LATEST ADDITIONS

Geoffrey Morrison  |  Apr 25, 2012

Burbling quietly as it rolls down the back of the flatbed truck, the Panamera appears an expansive stretch of undulating blue sheet metal. With nary a paper to sign, the delivery driver hands me the keys and says, “have fun” with a wry smirk.

Because it amuses me (and probably my neighbors), I park it next to my 1975 Porsche 914, which cost me a hair north of 1% of the sticker price of its great-great-grand sibling.

It’s going to be a good week.

Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 24, 2012
Academy Award-winning sound editor Lon Bender explains the process of adding sound to a movie, how the process has evolved over the years, and how a home-theater mix differs from a commercial-cinema mix. He also shares some anecdotes from several projects he's worked on, including The Hunger Games and Drive, talks about the problem of not enough sound isolation between theaters in a multiplex, answers chat-room questions, and more.

Run Time: 1:06:32

Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 24, 2012
Movie theaters are always eager to find new ways to drag consumers off their living-room sofas and into the multiplex. In recent years, this has become more difficult as big-screen HDTV and home surround sound can often exceed the movie-going experience. Apart from sheer screen size, consumers have less and less incentive to spend $12 a head, or more, just for the seat—never mind the cost of refreshments.
Leslie Shapiro  |  Apr 24, 2012

For years, TV manufacturers have been striving to make the biggest and best TV displays. Every year in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Show has been a competition to see who could show off the most ridiculously humongous TV screen.

Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 24, 2012

2D Performance
3D Performance
(92-inch high-gain screen)
3D Performance
(118-inch standard screen)
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $25,000 At A Glance: Superb 4K resolution • Excellent blacks and shadow detail • High-gain screen recommended for 3D

Editor's note: This is an addendum to our earlier review of the Sony VPL-VW1000 4K 3D projector, covering only its 3D picture quality. Click here for the orignal review.

In our February 2012 issue, we published an exclusive first look at Sony’s new top-of-the-line projector. In addition to stunning performance with conventional, high-defintion, consumer material, the VPL-VW1000 employs 4K imaging chips, offering four times the resolution of standard high-definition video.

Barb Gonzalez  |  Apr 23, 2012
Perhaps you just bought a media-streaming device or a smart TV that connects to the Internet to stream movies and TV shows from online providers. Where will you get your movies? Is it better to buy, rent, or stream them from monthly subscription services like Netflix or Hulu? If you buy movies, should you download them to your computer or save them to an online cloud service?
Michael Berk  |  Apr 23, 2012

The dirty little secret of the iOS aftermarket accessory world (at least where audiophiles are concerned) is that Apple's various bricks and slabs actually sound fairly good out of the box. Output impedance of the headphone jack is comfortably low (around 5 ohm for iPods and iPads most cases, below 1 ohm for the iPhone 4/4s), the onboard DAC isn't a slouch - totally adequate for on-the-go, and for everyday desktop listening, you could do a lot worse.

But that might not be enough for you.

Geoffrey Morrison  |  Apr 23, 2012

It’s hardly a new trend, hiring a high-end audio company to design — maybe build — an audio system upgrade for a car. Bose does it all the time, as do THX, B&W, Lexicon, and B&O

It’s win-win, better audio, a bit of extra profit, and brand exposure for the audio company. But when it’s a pairing of two storied companies like Porsche and Burmester, color me interested.

Conveniently, that color is “Yachting Blue.”

Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 20, 2012
The most important consumer-related product introduction at NAB was a new projector and source device from Red Digital Cinema, which is best known for its digital-cinema cameras. As its name implies, the REDray Laser Projector uses lasers as its illumination source, and the red, green, and blue lasers are housed in a separate module (the larger box seen directly above the projector in the photo) that connects to the projector itself via fiber optics. Even more interesting, multiple laser modules can be ganged together to produce more light for larger screens, and the lasers are rated to last more than 25,000 hours with virtually no change in color or light output.

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