Thomas J. Norton

The first thing I noticed about the new Marantz DV-8300 DVD player was its weight. You won't confuse the 24-pound Marantz with a Krell power amp, but with so many DVD players today weighing less than the boxes they came in, the DV-8300's comfortable heft, metal front panel, and smooth mechanical operation suggest quality.

At 400 watts and $15,000 each, the new Mark Levinson monoblock (single-channel) power amplifier is not for the feint of heart or the light of wallet. Everyone else can line up to purchase 11 of them for their 7.2.4 Dolby Atmos systems!

If you haven't already taken a peek at the "Specifications" sidebar, you might want to read this review before checking out the price of the Mark Levinson No.40 surround preamplifier-processor. Drat—you looked. Now I have to find a way to hold your attention for this, the first US review of the production version of what may well be the most ambitious piece of home-theater electronics ever assembled.

I had a dream last night. I was wandering around lower Manhattan (New York). I think I was trying to find my way, but as dreams go I’m not exactly sure where to. I was apparently using a map on my tablet, but the tablet was an old CRT the size of the integrated CRT monitor/computer on the first iMac. I wandered into a bookstore, apparently in search of a more usable map, but all I recall seeing was a copy of Widescreen Review and a children’s version of the New York Times, the latter’s cover filled with full color comics (definitively proving, I suppose, that we do dream in color, though the hues were so odd that they must have been captured in two-strip Technicolor). I had left my “tablet” outside (perhaps the bookstore was a tablet-free zone) and when I went back outside it was still there but the screen had been smashed. In a New York minute. Then I woke up.

This was all likely inspired by my recent trip to New York to attend the Vizio launch of its new Reference series Ultra HDTVs...