LATEST ADDITIONS

Headphone Reviews
Review: Red Giant A03 and TDK ST750 headphones
Brent Butterworth  |  Feb 24, 2013

If you're wondering what kind of common thread we've found between two such obviously different headphones, stop wondering. They have nothing in common. Except three things:

1) They're both headphones
2) They both employ unusual engineering.
3) They've both been sitting around my office way too long.

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TV ReviewsLCD TV Reviews
Samsung UN75ES9000 3D LCD HDTV
Tom Norton  |  Feb 22, 2013

2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $9,000 At A Glance: Superb resolution and color • Impressive blacks • State-of-the-art 3D

If last year was the year of thin in flat-screen HDTVs, 2013 promises to be the year of big. Seventy may well be the new fifty, and we’re not talking birthdays. While this year’s models are still remarkably thin, now your friends can ooh and ahh while viewing them from the front and not just the sides.

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Premiere Design
Aragon Iridium Monoblock: The Signature V Rides Again
Bob Ankosko  |  Feb 22, 2013
Gibson has its famous Flying V guitar, the high-end audio community has Aragon’s signature V-notch power amp, introduced 25 years ago in Mondial’s Aragon 4004 amplifier and resurrected in the Iridium Monoblock, flagship of the recently revived Aragon brand.
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Tech2
PlayStation 4 Revealed! Sort of…
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Feb 21, 2013

It's hard to write up news about the PS4 when there wasn't any actual news about the PS4. At what best can be described as a "Save-the-Date" event, Sony laid out their ideas for their next-gen console, but gave few, if any, specifics.

What we found out is... interesting. By far the PS4 is being pushed as a gaming console to act as a central hub for a gaming lifestyle, than a hardcore, cutting-edge, gaming machine.

That and other disappointments AWESOME GAMING NEWS after the jump.

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Other Tech
Truly Useful Apps: Watching TV on the Second Screen
Michael Antonoff  |  Feb 21, 2013
So desperate are the networks to keep you cuffed to their shows that they’ve been launching apps for the second screen. Made for the tablets and smartphones to which viewers’ eyes keep darting—often at the expense of the TV screen—these apps are intended to boost fan loyalty.
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Power Amplifier ReviewsSurround Processor Reviews
Marantz AV8801 Surround Processor & MM8077 Amplifier
David Vaughn  |  Feb 20, 2013

AV8801 Surround Processor
Audio Performance
Video Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
 
MM8077 Amplifier
Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: AV8801, $3,599; MM8077, $2,399 At a Glance: Up to 11.2-channel playback with Audyssey DSX and DTS Neo:X Audyssey MultEQ XT32 and Sub EQ HT Apple AirPlay support

As A/V enthusiasts, we are constantly on the lookout for the best audio and video we can find, and when we reach that state of nirvana, we enjoy our equipment until the next CES or CEDIA when we then hear about something new and begin to worry that our system will soon be second best. Writing for Home Theater makes me an unwilling accomplice in this never-ending cycle of upgrade-itis, but truth be told, I’m just as affected by this as the rest of you. Thankfully, I’m able to get my fix by having lots of equipment moving through my rack, but every now and then, I fall in love with a piece and don’t want it to leave my possession.

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Projector Tech
Calculating Projector Brightness for Your Screen
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Feb 19, 2013

Every once and a while I get an email questioning our choice of using a 100-inch screen to measure projectors. I feel this size is the best way to judge the performance of a projector, while at the same time offering you, our fair readers, a way to judge how bright the projector will be on your own screen.

This is easy to do, but it involves the maths.

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Audio Video News
Circuit boards Out, Meta–boards In?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Feb 19, 2013
Conventional circuit boards and their metallic tentacles may be on their way out—someday. Scientists at Oxford University have developed a new kind of sealed “metaboard” by embedding copper coils into a conductive layer. This meta- board can transfer data and power using magneto-inductive waves instead of wires.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
School of Rock
David Vaughn  |  Feb 19, 2013
Picture
Sound
Extras
Interactivity
Kicked out of his band and desperate for work, Dewey Finn intercepts a call meant for his roommate and lands an extended gig as a substitute teacher at Horace Green Elementary, a $15,000-per-year private school in the Northeast. The school’s uptight principal suspects something is amiss when the new teacher is less concerned about the students and is more interested in when the school day ends, but he gets the gig anyway. Dewey’s attitude changes when he hears the kids in their music class and realizes they have some serious potential if he can take them under his wing. He forms his own “classroom band” and involves the entire class with a costume designer, backup singers, security, and even a band manager with two goals in mind—to not get caught by the principal and to win the local Battle of the Bands contest.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Chico & Rita
Fred Kaplan  |  Feb 19, 2013
Picture
Sound
Extras
Chico & Rita is a wonderful movie, a valentine—poignant, sweet, but never sentimental—to Cuban jazz, bebop, and the street scenes of 1940s and ’50s Havana and New York. It’s a sophisticated animation, drawn in an evocative sketch-edged style similar to that of Waltz With Bashir. (It’s based on a graphic novel, a few pages of which are reproduced in the Blu-ray box’s booklet.)
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