A mirror TV to spice up your kitchen, sweet sunburst speakers that echo an iconic guitar (can you guess which one?), a Bluetooth—yes, Bluetooth—turntable, a soundbar for Connoisseurs, and more.
You’ve got the gear, but when it comes time to show it off, can you walk the walk? There are many approaches to displaying or hiding your home theater equipment and a multitude of furniture, mount, and accessory products out there. Here are just a few that, we think, put their own unique spin on your personal space.
2015 is shaping up to be the Year of the Ultra HD as the balance begins to shift from everyday HDTVs to 4K/Ultra HDTVs with their higher-than-HD 3840x2160 pixel count. The latest projections from the Consumer Electronics Association show UHD shipments growing exponentially over the next few years, jumping from 1.3 million sets in 2014 to 4 million this year and tripling again to 13 million in 2017. Before long, UHD will become as commonplace as HD.
Sony this week announced pricing and availability of two new budget AV receivers and four soundbars, including the high-end HT-ST9 that will list for $1,500 when it hits stores in July.
I tried to imagine the S9W at home but quickly realized my rustic family room is no match for its art-gallery vibe. Although I have to admit, when I first laid eyes on its magnificent 82-inch Ultra HD screen with its cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio, I wondered why it was perched, just shy of teetering, on a compact refrigerator. Refreshments at hand, perhaps? No, that wasn’t it. (Not even close, knucklehead.)
The most stylish DAC/amplifier you'll ever see, an AV cabinet made of reclaimed teak from a sunken naval vessel, another Atmos-enabled speaker, and more.
GoldenEar's latest speaker, a wireless video transmission system, Panasonic's THX-certified 65-inch Ultra HDTV with full array LED backlighting, and more.
Canada’s Classé built its first amplifier way back in 1980 and has been perfecting the art ever since, adding preamp/processors and other components along the way. In 2001, the company became a part of the vaunted B&W Group—a meeting of minds that made perfect sense given their shared dedication to uncompromised audio fidelity and design elegance. The Classé story continues with the introduction of the Sigma Series, which includes the $5,000 7.1-channel Sigma SSP surround preamp/processor and the companion AMP5 power amp, also $5,000. (As it turns out, naming products is not one of the company’s strong suits, but I digress.)
LG made headlines this past summer with the announcement that its 55-inch OLED TV would sell for $3,500. Not cheap, but a whopping 75 percent less than what its predecessor sold for. Then along came the 65EC9700, a TV capable of delivering lush OLED images in 4K resolution that sells for $10,000. LG made headlines again—this time for making television’s holy grail a reality. We spoke with Tim Alessi, director of new product development, for the story behind this inspiring 65-inch hybrid.
Audiophiles have long been enamored with the lifelike presentation of electrostatic speakers but vexed with having to sit precisely in the sweet spot to enjoy the glorious sound. Canada’s Muraudio aims to change that with the “world’s first omnidirectional electrostatic speaker,” the Domain Omni ESL, perfected over more than a decade by company founder and chief technology officer, Murray Harman.
Just what the world needs—another Bluetooth speaker. Must be a couple thousand of them on the market by now, and from what we can tell, a good many of ’em pretty much, well, suck. But a few things about the Core caught our eye. For starters, it costs $599—pret-ty darn steep in a market dominated by sub-$100 “wireless wonders”—and it’s designed by Mass Fidelity, a Canadian startup that impressed us with its Relay Bluetooth receiver (Sound & Vision, February/March 2014).