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CES 2023New Products
LG Goes Wireless with Stunning 97” OLED
SV Staff  |  Jan 04, 2023  |  0 comments
LG made a splash this morning with its pre-show announcement of a stunning 97-inch OLED TV. As beautiful and minimalist as the display is, connectivity is the story here. Instead of delivering audio and video via HDMI, the TV includes the Zero Connect wireless transmitter that sends audio and video to the TV wirelessly in real-time at up to 4K 120Hz.
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CES 2023
Roku to Release Its Own Roku-Branded TVs
Barb Gonzalez  |  Jan 04, 2023  |  0 comments
On the eve of 2023 CES, Roku announced plans to expand its A/V hardware offerings to include for the first time Roku-branded TVs.
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CES 2023New Products
JVC Ups Frame Rate, Boosts Brightness on New 4K Projector
Bob Ankosko  |  Jan 04, 2023  |  0 comments
JVC will kick off 2023 CES with a new projector targeting gamers looking for an edge and home theater enthusiasts with rooms subject to ambient light.
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CES 2023Audio Video NewsNew Products
2023 CES Preview
Bob Ankosko  |  Jan 03, 2023  |  0 comments
The 2023 edition of CES opens its doors in Las Vegas on Thursday, January 5, making a full return to the in-person format upon which the world’s largest technology show was built over more than half a century. Here’s a quick preview of a few A/V products slated for introduction at 2023 CES.
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Top Picks
2022 Top Picks of the Year
Mark Henninger  |  Jan 03, 2023  |  30 comments
We live in a remarkable era where home entertainment delivers experiences with convenience and quality that was the stuff of science fiction not long ago. The past year yielded a lot of interesting new gear, including the first quantum-dot OLED TVs from Samsung and Sony. It's a year where Sony updated its 4K home theater projector lineup and went all-in with laser light sources. Meanwhile, Epson raised the bar on what to expect from an ultra-short-throw (UST) projector with the wall-hugging LS800, while LG made its popular OLEDs bigger and brighter than ever.
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Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction
Chris Chiarella  |  Dec 31, 2022  |  0 comments
Reservoir Dogs, 99 mins.
Picture
Sound
Extras
Pulp Fiction, 155 mins.
Picture
Sound
Extras
When an immensely talented young screenwriter with something to prove fights to make his movie his way—and wins—every once in a while, we get a Reservoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino's auspicious directorial debut is rough and raw and all the better for it, the story of a heist gone wrong and the rat in the criminals' midst, with copious amounts of blood spilling and bodies piling up as plans spin wildly out of control.
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Spatial Audio File
Atmos Lang Syne: The Ten Best Immersive Audio Tracks of 2022
Mike Mettler  |  Dec 30, 2022  |  2 comments

Where did all the time go? Time, flowing like a river. Time is on my side (yes it is). Time to play B-sides. Are you eye-rolling at all my lyrically borrowed time comments yet? Anyway, it’s high time to take stock of what we’ve heard and what we’ve learned this past calendar year, seeing how a) time flies, and how b) time is indeed all around us—just like the best Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos mixes are, in fact.

With all this time sensitivity in mind, it seems to be the exact right time (last one, I promise) to comprise my Top Ten list of the best immersive audio tracks of this past year. As always, I’ve thoroughly spec’ed and checked all of the tracks I’ve selected here by way of my personal deep-dive listening sessions on both my home system and headphones alike. You’ll find each and every one of them amidst the cavalcade of Made for Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos tracks within the ever-expanding immersive audio libraries on Apple Music Unlimited, Amazon Music, and Tidal.

Enough with all the time-wasting—here are my choices for the ten best, thoroughly immersive audio tracks of 2022, which are, in reverse order from 10 to 1. . .

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Bookshelf Speaker Reviews
Three for Three: KLH Model Three Review
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 29, 2022  |  0 comments

Performance
Build Quality
Value
PRICE $1800/pair

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Tight, crisp bass
Detailed, dynamic sound
Price
Minus
Looks suffer with grilles removed
Needs a subwoofer for bass-heavy films
Vintage style might not appeal to all

THE VERDICT
It might not be at its best in a large room without a subwoofer or two, but the dynamic, open, and detailed sound of the KLH Model 3s can otherwise equal or exceed the performance of many far more expensive loudspeakers.

In the early 1950s Edgar Villchur, Henry Kloss, Malcolm S. Low, and Josef Anton Hofmann founded the Acoustic Research and Development Corporation. Of the four founders, Henry Kloss may be the name best recognized by audiophiles with a bit of mileage on their wheels. Kloss later left AR (along with Low and Hoffman) and founded KLH. Kloss later founded two other loudspeaker companies, Advent and Cambridge Audio.

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SmartStream
2022: A Year of Streaming Commercials, Big Mergers, and Faster Players
Barb Gonzalez  |  Dec 28, 2022  |  1 comments
As we look back at streaming in 2022, there have been few innovative new services or products. Instead, streaming is showing signs of its maturity. Both streaming providers and streaming player manufacturers are playing catch-up with the competition.
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TV Reviews
Samsung 98" QN100B Neo QLED 4K TV Review
Mark Henninger  |  Dec 23, 2022  |  12 comments

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $40,000

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Incredible brightness
Cutting-edge picture quality
Lays flat on wall
Minus
No Dolby Vision
Extremely expensive

THE VERDICT
A 4K tour-de-force from Samsung, the QN100B loves to show you what's missing from less capable TVs.

Samsung's over-the-top 98-inch Neo QLED showcases what's possible when a TV has the horsepower needed to handle HDR properly. What's mind-blowing is in HDR mode, its measured brightness can exceed 1000 nits, full-screen. Few TVs of any size can achieve this level of brightness, and the QN100B does it while preserving extremely high contrast and offering a wide color gamut. The resulting picture quality is thought-provoking, even at this price point, because it begs the question of what to prioritize for the ultimate home viewing experience: Size or HDR capability.

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