The Big Picture

I know, I know—I'm a little late to the party. I just saw Despicable Me, even though it's been in theaters for three weeks. I rarely see a movie on its opening weekend—I really hate waiting in line only to get a lousy seat right in front of a fidgety kid—but I don't normally wait this long for such a hyped 3D title. So how was it?

I just saw <I>Shrek 4D The Final Chapter Forever After...whatever</I> in Imax 3D. (I really wish DreamWorks had settled on one name for its marketing campaign!) I went because I want to see as much 3D as possible, but after reading several lukewarm reviews, I was prepared to be unimpressed, at least with the story.

<I>For the average consumer who takes a new LCD or plasma TV out of the box, what is the best way to set it up for home use? What is the name of the DVD used for adjusting and fine tuning?

On Sunday, March 7, the 2010 Academy Awards were handed out at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, California, and like 41.3 million other viewers around the world (including 3.1 million New York Cablevision subscribers who almost didn't get to see it due to a dispute with ABC), my wife and I watched the spectacle live as it unfolded only a few miles from our house. Well, okay, we didn't watch it live, exactly&#151;we waited a couple of hours so we could skip through the commercials and acceptance speeches thanks to TiVo. So what I'd like to know from you is...

It's been a bad week for Panasonic. A report of suddenly rising black levels in its 2008 and '09 plasmas gained some serious traction throughout the A/V community over the past few days, even though it's been brewing since July 31, 2009, when AVS Forum member Orta (who I assume is male) <A href="http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1167339">posted that his TC-P50G10 doubled its black level literally overnight, with measurements to prove it</A>. As you might imagine, this led to a flurry of concern, to which Panasonic finally responded with this official statement:

Last Sunday, my wife and I joined 25.8 million of our closest friends to watch the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards on CBS. So why am I writing about it here? Because this is <I>Ultimate AV</I>, and the Grammys are all about the best in audio <I>and</I> video. The audio part is obvious&#151;this is "music's biggest night" honoring the best recording artists, and all the performances are live, a technological tour de force in its own right. But the show is no less dedicated to video, both on stage and in the home.