As if your cell phone didn't already try to perform too many functions at once, a slew of consumer electronics manufacturers want to add in one more feature: A digital projector. That's right, a mini-version of the home-theater grade projectors...
Forget microscopes. Students at Tufts University's Center for Scientific Vizualization don't have to squint when examining particles, molecules, DNA, and tiny organisms. Instead they simply glance up at the enormous VisWall in their classroom. The...
Despite their popularity, LCD TVs have always had a problem with black level. Yesterday Dolby and SIM2 gave dazzled reporters a glimpse of how good black and dark colors could look on a flat-panel set. Unfortunately, this High Dynamic Range (HDR) tech was only a prototype, so it'll be awhile before you get to share the love.
JVC has long been a player in industrial-grade video front projectors, with its D-ILA (JVC's variant of LCoS technology) models finding their way into plenty of boardrooms, digital movie theaters, and other commercial venues.
Remember when those poor, starving contestants on Survivor finally got a serving of sustenance? Only, instead of being rewarded with a good rib eye or a yellowfin tuna roll, they get a big dollop of termite larva. Or perhaps a skinny slice of bat-wing. It's like, "Yeah, they're hungry enough to eat anything.
No one ever said being a home theater enthusiast was cheap. If you've got a full 7.1-channel speaker system, tricked out with the latest gear, and topped off with a 60-inch plasma, it could cost you more than $10,000. Yeah, that thing saying "ouch" is your credit card.
I've been engaged in an interesting e-conversation with Steve Gutierrez, a builder/developer who won a Panasonic plasma at his workplace and wants to install a complete home-media system. Here's the gist of our dialog, but I welcome any comments from readers with suggestions I might have missed.
It was 40 years ago today (well, just about) that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. What a year 1967 was! It was also the year of Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, Disraeli Gears by Cream, Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd, Surrealistic Pillow by the Jefferson Airplane, The Doors by the Doors, and that album with the banana on the cover by the Velvet Underground. A scan of Rolling Stone magazine’s “40 Essential Albums of 1967” also turns up Moby Grape, the Hollies, James Brown, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Arlo Guthrie, the Beach Boys, Tim Buckley, the Kinks—please, a sustained round of applause for the Kinks—Van Morrison, Dionne Warwick, Buffalo Springfield, the Moody Blues, Love, the 13th Floor Elevators, and (a previously undiscovered gap in my listening life) the Serpent Power. Thank God I wasn’t into drugs then. Look at what I would have missed.
Perfection—is it possible? Some look for it in a significant other, others in the newest sports car to hit the market. I look for it in A/V equipment, be it my display, speakers, or source components.