Thomas J. Norton

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Black Hawk Down —Blu-ray
Thomas J. Norton  |  Dec 28, 2006  |  Published: Dec 29, 2006

The story of a well-intentioned but ultimately failed U.S. 1993 military mission in Somalia, where American Rangers and Delta Force troops tried to capture a savage warlord who was ravaging and starving his own people into submission, is not a pretty one. Nor is Black Hawk Down an easy film to watch. But while it's often gritty, depressing, and filled with violent, bloody imagery, it also paints a very positive, uplifting image of American troops and what they're willing to risk for the mission and for each other. It's hard to imagine mainstream Hollywood producing such a film today, five event-filled years after Black Hawk Down first hit the screens.

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A/V Veteran
Blog on Blogs
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 27, 2005

What's a blog? It's the hot topic on the Internet these days, but what, exactly, is it? Since we've just launched four new blogs here on <I>Ultimate AV</I>, this is a timely question. Three of the blogs have been converted directly from our previous monthly columns. A fourth is brand new.

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Blu-ray and HD DVD? LG Does Both!
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 07, 2007

LG was the first press event of the day, and at 8AM the assembled press corps was suitably bleary-eyed. But the big news (which had broken a few days before the show) drew a huge crowd and kept all of them awake. Oh, LG did announce 12 new 1080p displays, including 9 LCDs and 3 plasmas. But it was their Super Multi Blue player that shook up the opening of the 2007 CES.

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A/V Veteran
Blu-ray Disc—ussion
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 02, 2012
It may surprise some readers, but apart from the Blu-ray discs we are assigned to review and the occasional disc that flies over the transom, most of us here at Home Theater actually buy the Blu-rays we watch. True, at one time (as the editor of the Stereophile Guide to Home Theater and Ultimate AV), I received many screeners for review. So I do have a large collection of DVDs (many of which have been donated away), Blu-rays, and HD DVDs (RIP). But the pile has grown far more slowly in recent years. Nevertheless, I look forward to upcoming releases just as much as before, and I'll be in line to purchase titles I want that don't come my way for review.
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A/V Veteran
Blu-ray Players Part IV: HD Video
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 12, 2010

With the analog audio section of this multi-part tome largely out of the way (though a listen to the audio from the Special Edition Oppo BDP-83 is still to come), I turned to video. All of the testing was done with duplicate copies of high quality Blu-ray discs. The players were compared directly, two at a time, with the disc in one of the players running roughly 12 seconds behind the other. Making allowances for a switching delay of about 5 seconds (which the players needed to re-sync with the display following the switch) this staggered cueing let me watch the same few seconds of program material first on one player and then on the other.

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A/V Veteran
Blu-ray Players Part V
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jul 05, 2010

Break out the fireworks. Fire up the grille. Happy 4th of July. A new chapter in the Neverending Story of this Blu-ray player saga has arrived.

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A/V Veteran
Blu-ray Players Part VI: Finis
Thomas J. Norton  |  Sep 20, 2010
At long last, we come to the final chapter of the ongoing Blu-ray player saga. It has been a journey too-often interrupted by the need to adjust to new system components coming in and out for their own reviews. Nothing is more disruptive than having to adjust to the sound of new speakers.

But enough with that. First, a brief summary of what this entire effort has been about....

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A/V Veteran
Blu-ray vs. Streaming and Avoiding the Pre-Packaged Media Apocalypse
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 18, 2015
Join me in the WayBack Machine for a trip to 1995. Somewhere in North America a Stereophile Hi-Fi Show is in progress, and the writing staff is gathered for an Ask the Editor’s session. A question arises about the then fledgling music downloading technology. I recall I answered that, “We’ll be able to do it before we can do it well.”

As it turned out that was correct, though I’m no soothsayer...

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A/V Veteran
Blu-Tech
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 01, 2006

With the HD DVD competition set to launch within a month, Sony invited members of the CE press to the Sony Studios in Culver City, California for an update on Blu-ray technology and a demonstration of that format's formidable capabilities.

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CEDIA 2016
Bose 901: Most Successful Speaker of All Time?
Thomas J. Norton  |  Sep 17, 2016
Bose doesn’t often attend CEDIA (or CES for that matter), so I was surprised to see them here. The emphasis here appeared to be on lifestyle or custom install products, noted in another blog. The pair of 901 Series 6 loudspeakers shown here were also on hand, but not playing. I haven’t followed that speaker for years, but...
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