The Big Picture

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The Big Picture
Press Conference Hell
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 02, 2008  |  1 comments

Dang! Tom Norton stole my thunder by blogging about the upcoming CEDIA Expo just one day before I was going to. Oh well, I can still add my two cents before I head off to Denver for the annual confab dedicated to custom consumer-electronics installation.

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The Big Picture
Projection Problems
Scott Wilkinson  |  Mar 02, 2008  |  10 comments

It seems our readership extends far beyond the USA. Here's a question from Helcio in Brazil:

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The Big Picture
Rango Fandango
Scott Wilkinson  |  Mar 15, 2011  |  1 comments
I just saw Rango, the new animated western populated by anthropomorphic animals and starring the inimitable Johnny Depp voicing the title character, and I thought it was a real hoot. Not only were the voice characterizations superb, but it has some of the best animation I've seen to date—and it's not even 3D!
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RealD at SID 2011
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 20, 2011  |  1 comments
In addition to the news that RealD has partnered with Samsung to make so-called active/passive 3D flat panels, the company had some other interesting announcements and demos at the SID conference this week. For example, even though RealD is known mostly for passive-polarized 3D glasses, it has also developed universal active-shutter glasses that work with any manufacturer's active 3DTV.
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Receiver or Separates?
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 22, 2008  |  17 comments

Colin Robertson, a thoughtful commentator on many <I>UAV</I> blogs, is facing the age-old question as he contemplates upgrading from 2-channel to surround sound:

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The Big Picture
Red Epic 5K Camcorder
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 14, 2011  |  1 comments
One of the biggest digital-camcorder announcements at NAB is Red Digital Cinema's new Epic camera with 5K (5120x2700) resolution. Why 5K? Because it's one better than 4K? Well, sort of. Having 5K resolution allows content creators to crop or downscale to 4K with better-looking results.
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The Big Picture
Remain CALM
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 07, 2010  |  3 comments
Are you bothered by TV commercials that seem louder than the program in which they are embedded? If so, you're not alone—the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has received millions of consumer complaints about this, and in a rare moment of bipartisanship, the US House of Representatives passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act last Thursday, following the Senate's unanimous passage in October. According to the reports I've read, this legislation empowers the FCC to require broadcasters to adopt industry technology—which Dolby has been working on for the last decade—that modulates sound levels and prevents overly loud commercials within one year.
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Requiem for a Heavyweight
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 16, 2008  |  1 comments

You probably don't recognize the name Mel Harris, who passed away at the age of 65 on September 6, 2008. But you most certainly know the results of his work in the broadcasting and entertainment industry. Let me tell you a bit about the impact he had on TV and movie viewers everywhere...

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Riddle Me This
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 14, 2008  |  22 comments

In this blog a couple of months ago, I asked readers to vote on whether you wanted more audio reviews with fewer objective measurements or fewer reviews with more measurements, a choice I had to make in the face of budgetary constraints. Your input was very helpful, so now, I have another question for you...

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Samsung 4K 3D & Other Flat Panels
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 19, 2011  |  1 comments
Aside from the RealD passive/active 3D flat panels, Samsung had some other great demos in its booth at SID DisplayWeek. One of the most interesting was a 70-inch, 240Hz, 4K (3840x2160) 3D panel that uses active-shutter glasses. The custom footage of a woman hanging out at an oval house in the woods looked gorgeous, though all the motion was very slow, and I did see a few artifacts in the stairs during one pan.
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Samsung Reviewers' Workshop
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 23, 2011  |  0 comments
Last Thursday, Samsung held a day-long workshop for TV reviewers on the campus of DreamWorks Animation in Glendale, California. About 25 journalists assembled in the studio's motion-capture stage, which is painted the same Munsell gray as our own video-testing lab and ringed with cameras to capture the motion of actors wearing bodysuits with reflective dots all over them. Fortunately, we were not asked to wear such suits!
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Samsung/RealD Active/Passive 3D Flat Panels
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 19, 2011  |  2 comments
This week, the Society for Information Display (SID) is holding its annual DisplayWeek confab at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the future of display technology is front and center. Among the biggest announcements at the show was a partnership between Samsung and RealD to develop a new type of 3D flat panel that uses passive glasses but does not cut the vertical resolution in half like other passive-3D flat-panel technologies.
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Scott Hosts The Tech Guy Radio Show
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 30, 2012  |  8 comments
I just got back from Petaluma, California, where I was honored and privileged—not to mention greatly pleased—to fill in for Leo Laporte, hosting his nationally syndicated call-in radio show, The Tech Guy, while he was attending the Northern Lights photography festival in Norway. On Saturday, I was joined in the studio by David Vaughn, hardware and movie reviewer for HomeTheater.com and Home Theater magazine, and we spent a delightful three hours answering listener questions and conversing with the lively chat room during commercial and news breaks.
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Scott on The Tech Buzz
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 09, 2011  |  0 comments

In addition to my own Home Theater Geeks podcast, I'm an occassional guest on Thirsty Thursday Tech, a podcast with Stephen Heywood and Slick from The Tech Buzz. Check it out!

Run time: 1:00:35

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The Big Picture
Scott Wilkinson Hosts The Tech Guy Radio Show
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 12, 2011  |  6 comments
Last weekend, I had the honor and privilege—not to mention the great pleasure—of guest hosting Leo Laporte's nationally syndicated radio show, The Tech Guy, while Leo was attending a conference called Le Web in Paris, France, and hobnobbing with the likes of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. I answered call-in questions about home theater for three hours on Saturday and again on Sunday for a listening audience of around a million! I also had a couple of very interesting guests on the show, including Oscar- and Emmy-winning composer Michael Giacchino, whose credits include Lost, Alias, Up, Star Trek, and Super 8 among many others, and film-restoration expert Grover Crisp, who's currently working on Lawrence of Arabia for theatrical and Blu-ray release.

Not only that, I answered more questions from the chat room during the commercial and news breaks, and it was all captured on high-quality video by the incredibly talented crew of TWiT, Leo's podcast network. The video of both days is available right here, so please enjoy this double dose of home theater geeky goodness!

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