LATEST ADDITIONS

New Products
New Products—May 2004
SV Staff  |  May 05, 2004

BenQ Think of it as a portable CD player with benefits: BenQ's Joybee610 will not only play your tunes on the go (including MP3s on CD), but it also plays DVDs and can read CD-ROMs with JPEGs. For anything visual, however, you'll need to hook up the Joybee to an external monitor through its composite-, component-, or S-video output.

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Audio Video News
Added to the Archives This Week
Ultimate AV Staff  |  May 03, 2004  |  First Published: May 04, 2004

Thomas J. Norton reviews the <A HREF="/speakersystems/204psb">PSB Platinum M2 surround speaker system</A>, admitting, "I've had a soft spot for PSB speakers ever since I reviewed the first Stratus Gold for <I>Stereophile</I> back in 1991." TJN explains how over a decade of improvements since then has paid off.

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Audio Video News
Cable and Satellite News
 |  May 03, 2004

"Local into local" renewed: Direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services can continue to beam local stations to their subscribers, thanks to a renewal of the Satellite Home Viewer Enhancement and Reauthorization Act (SHVERA) by the US House of Representatives Telecommunications Subcommittee on Wednesday, April 28.

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Audio Video News
DVRs Critical for Cable
Barry Willis  |  May 03, 2004

The digital video recorder (DVR) is increasingly the pivot on which turns the decision to sign up with cable or a satellite service. It may also forever change the basic business structure of the broadcasting industry.

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Audio Video News
Ultimate AV Launched
Ultimate AV Staff  |  May 02, 2004

Last week, Primedia announced the next in a series of editorial upgrades to its Home Technology & Photography specialty group. The group is redesigning its <I>Stereophile Guide to Home Theater</I> magazine to become <I>Stereophile Ultimate AV</I> (new URL: <A HREF="http://www.ultimateavmag.com">www.ultimateavmag.com</A>) starting with the June issue. Hitting newsstands May 11, the redesigned magazine will feature 16 pages of new and expanded editorial content for high-end audio/video enthusiasts, more advertisers, and an enhanced consumer-friendly design.

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Tower Speaker ReviewsSubwoofer Reviews
PSB Platinum M2 surround speaker system
Thomas J. Norton  |  May 02, 2004

I've had a soft spot for PSB speakers ever since I reviewed the first Stratus Gold for Stereophile back in 1991. Counting updates (the Gold i was introduced in 1997), the Gold has been PSB's flagship speaker for 12 years. That's quite a run in speakerland, where new models sprout like mushrooms.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Honeymooners and The Dick Van Dyke Show
Wes Phillips  |  May 02, 2004

It's difficult to name a single televised situation comedy that doesn't owe a huge genetic debt to a trilogy of early TV prototypes. The Honeymooners can legitimately be said to have supplied the DNA from which everything since has evolved. The Dick Van Dyke Show, for example, moved the genre into the suburbs and the workplace.

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Projector Reviews
SIM2 Grand Cinema HT300 XTRA DLP Projector
Gary Merson  |  May 01, 2004
SIM2's new HD2+ DLP projector delivers the goods.

Digital Light Processing front projection has a short but interesting history. It began in the late '90s when the first consumer DLP projector was marketed. This new type of display—which uses a tiny, reflective chip called a DMD (digital micromirror device) that contains hundreds of thousands of hinged mirrors (instead of miniature LCD panels)—provided consumers with an early look at all-digital imaging. This primitive effort made big pictures, but it had many picture-quality issues.

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Bookshelf Speaker Reviews
Athena Micra 6 Speaker System
Kevin Hunt  |  May 01, 2004
Athena's on the money with a petite 5.1 system.

It's called Micra—as in micron and minute—but Athena Technologies really didn't have to be so modest when naming their latest, and smallest, home theater speaker system. Micra, although dead-on accurate, somehow doesn't do justice to this rockin' little package. Visually, it's Micra. Monetarily, it's Micra. But sonically, it's definitely maxi, as in maximum volume. . . and maximum value.

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Other Source Component Reviews
Where's the DVR?
Chris Chiarella  |  May 01, 2004
Where's the DVR? Come to think of it, where isn't the DVR?

Amazing but true, many TiVo and ReplayTV owners out there just see the devices as neat, little living-room boxes that record their television programs, and they simply don't care about the technology inside. Thanks to steady improvements in digital-video-recorder technology, consumers don't have to care if they don't want to. Not to be like that weirdo in the mask and spoil the magic trick, but there's a simple hard disk drive inside—in many cases, the same exact brand and model you have inside your PC. However, while computer-based "video capture" applications seem to have plateaued in terms of features and convenience (at least for now), the more user-friendly dedicated DVR hardware has undergone some interesting transformations, in and out of the home theater.

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