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TV ReviewsLCD TV Reviews
Test Report: LG 47LW5600 3D LCD HDTV
Al Griffin  |  Jul 13, 2011

At 3D theaters, you’re handed lightweight passive glasses that work in tandem with a polarizing filter positioned over the projector’s lens. When viewing at home with a 3D TV, you use bulky, battery-powered glasses with active shutter liquid-crystal lenses. Passive glasses in theaters are cheap and easily replaced. But at an average cost of $100 per pair, glasses used at home represent a sizable investment. Better to put them in a safe place — and keep ’em away from kids!

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Streaming Device ReviewsBlu-ray Player Reviews
Review: LG BD670 Blu-ray Disc Player
Al Griffin  |  Jul 13, 2011

Blu-ray players are becoming less a means to play discs than a gateway to online services — and to any media stored on computers, smartphones, and iDevices lying around your home. Take LG’s BD670. You might pick up this modest-looking machine thinking you’d use it to play Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D discs, along with DVDs and CDs.

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Test Report: Thiel Audio SCS4T Tower Speakers
Brent Butterworth  |  Jul 13, 2011

You already own a speaker that’s better in some ways than any ever reviewed in Sound+Vision — and you’ve owned it since you were born. What is it? 

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Ask S&V
Digitizing Cassettes
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 13, 2011
Can you recommend an audio system that will let me transfer my cassettes to CD or MP3? It would also need to have excellent sound quality and all the usual features; satellite radio would be great as well. I've checked with several retailers, but none seem to have what I need, especially the first item on my list, which is crucial.

Some have suggested I simply buy a tape-to-CD dubbing deck, but they are cumbersome and the last thing I want is a shelf of separate components. Right now, I don't have any audio components, not even a portable. Cost is also a factor (keeping it low as possible).

Ray Aviles

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Ask S&V
Matte-Screen TV
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 13, 2011
I'm looking to purchase a 46- to 55-inch TV. We have a window parallel to the TV area and behind our seating, which can cause some glare on a regular tube television. For this reason, we've been steered toward an LCD. Do you agree? Which LCDs are the best? We heard a lot of positives about Samsung.

Mark B

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Tech2
World’s Most Kick-Ass Home Theater
Brent Butterworth  |  Jul 13, 2011

An audio reviewer hears two lines over and over: “That never happened with any of the other samples” and “We created this [fill in the blank] because the products that are out there now are inadequate.” I heard the second line last week in a ramshackle Van Nuys, California industrial space bordered by a security gate and half-filled with piles of decades-old test gear. Unlikely as the setting seemed, its tenant actually delivered on his claims.

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Ask S&V
TV Headphone Listening
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 12, 2011
I own a Sony KDL-40V4100 LCD TV, and I need to use headphones when I watch TV at night, but the TV doesn't have a headphone output. How can I connect headphones to the TV?

Mel

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Home Theater Geeks Podcast
Podcast 72: Bob Heil
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 12, 2011
Legendary live-sound pioneer and microphone maker Bob Heil tells fascinating stories about his early days as a theater organist in St. Louis and his work as a live-sound engineer for groups such as the Grateful Dead, the Who, ZZ Top, Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, and many others in the 1960s and '70s. He also talks about his involvement in the early days of satellite TV and his home-theater business, which he shuttered with the advent of cheap home-theater-in-a-box systems.

Run Time: 58:36

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Other Tech
Tech Spotlight: SRS & The Future Of Surround
Rob Sabin  |  Jul 12, 2011
SRS & the Future of Surround

Like most Home Theater readers, I’ve known SRS Labs primarily as the company that does virtual surround sound and other audio solutions for HDTVs and soundbars—features largely dismissed by serious enthusiasts as lightweight hocus-pocus. So it was with some skepticism that, back in March, I rolled into the firm’s Santa Ana, California, headquarters for a private demo of some new surround sound technology.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
3D Channel Report Page 4
Kevin James  |  Jul 12, 2011

If you were around during the launch of high-def TV, you may remember an interesting phenomenon: People with HDTVs became oddly knowledgeable about esoteric topics, such as the migratory patterns of North American birds or the concept of Dark Matter.

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