos on my home network, and simply works.

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Ask S&V
Video Dynamic Range and Color Space
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 11, 2012
I recently read HT's review of the Panasonic TC-P55ST50 3D plasma TV. (Good review, by the way.) I noticed that the display was calibrated using a brightness range of 0-255. My understanding is that digital video (Blu-ray, DVD, digital TV) is encoded in YCbCr with a video brightness range of 16-235, and one should set the source component to output YCbCr and set the display to accept the brightness range of 16-235 to preserve the signal and avoid processing and interpolation. Just wanted to get your thoughts and reasons if one way is better than the other.

Stephen Lin

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New Products
New Gear: Krell Phantom III Preamplifier
Michael Berk  |  Jul 11, 2012

Krell is synonymous in the minds of many with high-performance audio, but they're not the first manufacturer that comes to mind when you mention DACs or headphone amps. That's about to change, perhaps, with the introduction of the Phantom III stereo preamplifier.

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Headphone Reviews
Review: Dusting Off Some Vintage Headphones
Brent Butterworth  |  Jul 11, 2012

Checking out the latest acquisitions during a recent visit to Vancouver, BC vintage audio dealer Innovative Audio, I noticed a lot of headphones that I hadn’t seen since the days when I wore Qiana shirts and had hair down past my shoulders.

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