Thomas J. Norton

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CES 2018
Monstrous Music
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 11, 2018
Monster livened up CES with a string of live music performances at its booth.
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A/V Veteran
Mother Glass
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 21, 2006

It all starts with the mother glass. That's the foundation for building an LCD panel. Everything else—the individual red, green, and blue elements of each pixel and the interconnects necessary to drive them—are grown on it.

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A/V Veteran
Move It!
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 17, 2015
The communication advancements of the past few years have made it possible to do some types of work—such as evaluating AV gear and writing about it—from almost anywhere. So I’ve picked up stakes and moved from sunny Southern California to a far less crowded burgh along the Florida panhandle’s Gulf coast.

It wasn’t an easy decision, and a major move after 14 years in one place is worse than having major dental surgery (and far more costly!).

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A/V Veteran
Movie Theaters: The Way They Were
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 04, 2020
We all have our own early experiences with moviegoing. My mother once told me that when I was two or three she took me to a movie about a dog. I apparently sobbed uncontrollably when the dog got lost and couldn’t find his way home. This probably left a lifelong scar; as the old saying goes, never follow a dog act. I’m not a cat person, perhaps because few movies have ever been made about a cat (well, there was at least one recently about a bunch of them, but let’s not go there!). There was never a Fluffy Come Home.

Once upon a time the movie on the screen was only part of a theater experience; the theater itself was often part of the show.

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A/V Veteran
Movie Time in LA
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 11, 2006

Last time I mentioned a letter from a reader asking me to recommend great movie theaters he should check out on a visit to Los Angeles. I also suggested that out-of-towners visiting The Big Orange for our upcoming Home Entertainment 2006 show on June 2-4 (you are coming, right?) might want to include a visit to one or more of the best theaters in the world in their plans&mdash;particularly if they're from a theater-challenged part of the country. There are new multiplexes in LA <I>suburbs</I>, for example, that are likely better than any movie theater in the entire state of New Mexico (I know from experience, having lived in Santa Fe for 10 years and visited most of the theaters there and in nearby Albuquerque, the state's biggest city by far).

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A/V Veteran
Movies for a Summer Night
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jun 16, 2020
We all suffer through choosing a film to play for friends and family on a movie night. This might invariably include Joe and Ann from down the block, the neighborhood’s premier movie fans (apart from you!) who claim to have seen just about everything. Of course, most of what they’ve seen might have been on a 40-inch set (or even an old 27-inch, low definition CRT), constantly interrupted by commercials. Or perhaps new neighbor Bob from across the street, who hasn’t seen a movie in 20 years on anything but his computer — or not at all.
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A/V Veteran
Movies Here and There: Spoiled by LA's Superior Theaters
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 26, 2015
I lived in the Los Angeles area on two occasions prior to the most recent 14.5 years, each time long enough for me to recognize the superiority of its best movie houses. When I moved from Los Angeles to Santa Fe in 1990 to work for Stereophile, I often vacationed back in LA just to see movies there. Santa Fe’s theaters at the time were depressing at best, and nearby Albuquerque wasn’t much better. In a week in LA I might see 7-8 movies (on one occasion I recall seeing 10!), enough to satisfy my appetite for at least a few months.

These trips continued, and even escalated to twice a year after I began supplementing my writing for Stereophile with major work on the Stereophile Guide to Home Theater...

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A/V Veteran
Movin' On Out
Thomas J. Norton  |  Nov 16, 2021
I wrote about moving cross country back in 2015, but there's always more to say on the subject, particularly as it applies to home theater fans with expensive gear to transport safely. No, I'm not moving again, but what with Covid and other incentives, more folks are moving today than ever — particularly out of a few big and management-challenged states such as New York and California.

Moving from the wilds of Glendale California to the (different) wilds of western Florida in 2015 presented me with a number of challenges. But that was nearly seven years ago. Those challenges are somewhat different now, but the basics haven't changed. Moving remains one of life's more disorienting experiences.

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A/V Veteran
Moving Daze
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 21, 2015
Moving is never fun, and my move from southern California to northwest Florida was particularly challenging. The packing and unpacking were chores I don’t wish on anyone, though the actual transportation from point A to (a distant) point B was, thankfully, relatively uneventful. Some of you may be faced with a similar situation, as spring is invariably the busiest moving season. For the AV fan, with a likely collection of valued components and program software, it can be particularly traumatic.
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CES 2014
MSR Elite Home Entertainment Experience
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 14, 2014
In the most ambitious home theater demo at CES, MSR Acoustics coordinated an Elite Home Entertainment Experience in a large room at the Venetian Hotel.
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