LATEST ADDITIONS

Signals
Toys Make the Man
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Aug 14, 2012

Boy, do I feel like a dope. I was under the impression that the decades of conspicuous consumption were finished. What with all the Occupy protesters and unemployed French literature majors out there, I thought that anything ostentatious was unfashionable. Or, as French literature majors would say, passé.

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This Week
New Music for August 14, 2012: Kronikling the Kinks
Mark Smotroff  |  Aug 14, 2012

Kinks at the Beeb

Its been a great few years for us Kink Kroniklers. Ray Davies, of course, just played "Waterloo Sunset" to the packed house at the 2012 Olympics' closing ceremony.

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Speaker Buying Tips
Sound Choices: How to Pick the Best Speakers for You
Daniel Kumin  |  Aug 13, 2012

Virtually all music recordings and film soundtracks are intended by their creators to be heard over speakers. There’s good reason for that: Speakers yield the most natural tone and the most accurate spatial presentation — qualities that are difficult or impossible to match via any sort of headphone listening. But what kind of speakers should you buy?

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Soundbar Reviews
Budget Bars: Soundbars from Vizio, Samsung, LG, and Harman Kardon
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Aug 13, 2012
TVs are lonely. A beer-soaked barstool at 2 a.m. kind of lonely. They cry out for companionship, their tinny, bass-less voices difficult to hear, even harder to enjoy. When they were young, they held so much promise: high definition, good times, low cost. How quickly came the onset of disappointment?
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Vote
How Many Remotes Do You Have On Your Coffee Table?
Rob Sabin  |  Aug 13, 2012
One of the greatest put-offs for anyone trying to watch television or play a home theater system, especially non-technical family members, is figuring out how to use it. Even a simple system that just utilizes the TV speakers is likely to require at least three remotes: one for the cable box, one for the Blu-ray or DVD player, one for the TV. You've got to juggle remotes, cycling through inputs with one, adjusting channels or changing tracks with another, then picking the first one back up to adjust volume...it's a miracle some of us even bother. Universal remotes are supposed to solve that problem for day to day use, but don't always do everything we need them to do, either by insufficient design or poor programming. The result is a stack of factory remotes kept close at hand.

Today's poll question, then, is this: how many active remotes do you currently have on your coffee table that you end up having to pick up at least once a week?

How Many Remotes Do You Have On Your Coffee Table?
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
War Horse
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 13, 2012
Picture
Sound
Extras
Interactivity
When I was a wee lad, I was taken to a movie about a boy and his dog. It was a Lassie movie, I believe, although I was too young for that to mean anything. According to my mother, however, I cried so hard they could hear me in the back of the balcony. (All theaters had balconies in olden times.)
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Headphone Reviews
Review: Phiaton PS210 BTNC Headphones
Brent Butterworth  |  Aug 12, 2012

Gadget freaks can drive themselves crazy waiting for the perfect product. Whether it's a smartphone, an A/V receiver, or a laptop, it seems there's always at least one missing feature that you really, really need.

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Out Of The Blu
Blue Like Jazz, Titanic: 100 Years in 3D, Stallone 3-Film Collection
Chris Chiarella  |  Aug 11, 2012
Take a gander at a quirky, spiritual indie, a 3D study of the legendary doomed luxury liner, and our own private film festival to put us in the mood for Expendables 2.
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Editor's Eye
Why Don't They Love Us?
Rob Sabin  |  Aug 10, 2012
Regular readers of Home Theater have heard me espouse, maybe once or twice too often, my belief in a broad definition of what makes a home theater. At the risk of repeating myself, perhaps verbatim, it’s not about how many speakers you have, how expensive your electronics are, how big your screen is, or whether you own a front-projection system.

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Surround Sound System ReviewsBookshelf Speaker Reviews
KEF R300 Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 10, 2012

Performance
Build Quality
Value
Price: $6,800 At A Glance: Three-way with coaxial midrange/tweeter • Sub with dual side-firing drivers • Laser-like focus and well rounded

Kent, in the south of England, was best known for hop farming when Raymond Cooke left Wharfedale and founded KEF in 1961. The company was named after the industrial site on which it was founded: Kent Engineering & Foundry. KEF’s numerous distinguished alumni include Laurie Fincham, who now develops next-generation audio technologies for THX, and Andrew Jones, who designs world-beating loudspeakers at a variety of price points for Pioneer and TAD. KEF has earned a reputation for making both great speaker systems and great speaker drivers, some of which were instrumental in the legendary BBC-designed LS3/5A, which KEF and other manufacturers have marketed in various forms. Roving through a New York cocktail party celebrating KEF’s 50th anniversary last year, hobnobbing with the audio elite, I found that the drive units inspired as much nostalgia as the speakers in which they were used. (To read about KEF’s history in more detail—and in a handsome coffee-table book, no less—see KEF: 50 Years of Innovation in Sound by Ken Kessler and Dr. Andrew Watson.)

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