LATEST ADDITIONS

AV Receiver Reviews
Rotel RSX-1550 A/V Receiver
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 04, 2009
Price: $1,999 At A Glance: Rotel enters the HDMI 1.3 age with two new receivers • Rated power at 75 watts times five • Snazzy aesthetics, minimalist user interface

Family Matters

Longtime readers will recognize the Rotel RSX-1065 as my reference A/V receiver. It’s been around so long that it’s no longer listed on Rotel’s Website. Mine has been in service since 2001, when I reviewed it, setting a record for longevity and giving every loudspeaker review I’ve written since then a firm foundation. When I tell speaker makers what I use for amplification, they breathe a sigh of relief and change the subject. Even the arrival of the seven-channel version, the RSX-1067, left me unfazed. The five-channel version has served me for nearly eight years.

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Audio Video News
Move every sig: real movie-star autographs
SV Staff  |  May 04, 2009
There are three types of celebrity autographs: Sports autographs, convention autographs, and fake autographs. Sports autographs are signed balls, mitts, trading cards, and other memorabilia that bear the signature of a professional athlete....
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Audio Video News
Best Buy to Stock Vinyl
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 04, 2009
The LP has always had friends in high places. Apparently that includes someone at Best Buy, which is considering adding vinyl to all 1020 of its brick-and-mortar stores.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Incendiary—Image Entertainment (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  May 03, 2009
Video: 4/5
Audio: 3.5/5
Extras: 1.5/5
Williams delivers a riveting and heart-felt performance as a young wife and mother who suffers a devastating loss in the attack...which occurs while she's meeting her secret lover. Wracked with guilt and trying to piece her shattered life back together, she becomes embroiled in the police investigation of the attack - and discovers that the authorities will do anything to cover up the terrifying truth behind it.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Grudge—Columbia Pictures (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  May 03, 2009
Video: 3.75/5
Audio: 4.5/5
Extras: 3.5/5
Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as an American nurse who has come to work in Tokyo. Following a series of horrifying and mysterious deaths, she encounters the vengeful supernatural spirit that possesses its victims, claims their souls, and then passes its curse to another person in a spreading chain of horror. Now, she must find a way to break this supernatural spell or become the next victim of an ancient evil that never dies, but forever lives to kill.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—Paramount Pictures (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  May 03, 2009
Video: 3.75/5
Audio: 3.5/5
Extras: 3/5
"Bueller... Bueller...?" Sorry, not here! Instead, high-schooler Ferris Bueller, his girlfriend Sloane, and his best bud Cameron are off on the spontaneous romp through Chicago known as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
American History X—New Line Cinema (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  May 03, 2009
Video: 4/5
Audio: 4/5
Extras: 2/5
Derek Vinyard is dangerous, a coiled fury of hate who leads a neo-Nazi gang. But time and events start to change him. He reassesses his ways while doing time for manslaughter and emerges from prison eager to keep his younger brother from falling victim to the thug cycle of violence and payback. It may be too late. Weaving in and out of events past and present in Derek's life, "American History X" is revealing in its look at white-supremacist gangs and impassioned in its message that hatred and bigotry can be unlearned.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button—Paramount/Criterion (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  May 03, 2009
Video: 5/5
Audio: 5/5
Extras: 5/5
"The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button" is a grand tale of a not-so-ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans—Screen Gems (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  May 03, 2009
Video: 4.5/5
Audio: 4.5/5
Extras: 3.75/5
"Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans" delves into the origins of the centuries-old blood feud between the aristocratic vampires, known as Death Dealers, and the barbaric Lycans (werewolves). A young Lycan, Lucian, emerges as a powerful leader who rallies the werewolves to rise up against Viktor, the cruel vampire king who has persecuted them for hundreds of years. Lucian is joined by his secret lover, the beautiful vampire Sonja, in his battle to free the Lycans from their brutal enslavement.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Point of No Return—Warner Bros. (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  May 03, 2009
Video: 4.25/5
Audio: 3.5/5
Extras: 1/5
She is society's worst nightmare, an antisocial misfit convicted of murder and sentenced to die. But a covert government agency may be able to transform her into a sleek, cool-as-ice assassin. Dressed to kill, trained to survive, she's set loose in a deadly world where unexpected romance complicates things even more.
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