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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Dear John (Blu-ray)
David Vaughn  |  May 25, 2010

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/dearjohn.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Based on the bestselling novel from Nicholas Sparks ("The Notebook"), <i>Dear John</i> is the story of two young lovers, John (Channing Tatum) and Savannah (Amanda Seyfried), who are separated from each other two weeks after falling in love. They pass their time apart by writing a series of love letters until they can finally be together again. Complications arise after 9/11, when John reenlists in the military despite promising Savannah he would get out to be with her.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Alice in Wonderland
David Vaughn  |  May 25, 2010
Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now 19 years old, returns to the mysterious world she first entered as a child and embarks on a journey to discover her true destiny. Along the way, she meets the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and many others who help her complete her quest.

I'm a huge fan of director Tim Burton and was eager to see his take on the classic tale. The theatrical reviews were mixed, but the box-office take ($332 million) makes it Disney's fourth-highest-grossing film of all time. Despite the bizarre second act, it's very entertaining, and the amazing sets and costumes certainly helped draw me in. While not perfect, the 1080p encode boasts some amazingly detailed scenes, and the DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is just as impressive with a plethora of discrete effects.

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Projector Reviews
Vivitek H9080FD LED-Based DLP Projector
Shane Buettner  |  May 25, 2010
Price: $15,000 At A Glance: LEDs promise longevity, consistent performance • Excellent color • Good contrast mitigated by unrefined dynamic contrast performance

Get the LED In

The last few years have been a golden age for digital front projection in home theater applications. Today’s best projectors offer an absolutely stellar combination of price, convenience, essential features, and most importantly, performance. In virtually all of these respects, today’s digital projectors shatter any expectations we had a few years ago. But there is a rub. Digital projection as we’ve known it has been driven by analog lamps for illumination. These lamps, which generally cost $300 to $500 each, age and need to be replaced every couple of thousand hours. If you insist on the very best performanceyou may need to replace them even sooner. In addition to dropping light output, aging lamps also affect a projector’s color performance, gammaand gray-scale tracking. Inother words, the lamp-driven projector you buy today isn’t the same projector you’ll have after several hundred hours without a touch-up calibration.

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Custom Installation How-To
Kaleidescape M500 Player
John Sciacca  |  May 25, 2010

Kaleidescape and I go way back. This is the fifth time I’ve had one of its systems in for review, and I must say, the company’s products just keep getting better and better.

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Custom Installation How-To
Kaleidescape M500 Player Page 3
John Sciacca  |  May 25, 2010

Kaleidescape and I go way back. This is the fifth time I've had one of its systems in for review, and I must say, the company's products just keep getting better and better.

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Audio Video News
BB to Offer Same-Day Streaming
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 25, 2010
Best Buy's newly acquired CinemaNow will stream movies on the same date as their DVD release.
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Audio Video News
Street Fighter comes to HDTVs
SV Staff  |  May 24, 2010
Marvel-licensed HDTVs were nerdy enough, but this is just over the top. Roundtable Concepts, the company behind the Marvel Comics HDTVs, is now offering a series of Super Street Fighter IV HDTVs. The new screens are based on Capcom's hit...
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Premiere Design
Harman Kardon GLA-55 Multimedia Speaker System
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 24, 2010

I don't typically cover so-called multimedia speakers in this blog, but when I came across an ad for the GLA-55 from <A href="http://www.harmankardon.com">Harman Kardon</A> in an upscale magazine, I was intrigued. The cabinet looks like it was chiseled from rock crystal, and its beauty turns out to extend well below the surface.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
100 Best Blu-Ray Discs
HT Staff  |  May 24, 2010
Introduction
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Audio Video News
Acura disses audiphiles with new commercial
SV Staff  |  May 24, 2010
Acura has started showing commercials questioning the nature of luxury, taking pot shots at audiophiles in the process. The commercial shows various luxury items, including an expensive tube amplifier, with the owners weakly trying to justify...
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