LATEST ADDITIONS

I go back a bit with Anthem. Years ago, with another publication, the Anthem AVM 20 and PVA 7 pre/pro and power amp combo were offered to me for review. I hadn't sought them out, but I knew the parent company Sonic Frontiers, and was very familiar with its other house brand, Paradigm loudspeakers, which I'd always liked and recommended to friends as Bose killers. What the hell, I thought.

Well, DirecTv's new high definition channels are here and, er, what the heck were they thinking? On TNTHD, a station that existed as channel 75 before the hoopla and is now also shown on 245, "Save the Last Dance" is being shown in 4x3 stretch mode. Sci-Fi's high def incarnation is showing Merlin, a movie that was only shot in 4x3 (but at least they're not stretching it). USA is showing "Law & Order: CI" on their high def station properly, but in a weird-aspect challenged pillow box (black bars on all four sides) on their regular definition channel. A&E's has some high def shows that they're cropping and then stretching to 16x9 judging by the look of it. Only TBS's high def baseball game looks good enough that it gives me nothing to complain about – except that fact that the Yankees are losing.

The 21st century is giving us numerous ways to listen to and control our music. Not only can we now distribute tunes around our homes with the touch of a button, but the wonder of metadata feedback actually lets us know what's playing as well.