LATEST ADDITIONS

Cool new gear: JVC’s smart HDTV, a Bluetooth receiver for audiophiles, and a novel—uh, make that unusual—iPhone/Pod sound/security system, and more.

Above the streets of Hollywood, at the top of the swanky W Hotel, Panasonic held a party to show off their upcoming 4K tablet.

That’s right, a tablet with 4K resolution.

What I wasn’t expecting is that it’s huge. I guess it’s still technically a tablet with a 20-inch 15:10 screen, but wow.

They also had their new 4K LCD. Fellow S&Ver Lauren Dragan and I headed to Hollywood and Vine to check it out (that’s where the hotel is, not just some random location we wandered by).

PRICE $700

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Audiophile sound quality
Outstanding build quality
Successful YPAO room correction
Minus
Pedestrian power output
Suboptimal video processing
Crowded, hard-to-use remote

THE VERDICT
A $700 receiver that puts the audio first.

The AVR is the Grand Central Station of our home entertainment systems. Everything runs into one box from our source components and then out to our speakers and displays for audio and video. In the process, we hope the video signal moves through the AVR without being harmed and that the amplifiers in the receiver mate well with our speakers, providing them plenty of juice without any distortion or clipping.

White Heat is one of the greatest gangster movies ever made. It’s a true film noir, a Freudian character study, and a pioneering police procedural, with slick suspense, a dry wit, and a deep-cutting (but not bloody) cruelty that’s still jarring today. The script is by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, who later wrote a few seasons of the Charlie’s Angels TV show, which at its best pulled off a warmed-over, softly satirical simulacrum of those traits.