LATEST ADDITIONS

On-Wall Speaker Reviews
Test Report: Klipsch Gallery G-28 Speaker System
Brent Butterworth  |  Nov 30, 2011

Flat-TV friendly speakers from a company best known for its horns. If your speakers are fat, what good does a skinny TV do? Speaker manufacturers have begun addressing that problem in the last year.

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Test Report: Toshiba 47TL515U 3D LCD HDTV
Al Griffin  |  Nov 30, 2011

Passive 3D and edge-lit- LED come together in Toshiba’s affordable TV. While other manufacturers of 3D TVs make the case for which is better — sets that use active- or passive-glasses technology — Toshiba’s long-term 3D strategy is to dump glasses altogether.

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AV Receiver Reviews
Test Report: NAD T757 A/V Receiver
Daniel Kumin  |  Nov 30, 2011

When I reviewed one of the first of NAD’s long-awaited “new-generation” A/V receivers almost 2 years ago (can it be?), I liked it a lot.

Know what? I like this one even better.

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Tech2
Demo Doubts
Brent Butterworth  |  Nov 30, 2011

As I was going through some old trade show photos earlier this week, it dawned on me that a lot of the products I’d photographed and subsequently reviewed turned out to be quite different from what I’d been led to expect by the demo. Sometimes products that sounded amazing at a show didn’t sound so great when I actually got a real production sample into my home.

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Home Theater Geeks Podcast
Podcast 89: Michael Lavorgna
Scott Wilkinson  |  Nov 29, 2011
Michael Lavorgna, editor of our sibling site AudioStream.com, describes his listening room and discusses a variety of topics related to high-quality computer audio, including lossless FLAC compression versus uncompressed WAV, the difference between DACs, sample-rate conversion, DSD DACs, high-resolution music download sites, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Run Time: 56:36

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Ask S&V
Panasonic ST30 vs. S30
Scott Wilkinson  |  Nov 28, 2011
Are the blacks visually better on the Panasonic ST30 plasma compared with the S30? And do I really need to pay attention to the Moving Picture Resolution spec? Are there any models you would consider other than these? I'm not interested in 3D, but I understand that it will be included with the better TVs.

Dave Butler

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TV Reviews
Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30 Plasma HDTV
Scott Wilkinson  |  Nov 28, 2011

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $1000 At A Glance: Beautiful color • Sharp detail • Reasonably good blacks • Outstanding value

Panasonic is well known for its high-quality, high-value plasma TVs, but how good can its $1000 50-incher be? Really good, as it turns out. The TC-P50S30 offers nearly identical performance to the highly rated TC-P50ST30—the only real difference is that the S30 has no 3D capabilities. If you're looking for a 50-inch flat panel with only $1000 to spend, look no farther.

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Tech2
Dispersion: A Show and Tell
Brent Butterworth  |  Nov 28, 2011

We tend to think of speakers as devices that blast sound at us. But they actually blast sound in every direction, and that's a good thing. In fact, if they don't blast sound in every direction, it can be a problem.

A speaker's characteristic sound projection pattern, broad or narrow, is referred to as "dispersion."

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Tech2
The Tech2 Stuff to Read While Waiting in Line Guide
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Nov 24, 2011

Everyone else is doing those Black Friday shopping guides. We do things a bit differently here at the Tech2 shack on the S+V compound.

Knowing how many people have smartphones, and would rather look at them then stare at the schlub in front of them in line, we present “Stuff to Read While Waiting in Line.” Or, to translate for the New Yorkers out there: “Stuff to Read While Waiting on Line.”

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll burp turkey from yesterday.

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Other TechAudio Video NewsNew Products
2011 Black Friday Home Theater Deals
Scott Wilkinson  |  Nov 24, 2011
As the song says, it's the most wonderful time of the year—or the most dreadful, depending on whether or not you plan to join the buying frenzy on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. Many stores open at an ungodly hour and offer seemingly outrageous deals on certain products to get people in the door, hoping that they'll buy more than they bargained for and put the store's accounts in the black for the year, which is why it's called Black Friday—either that, or it might be due to all the black eyes resulting from fights over the last remaining $40 Blu-ray player.

Scanning some of the myriad Black Friday websites—my favorite is bfads.net because you can search by product category from multiple retailers—I found a few great deals on home theater gear. In many cases, however, these products are already available at less than the MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price), so the savings I cite here might not be as great as they appear. I've included links to HT's reviews of the same or similar items if available, so let your mouse do the clicking before you venture forth to battle the hordes.

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