Geoffrey Morrison

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Tech2
Some tips and tricks for the ultimate of sports-watching marathons
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jun 20, 2013

I watch one sporting event each year (OK, two if you count the sportball game between the commercials of the "Superbowl"). This one event takes place in a tiny village in western France. An epic battle of men and machines, of endurance and stamina, of danger and skill, fought against weather, distance, and time.

I of course speak of le mythique, le légendaire, le grand Circuit de la Sarthe et les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans.

Or simply,

Le Mans

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Song From My SoundtrackTech2
Song from My Soundtrack: Dominic Baker and The Last Night of the Proms
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Oct 02, 2013
Dominic Baker is the Audio Systems Business Director at Cambridge Audio. He was previously the Chief Acoustics Engineer at Focal JM Lab, and the Acoustic Development Engineer at Tannoy. This is a Song (ok, musical event) from his Soundtrack.
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Tech2
Songs to Buy By
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Nov 23, 2012

I use my iPod to deal with crowds. If you’re like me, sometimes you just like cranking up some tunes to push the world out to more acceptable distance. This is especially true trying to shop during the holiday season.

So for the always-hectic Black Friday weekend, I figured I’d put together a few songs that are, shall we say, not sticky-sweet holiday shopping tunes. Drown out that Bing, Nat, and Perry, and power through the season with these.

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Other Source Component Reviews
SONICblue ReplayTV RTV4000 PVR
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jun 11, 2002  |  Published: Jun 12, 2002
�ReplayTV goes online.

At first glance, this appears to be yet another review of yet another PVR. Sure, this PVR looks a little cooler and seems a bit newer, but take a closer look at the back panel. There amongst all of the inputs you'd expect to see is an Ethernet connection. ReplayTV and new owner SONICblue have pushed the PVR to the next level: the Internet.

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Sony 70-inch LCD
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jan 08, 2007
Sony revealed the KDL-70XBR3. It’s 1080p, has LED backlighting, and has what Sony calls “x.v. Color.” This means it is capable of the xvYCC color space, a first. To let you take advantage of that, Sony also released four new HD video cameras that are also xvYCC capable. The TV will be available in February at the low, low bargain price of $33,000.
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Blu-ray Player Reviews
Sony BDP-S300, Samsung BD-P1200, and Panasonic DMP-BD10A Blu-ray Players
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Nov 05, 2007  |  Published: Oct 05, 2007
3 More BD 4 U: Three second-gen Blu-ray players.

Hot on the heels of the first, and almost universally lame, generation of Blu-ray players, here's generation II. In the case of two of these players, the big news is a substantial reduction in price. Both are less than half of their predecessors. In the case of the other, the news is its fancy HQV processing, the same that's found in the excellent Toshiba HD-XA2. I have to admit, I get a certain amount of perverse amusement mentioning HD DVD in a Blu-ray review (and vice-versa).

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Other Source Component Reviews
Sony DVP-NS755V Progressive-Scan DVD/SACD Player
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Dec 19, 2002  |  Published: Dec 20, 2002
Upping the ante.

Thanks to consumer interest, competition, and their fundamental coolness, high-resolution audio players are falling in price to a point where almost everyone can afford them. Sony's DVP-NS755V, for example, is only $250, and it features SACD capability and progressive scanning. A year ago, this player's predecessor excited us as an inexpensive progressive-scan DVD player. Now Sony ups the ante by adding SACD and keeping the price the same.

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Sony Grand Wega KF-50XBR800 LCD HD Monitor
Geoffrey Morrison  |  May 12, 2003  |  Published: May 13, 2003
Funny name; serious TV.

Sony insists that I pronounce this TV's name correctly: Wega (Vay-guh). I think Wegg-ah is so much more amusing. Perhaps Wee-ga. If only Sony had gone all out and put an "e" at the end of Grand. I can hear the annoyance of salespeople everywhere as customers come in looking for one of them thar Grand-ee Wee-gas. It's too bad that the rest of the model nomenclature is hard to poke fun at. After all, how funny is KF-50XBR800? KF-50Exburrerr… never mind. Names aside, the TV itself is very hard to make fun of. Mostly.

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Sony KDS-60A2000 SXRD HDTV
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Oct 24, 2006  |  Published: Oct 25, 2006
Save some money; get a 1080p input.

I've been getting a lot of letters asking when there will be cheaper 1080p displays. Well, this 60-inch model is $300 cheaper than the last 50-inch Sony 1080p RPTV we reviewed. The 50-inch model in the new A2000 line is a full $900 cheaper. This 60-inch is a full 26 percent cheaper than the last 60-inch SXRD we reviewed. Sure, $3,699 is still a chunk of change, but it's a little bit more palatable chunk.

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Sony KDS-R60XBR1 LCOS HDTV
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Nov 08, 2005  |  Published: Nov 09, 2005
I just can't resist poking fun at Sony's seemingly unending supply of strange and unpronounceable nomenclature. It has no direct bearing on a product, per se, but keeping track of all of the acronyms, abbreviations, and manufactured words takes up a sizable chunk of the already overtaxed (and undersized) mind of a reviewer. Regardless, Sony wasn't content just using the name LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) to describe their version of the technology. They instead call it SXRD (sex-erd?), or Silicon X-tal Reflective Display. Believe it or not, the "X-tal" is short for crystal. I'm not saying that JVC's name for their version of LCOS is any better: D-ILA. (This is an even less logical abbreviation: Direct-drive Image Light Amplifier? It doesn't amplify anything.) Each company takes pains to describe how different their version of the technology is from everybody else's. To be fair, this is true. Each of the two companies' core design and manufacturing are different. When it comes down to it, though, the proof is in the pudding, or, in this case, the RPTV.
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