LATEST ADDITIONS

Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 16, 2012

Audio Performance
Video Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $1,299 At A Glance: Advanced cooling allows for small chassis • Auto setup but no room correction • A true music lover’s receiver

Some of the best-sounding audio/video receivers come from companies that have earned a “low end of the high end” reputation in the two-channel sphere. And, yes, in case you were wondering, that’s a good thing. These receiver brands offer audiophile performance at what I would call moderate prices—although the owner of doghouse monoblocks would consider them cheap, while penny pinchers at the other end of the spectrum would consider them sky high. Among others, I’m referring to Arcam, Rotel, NAD—and Cambridge Audio, which just revamped its AVR line to include three new models.

Steve Guttenberg  |  Aug 16, 2012
RCA's CT-100 may not have been the first consumer color TV in the U.S., Westinghouse's set beat it by a few weeks, but that model didn't sell in significant numbers. Both sets were on the market less than 100 days after the Federal Communications Commission finalized its standards for broadcasting color television.

Michael Berk  |  Aug 15, 2012

Last week we got a chance to check out the new stuff Klipsch has up its sleeve for Fall 2012, and while we'll have lots more to tell you about soon, the first product to get an official announcement is a refreshed version of the company's well-regarded affordable in-ear 'phone, the Klipsch Image S4. The lineup remains the same as before, with updates to the basic Image S4 ($79.99), as well as the Android-friendly S4A and the iOS-remote sporting S4i (both $99.99)

Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 15, 2012
Audio Performance
Video Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $600 At A Glance: Denon entry-level AVR • Boston Acoustics sat/sub set • Acceptable performance

Eliminating nonessentials sounds easier than it is. A year ago, I went through my clothes and filled six shopping bags with shirts and pants I knew I’d never wear again. Just a month ago, I repeated the exercise and darn if I didn’t fill another bag. If I’d exerted myself, I could have filled two. So I felt a certain respect as I cracked open the Denon DHT-1513BA carton and moved its contents to my rack and speaker stands—because I knew this system’s designers had made some tough decisions. They’re more hardheaded than a guy who decides to let his HD DVD promotional T-shirt survive another year.

Brent Butterworth  |  Aug 14, 2012

In the unlikely event I ever again decide to pick a fight, it’ll be with someone who looks weaker than me. Obviously, Audio-Technica has a lot more guts than I do.

Josef Krebs  |  Aug 14, 2012

Jaws

The arrival of a giant man-eating great white shark on the shores of a New England beach resort in 1975 and its cruise out of the universal unconsciousness and through the international zeitgeist from was a historical and game-changing event.

David Vaughn  |  Aug 14, 2012
Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $150 At A Glance: Fast loading of Blu-ray Discs • 802.11n Wi-Fi • Bevy of streaming options • No additional memory needed for BD-Live

The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) requires mutual fund companies to tell investors that a fund’s past performance does not necessarily predict future results—and the same could be said of Blu-ray players. In the case of LG, I’ve had the opportunity to audition its top-of-the-line offering for each of the past four years. In 2009, the company’s BD390 (Home Theater, January 2010) was the fastest player I’d ever used, and in July 2010, I awarded its BD590 a Top Pick because of its solid Blu-ray performance and plethora of streaming services. Unfortunately, in 2011 LG dropped the ball with the BD690 (Home Theater, September 2011) with faulty firmware releases and buggy disc playback.

Fred Kaplan  |  Aug 14, 2012
Picture
Sound
Extras
Interactivity
There are few more enduring classics of American theater than Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, an over-the-top, sweaty steam bath of a play that straddles Greek tragedy and Gothic camp yet still commands attention, even astonishes, 65 years after its creation. The show ran on Broadway for two years; the film adaptation was shot two years after that; both were directed by Elia Kazan and starred Marlon Brando. This was only Brando’s second film. He was 27 years old. And despite all the subsequent parodies of his sultry pout and his mumblecore rage (“Stella! Stel-l-l-laaa!”), he was a blazing-hot actor. It’s a natural heat that he radiates, and he modulates it seamlessly, from simmer to boil and all shades in between. Brando’s amazing to watch: The acting is all there on the surface, yet he’s so immersed in his character, it seems completely uncontrived. You see the moves and attitude that countless actors later copied, but none of them ever matched this. (That said, his performance in Kazan’s On the Waterfront three years later was even better, subtler.)
John Sciacca  |  Aug 14, 2012

My family recently visited the Magic Kingdom park at Disney World in Orlando. One attraction we checked out was “Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress,” a revolving theater that follows a “typical” family through the decades, starting around the 1920s and winding forward to the future.

Gary Dell'Abate  |  Aug 14, 2012

I live in Connecticut, just about 30 miles from my daily gig in New York City. That technically makes me a New Englander. I mention this because New England winters can be brutal. (I know it’s still late summer, but bear with me. The weather will change soon enough.) For a guy like me who leaves for work at 4:30 a.m., early-morning temperatures can sometimes be in the single digits.

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