LATEST ADDITIONS

After being a stable homeowner for many years, the last three years have seen me moving more often than an aging knuckleball pitcher. This may seem like a negative—after all, moving is an event that many people view with as much enthusiasm as getting hit by a garbage truck or accidentally light-ing one’s hair on fire. But I prefer to look at the positives. Chief among them, I have become something of an expert at dismantling and reassembling a complex home theater system. Allow me to pass on my wisdom.

Now in its fourth year since the format was launched, Blu-ray remains a bit enigmatic. Of course, most early adopters and movie enthusiasts eagerly embrace it, and rightly so&#151;Blu-ray provides the best picture and sound quality you can get from a home-theater source. But its success in the mass market is less clear, at least so far. To assess this and other issues related to the state of Blu-ray, the <A href="http://www.dvdinformation.com/">Digital Entertainment Group (DEG)</A>, an industry-funded, non-profit organization that promotes various types of home entertainment, hosted a day-long conference last week at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, calling it Blu-Con 2.0.

I had not heard of Swedish speaker maker <A href="http://www.perfect8.com">Perfect8 Technologies</A> until reader Joe G. posted a comment in my blog about <A href="http://blog.ultimateavmag.com/ultimate-gear/glass_ear/">Hario's glass speakers</A>. Like Hario, Perfect8 uses glass as a primary building material, but not in the driver diaphragms as Hario does. Instead, the cabinets and some support structures are made of glass, creating elegant sculptures that are said to sound as good as they look.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/heat.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>An L.A. cop (Al Pacino) becomes fixated on a deadly thief (Robert De Niro) and his crew (Val Kilmer, Jon Voight) who are wreaking havoc on the streets of the city. When the cops and robbers clash outside a city bank, one of the most spectacular shootouts in film history takes place.