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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Monsters vs Aliens 3D
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 26, 2010
1010sdsoft.monstersaliens.jpgEarth is threatened. Galaxar, a four-eyed, tentacled, interstellar bad guy, is headed our way in search of his lost Quantonium, which it seems is even more valuable than Unobtainium. To make things worse, the Quantonium has landed on earth, struck a bride-to-be named Susan, and turned her into the proverbial 50-foot woman, much to the horror of her groom and wedding guests. She is thrown into an Area 51–like prison, where other monsters have been squirreled away from the public for decades. Out of options, the U.S. president recruits the monsters as Earth’s best hope for survival.

If all of this seems to be straight out of the usual Bruckheimer-Bay-Emmerich mold, it isn’t. Instead, it’s one of the funniest computer-animated films of recent years. Galaxar is a hoot. “People of Earth, I mean you no harm,” he proclaims. “But you’ll all be either dead or enslaved in 24 hours. Don’t be angry; it’s just business.” Susan discovers that she can do better than her egotistical fiancé, and the other monsters prove to be both endearing and fascinating.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Coraline 3D
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 26, 2010
1010sdsoft.coraline.jpgCoraline Jones is a lonely little girl. She has just moved into a creepy old house, has no real friends, and her parents are so preoccupied with their work on a gardening catalog that they have no time for her. But she soon discovers a small, papered-over doorway in the living room. It leads to another universe—similar to her own but different in important ways. Her “other” parents in that universe are devoted to satisfying her every whim. Her only new friend there doesn’t talk much (actually, not at all), the neighbors who share the old, subdivided house are fascinating rather than merely eccentric, and everything is colorful and fun.

All is not what it seems. Coraline is, at its core, a bloodless horror story. Much like the recent computer-animated film 9 (the first post-apocalyptic sock-puppet movie, and another dynamite audio/video transfer), it gets under your skin in ways that animated fare rarely does and could seriously frighten young children. It also uses stop-motion animation as refined by stop-motion expert Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Monkeybone, James and the Giant Peach).

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews3D Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 3D
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 26, 2010
1010sdsoft.iceage.jpgAs the third installment of the Ice Age franchise, you’d expect the latest adventures of our odd herd of prehistoric mammal friends—Sid the sloth, Manny and Ellie the wooly mammoths, Diego the saber-toothed tiger, Crash and Eddie the possums, and (off on his own as usual) everyone’s favorite latter-day Coyote, Scrat, the squirrel-rat. Scrat’s role has grown with each entry in the series, and here he gets a love (or rather love-hate) interest in Scrattle, a challenge to his acorn obsession.

The main attraction, and what makes this film the best of the three Ice Age movies, is clear from the title. It’s hard to make a bad movie featuring dinosaurs (although the recent remake of Land of the Lost took its best shot). Dinosaurs disappeared long before wooly mammoths walked the glaciers, but as they appear here in a sort of lost-world environment, we can forgive this bit of creative license.

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Premiere Design
Meridian Sooloos Control 15 Audio Server & MS600 Client
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 26, 2010

Long scoffed at by audiophiles, music servers are now gaining widespread acceptance for their convenience and sound quality. Among the most highly regarded products in this category is Sooloos from British high-end stalwart Meridian, which just announced two new members of the Sooloos family—the Control 15 server and Media Source 600 client.

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Audio Video News
3D Glasses Go Rechargeable
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 26, 2010
A series of Panasonic product announcements in Japan includes a rethink of the power source for 3D active shutter glasses. In lieu of a watch battery, the new glasses use a rechargeable battery.
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Audio Video News
Onkyo announces 3D-ready, THX-certified HTiB
SV Staff  |  Jul 23, 2010
The term "home-theater-in-a-box" has become an expletive in the A/V world. They're usually seen as catch-all, cheap, simple excuses for a carefully assembled home theater. Because of this, companies shy away from the term HTiB. Onkyo, for example,...
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Other Tech
Gadget Gary: Klipsch LightSpeakers
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Jul 23, 2010

A s many of you know, I built a house a little over 3 years ago and wired it to the hilt. I thought I had my future-proof bases well covered, but 3 years is a lifetime in today's techie world. When we first moved in there, my sons were 12 and 8 years old. They liked music to some degree, but since it wasn't a prioirty for them, I didn't bother to wire their rooms for speakers. Fast forward: My kids are now veterans in using iPods, iPod touches, and the Sonos wireless multiroom music system. It's no surprise, then, that my iTunes bill is through the roof.

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Samsung UN46C8000 3D LED HDTV and BD-C6900 3D Blu-ray Player Page 2
Al Griffin  |  Jul 23, 2010

The TV that Samsung sent me was its UN46C8000 LED model. Should you, too, decide to live on the edge and view 3D video, two additional things are required: a 3D source and a set of 3D glasses. Sources include 3D Blu-ray Disc players, DirecTV (scheduled to go live in June), certain cable TV providers, and PCs outfitted with special graphics hardware that outputs 3D video.

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Samsung UN46C8000 3D LED HDTV and BD-C6900 3D Blu-ray Player
Al Griffin  |  Jul 23, 2010

The TV that Samsung sent me was its UN46C8000 LED model. Should you, too, decide to live on the edge and view 3D video, two additional things are required: a 3D source and a set of 3D glasses. Sources include 3D Blu-ray Disc players, DirecTV (scheduled to go live in June), certain cable TV providers, and PCs outfitted with special graphics hardware that outputs 3D video.

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Premiere Design
dCS Puccini CD/SACD Player
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 23, 2010

I first heard about British high-end manufacturer dCS many years ago when I read a white paper from the company extolling the audible virtue of PCM digital audio recorded and played back at 192kHz with 24-bit resolution. Since then, it seems that dCS has embraced DSD—the digital-audio format used by SACD—in its CD/SACD playback systems, including the all-in-one Puccini.

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