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Audio Video News
MHL Takes Your Smartphone to the Movies
Bob Ankosko  |  Oct 02, 2012
Ever wish you could connect your smartphone to the TV in your living room while you’re lounging around so you could browse your apps on the big screen or watch that hilarious video you shot of your buddy impersonating Mitt Romney? Or maybe you’re on the road and want to kick back and stream a movie or watch a couple of crazy YouTube videos on the TV in your hotel room (assuming you’re not staying in a ’60s-era motel complete with the vintage Philco set). Or just think how cool it would be if instead of lugging your laptop to the boardroom, you could jack into the projector and run a PowerPoint presentation from your phone. If nothing else, you’d certainly impress the boss.
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This Week
New Music for October 2, 2012: Peter Gabriel, Instant Live, Remastered Beach Boys, and Grand Ukulele
Mark Smotroff  |  Oct 02, 2012

Peter Comes Alive Again

Peter Gabriel has offered live concert CDs in the past and his current tour again features them in conjunction with TheMusic.com.

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New Products
New Gear: Street by 50 On-Ear Headphones
Michael Berk  |  Oct 02, 2012

If you've been keeping up with our headphone coverage, you know that the S+V team can come down a little hard on celebrity-branded models - too often, the name attached means nothing more than price-inflating licensing fees paid for showing up at a few press appearances.

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Audio Video News
Show Report: TAVES 2012
Al Griffin  |  Oct 02, 2012

Regional hi-fi shows are sprouting up all over North America. We now have the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver, T.H.E. Show in Newport Beach, AXPONA in Jacksonville, and NYC’s New York Audio and A/V show. And each year Montreal gets its own event, Salon Son & Image. Wouldn’t it be great if they also held one in Toronto?

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Vintage Gear
Quad ESL-57 Electrostatic Speaker
Steve Guttenberg  |  Oct 01, 2012
The Acoustical Manufacturing Company’s Quad ESL-57 was the world’s first production full-range electrostatic speaker. It debuted in 1957 when hi-fi speakers were big boxes and used moving-coil drivers, so the ESL-57’s flat-panel, downright minimalist design not only looked like a radical advance, its thin-film diaphragm’s low-distortion and lightning-fast transient response sounded truly revelatory to 1950s audiophile ears. The speaker’s introduction came not so many years after the transition from 78-RPM records to higher-fidelity LPs took place. The market was primed for a more transparent transducer technology, and Quad had the best-sounding speaker of the age.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Wrath of the Titans
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 01, 2012
Picture
3D-ness
Sound
Extras
Interactivity
Zeus, king of the gods, enlists the help of his half-human son Perseus in defeating Perseus’ brother Ares, who has allied with Hades in an effort to release Kronos, the leader of the Titans and the father of Zeus and the other gods. But Perseus just wants to be left alone to live as a human with his son.
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SmartStream
What is a Media Controller?
Barb Gonzalez  |  Oct 01, 2012
A media controller is not a device or a physical remote control. You can’t go to the store and buy a media controller. "Media Controller" is a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certification. Part of a home network streaming media solution, the media controller finds photos, music and movies on connected media servers, and sends (pushes) the media file to an enabled media player, Smart TV or other streaming device. Typically you’ll find that a media controller is an app on a smartphone, tablet or computer.

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Tech2
Review: Samsung DA-E750
Brent Butterworth  |  Oct 01, 2012

With so many audio connection technologies available now, it's gotta be tough to be an audio product manager. Smartphone fans want to connect via Bluetooth. iTunes enthusiasts want AirPlay. Computer audio nuts expect a USB connection. A few old-schoolers demand a hardware dock for an iPod. And there's that one guy who still owns a Zune and needs an analog input.

What to do? If you're Samsung and you're trying to make a "statement" product, you throw it all in. The $699 DA-E750 includes all of the above technologies - plus DLNA, plus a fold-out "dual dock" that works with Samsung Galaxy phones as well as iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

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Tech2
Review: Samsung DA-E750 Page 2
Brent Butterworth  |  Oct 01, 2012

With so many audio connection technologies available now, it’s gotta be tough to be an audio product manager. Smartphone fans want to connect via Bluetooth. iTunes enthusiasts want AirPlay. Computer audio nuts expect a USB connection. A few old-schoolers demand a hardware dock for an iPod. And there’s that one guy who still owns a Zune and needs an analog input.

What to do? If you’re Samsung and you’re trying to make a “statement” product, you throw it all in. The $699 DA-E750 includes all of the above technologies — plus DLNA, plus a fold-out “dual dock” that works with Samsung Galaxy phones as well as iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

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TV ReviewsLCD TV Reviews
Sony KDL-55HX850 3D LCD HDTV
Thomas J. Norton  |  Sep 28, 2012

2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $2,600 At A Glance: Deep, uniform blacks • Superb out-of-the-box color and crisp detail • Head-tilt 3D crosstalk

The most popular, current approach to designing an LCD HDTV with LED lighting is to position the LEDs around the periphery of the screen and rely on diffusors to spread the light out uniformly. Sometimes (but not always) the brightness of the LEDs is also altered dynamically to help the LCD pixels create deep blacks, where needed.

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