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A/V Veteran
The Cinerama Dome: Take 2
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 20, 2021
Ken Pohlmann got the jump on me in his blog this week, but the recent permanent (?) closing of the Cinerama Dome theater in Hollywood is a significant event. Perhaps I can add a slightly different perspective.

When I lived in LA from 2000 to 2015 the Arclight theater in Hollywood was one of my go-to haunts whenever I wanted to see a top-drawer movie release in a premier theater. The Cinerama Dome was the main attraction in this multiplex, but the other Arclight screens were also impressive...

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Devil Wears Prada—Blu-ray
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 28, 2006  |  Published: Dec 29, 2006

This witty take on the fashion industry, with its dedicated, nearly obsessed careerists, should appeal to anyone who can get over the idea that it's just a chick flick. In fact, there are parallels here to any industry that demands total dedication. When I first saw the scenes of the big annual fashion gathering in Paris, I thought "CES!" OK, Vegas isn't Paris (not even at the Paris), and CES parties don't have as many gorgeous, skinny women. But you get the idea.

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A/V Veteran
The Evolution of Audio: A Brief History
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 02, 2022
Change is a constant in the audio-video world, but never more so than in the changing formats that constantly roil our hobby. Every twenty to thirty years, and sometimes more often, an old format we thought would last forever bites the dust, only to be replaced by a shiny new toy. Here's a brief history...
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CES 2011
The Fat Lady SIngs
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 08, 2011  |  Published: Jan 09, 2011
I heard the Fat Lady Sing, and she was in fine voice. The Fat Lady is a floor-stander from Morel of Israel, where the name apparently is politically incorrect. I have to admit that it's descriptive of the cabinet, which is designed to sing along with the speaker and stop short of coloring the sound.
A/V Veteran
The Friendly Skies
Thomas J. Norton  |  Sep 30, 2006  |  Published: Oct 01, 2006

I leave tomorrow for a week in Japan, courtesy of Sharp. We will, of course, visit Sharp factories, but another main event on the trip is CEATAC, the annual "Japanese CES." It actually isn't anywhere near as big as CES, but it is a show with a unique flavor all its own. And while I'm not sure we'll see anything we didn't see at the recent CEDIA Expo, you never know. Products are often introduced in Japan before they're exported overseas.

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CEDIA 2017
The Great Wall of Bang & Olufsen
Thomas J. Norton  |  Sep 09, 2017
I’m always on the lookout for new ways to use room treatments. With its Beosound Shape, Bang & Olufsen combines room absorption with on-wall speakers in a geometric shape that produces an optical illusion that it’s protruding from the wall more than it actually is...
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A/V Veteran
The Heat is Off: AC Infinity's Aircom T8 Electronics Fan System
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jun 15, 2021
Heat is the enemy of electronics, including all of that audio gear crammed into your A/V cabinet. In the early days of electronic entertainment, vacuum tubes (or as our Brit friends call them, valves) were the thing—the only thing. As one of my teachers once explained, the key to vacuum tubes was the little man with a switch inside. But he must have been sweaty, as a tube device could serve well as a space heater.

Back in the day our electronic entertainment consisted of little more than a radio. The family gave no thought to what was inside until one of the tubes failed, prompting a visit to the local drug store with its tube tester and ready supply of replacements.

Then came hi-fi and an interesting thing happened. Because of the heat issue, relegated largely to the output stages of an amplifier, separates were born. The separate preamp driving an amp on a separate chassis was a popular way to go.

The divide, between separates and the integrated amplifier (or perhaps AVR), still exists today in both the 2-channel and home theater worlds. Long forgotten is its genesis, since with solid state electronics heat is no longer an issue.

Or is it?...

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A/V Veteran
The Human Visual System: Digital Cinema
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 22, 2022
The human visual system is a lot more complicated than we might imagine. A recent paper published in the journal Science Advances (January 12, 2022), Illusion of visual stability through active perceptual serial dependence, by researchers Mauro Manassi (University of Aberdeen, UK) and David Whitney (UC Berkeley), takes this idea a step further. I can't pretend to have slogged through the bulk of this article. The text is dense with the sort of science-speak common to experts in their field of expertise but nearly incomprehensible to the layman (a worldwide issue over the past two years, but I digress!)
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CES 2016
The LG Signature OLED Makes an Impression
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 07, 2016
A photo shot with a point and shoot camera, viewed on your computer monitor can't really convey how fine this LG Signature 77-inch flat screen OLED looks in the flesh, but this shot from a short NASA video used for demonstration gives you a fair idea.
A/V Veteran
The Maestro and the Cellist
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 30, 2024
I've commented before on finding interesting posts on YouTube. Though marred by incessant commercial interruptions (I keep my TV's remote close enough to exit the promotions as soon as possible) that service's offerings cover endless topics: sports, history, current events, music, and much more...Several recent British documentaries, for example, covered the hazards found in English homes of different eras...I recently discovered another far more serious entry. Running for 86 minutes, The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz (a German production with subtitles and translations where needed) covers the very different stories of two musicians during World War II...The maestro of the title here was Germany's Willhelm Furtwangler, arguably one of the most storied and feted symphonic and opera conductors of the 20th Century.
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