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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Modern Family: The Complete Second Season
David Vaughn  |  Sep 23, 2011
The Pritchett clan has Jay (Ed O'Neill) as the patriarch who's married to his much younger Columbian wife Gloria (Sofia Vergara). Along for the ride is her old soul 11-year-old son, Manny (Rico Rodriguez), who is wise beyond his years but doesn't exactly mesh with his stepfather. Jay has two grown children from his first marriage, Claire (Julie Bowen) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), who have families of their own. Each family has their unique traits and when they all get together they form a very interesting and hilarious modern family.

I generally don't watch much TV, but Modern Family is a show that hooked me last year on Blu-ray and I couldn't wait to revisit the show on Blu-ray. This is by far the funniest show I've seen in years and the interactions between the characters are priceless. Whether it's Gloria's accent, Manny's phobias, or Jay's frustration with modern society, I'm laughing my rear-end off every episode. In fact, my wife and I laugh so much our kids have requested we don't watch the show if they are trying to sleep because we keep waking them up with our laughter!

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New ProductsHeadphone Amp/DAC Reviews
Totally Wireless: iHome's iW1 Portable AirPlay Speaker
Michael Berk  |  Sep 23, 2011

Been looking for a portable speaker system to go along with your iOS device? iHome's long-awaited iW1 battery-powered AirPlay speaker is finally here. The iW1 was one of the first announced AirPlay speakers - and while it was slow out of the gate, it's now set to be the first available truly wireless AirPlay device.

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This Week
Jamming For the Benefit of the Green Mountain State
Philip Ryan  |  Sep 22, 2011

What do good hippies do when their band's adopted home state is devastated by a natural disaster? They throw a benefit concert of course!

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Ask S&V
TV for HTPC
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 21, 2011
Is it be better to connect a plasma or LCD TV to an HTPC? I want to use it for watching movies, surfing the web, and playing games.

Steve Norene

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Music Reviews
Live at the Union County MusicFest
Dan Bracaglia  |  Sep 21, 2011

This past weekend, the Union County MusicFest brought an impressive roster of local and national acts to the Union County Fair.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Star Wars: The Complete Saga
David Vaughn  |  Sep 21, 2011
George Lucas had a dream of becoming a professional race car driver, but thankfully for the millions of Star Wars fans, he didn't perish in a horrific car accident after his high school graduation. Looking for a new passion, Lucas attended the film school at USC, won a scholarship to observe the making Francis Ford Coppola's Finian's Rainbow, and the pair eventually formed their own studio, American Zoetrope. Their first film was a feature-length version of Lucas's student film THX 1138, but Lucas eventually formed his own studio, Lucasfilm Ltd., and made American Graffiti, which went on to win one Golden Globe and garner five Oscar nominations.

Shortly thereafter, he began working on his next project that turned the small independent filmmaker from Northern California into a Hollywood legend. By luck (or fate) Lucas traded his guaranteed director's salary for a 40% share of the box office and all the merchandising rights (t-shirts, toys, etc.) in order to get Star Wars produced. The rest, as they say, is history.

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AV Receiver Reviews
Roundup: Super Soundbars
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Sep 21, 2011

For many years, the mantra in hi-fi design was "bigger is better." Your system didn't measure up unless you had a lofty stack of electronics and your speakers were tall enough to be called towers. Today, the reverse is true. It's a post-iPod world, where smaller is cooler. The iPod also advanced the notion that electronics don't have to be complicated; convenience is the new norm.

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Projector Reviews3D Projector Reviews
Sharp XV-Z17000 3D DLP Projector
Thomas J. Norton  |  Sep 21, 2011
2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $5,500 At A Glance: Bright, punchy images • Good (though not highly accurate) color • Middling black level and contrast

Many of us here at Home Theater are big on 3D, but a lot of front-projection fans have been holding off. Until recently, their only options in the $5,000 3D projector market were two identical JVC models (sold either through that company’s pro or consumer distribution channels).

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Limitless
Corey Gunnestad  |  Sep 21, 2011
It’s a long-held myth that the average human being can access only about 10 percent of their brain capacity at any given time. For me, it happens to be true, and that’s on a good day, but I digress. Now imagine if you could take a pill that would give you complete and total brain function. The possibilities would be, well, limitless.

This is a drug that’s so new it doesn’t even have a street name yet. This is life on fast forward, it’s David Fincher on acid, and it’s one hell of a ride. When the effect wears off, though, it’s straight back to Stupidville, and you’re royally screwed if your supply runs out. Bradley Cooper is the washed-up writer who happens upon the drug in a chance meeting, and his life takes some very drastic turns—for better and worse.

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Tech2
Netflix: Dumb as a Rock?
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Sep 20, 2011

Netflix announced this week that they were splitting their business, DVD/BD rentals on one side, streaming on the other. 

By all accounts, this seems like a perfectly crafted way to auger the company into the ground. Everyone hates it, customers are fleeing, there's no way it can work.

But. . . what if that's the point?

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