Price: $150 At A Glance: Fast loading of Blu-ray Discs • 802.11n Wi-Fi • Bevy of streaming options • No additional memory needed for BD-Live
The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) requires mutual fund companies to tell investors that a fund’s past performance does not necessarily predict future results—and the same could be said of Blu-ray players. In the case of LG, I’ve had the opportunity to audition its top-of-the-line offering for each of the past four years. In 2009, the company’s BD390 (Home Theater, January 2010) was the fastest player I’d ever used, and in July 2010, I awarded its BD590 a Top Pick because of its solid Blu-ray performance and plethora of streaming services. Unfortunately, in 2011 LG dropped the ball with the BD690 (Home Theater, September 2011) with faulty firmware releases and buggy disc playback.
Discovering life on Mars would be the crowning achievement in any scientist’s career, so when a team on the International Space Station receives a care package of samples from the red planet, they can’t wait to begin their experiments. To their surprise, they discover there was once life on Mars after all, and they unleash a creature that evolves at an accelerated pace that has its eyes on the planet below them.
<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/life.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT><i>Planet Earth</i> is one of the best documentaries of the new millennium and The Discovery Channel and the BBC join forces to bring us closer to how life begins on our planet with a view from every continent and habitat. Witness 130 stories in fabulous high-definition.
Holly (Katherine Heigl) and Messer (Josh Duhamel) can't stand each other but share a love for their goddaughter Sophie. When tragedy strikes and takes the young girl's parents away, the pair is forced to raise the child under the same roof and must learn to set aside their differences. Well, it's easier said than done.
There's definitely a female slant to this story and my wife enjoyed this much more than I did, but watching nearly two hours of Heigl in high-definition certainly makes up for the far-fetched story. Even though I wasn't the target demographic, I did find myself laughing-out-loud a few times, especially when the novice new guardians had to change a diaper for the first time and had the joy of baby proofing the house!
After his brother-in-law ruins his marriage with his philandering ways, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is his father-in-law's (Robert DeNiro) last hope to assume the role as the family patriarch (aka, "The Godfocker"). When a beautiful pharmaceutical rep (Jessica Alba) enters the scene, Greg must repel her sexual advances in order to keep his marriage sacred and not lose the new found admiration from the family patriarch.
After being skewered by critics in its theatrical run, I had extremely low expectations for the third installment of the trials and tribulations of Greg Focker. While it doesn't measure up to the first film (or the second), there are quite a few laughs, especially when Stiller and DeNiro share the screen together. Unfortunately the screenplay doesn't flow very well and I expected to see more of the kids given the title of the film, but their time on screen is very limited.
Although he’s never seen combat, Major William Cage crosses the wrong general and finds himself on the front lines of a D-Day-like battle in France where he stands no chance of survival against an onslaught of ridiculously superior alien invaders. Within minutes of landing on the beach, he’s killed by one of those aliens, but instead of heading toward a white light, he instantly wakes up the day before the attack, and now he is destined to live that day over and over. In lieu of becoming alien fodder again, he hooks up with a heroic Special Forces warrior, and they hatch a plan to get Cage trained for battle and embark on a journey to rid the planet of the aliens for good.
At A Glance: Elegant touch-sensitive screen • Decodes multiple audio formats • Internet radio support • Integrates with Facebook and Flickr
Remember the days when you stacked hundreds, if not thousands, of CDs into towers or bookshelves so you could have your entire music collection at your fingertips? The CD player evolved from a single tray to a multi-disc changer that allowed up to 400 discs per unit, but you still had to find a place for all of those pesky cases. In 1999, the music world turned upside down when 18-year-old Shawn Fanning created Napster, and a new way of music delivery was born. Millions of people around the world digitized their music into MP3s, which compromised quality in favor of convenience. Fortunately, as computing power increased and storage became cheaper, audiophiles could store their digital music in a lossless format (FLAC, WMA Lossless, Apple Lossless, etc.) in order to preserve the integrity of the original recording. But with all of this music digitized, how do you listen to it in your home theater?
<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/lost4.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>More than three months after their crash, the stranded passengers of the ill-fated Oceanic Flight 815 learn that the only thing more dangerous than the Island itself might be the people who have come to rescue them. Jack (Matthew Fox) and his followers head to the beach in anticipation of their departure while the group led by Locke (Terry O'Quinn) heeds the advice of Ben (Michael Emerson) and goes into hiding.
<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/lost1.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>On a flight from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles, California, Oceanic Flight 815 crashes on a mysterious island in the South Pacific. The ensemble cast is outstanding, but the true star of the show is The Island. Why did Flight 815 crash there? Did The Island have anything to do with the crash? What is the mysterious beast roaming the forest? Why are the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 so special? Where did the hatch come from? Who are "The Others" and where do they come from? What is the Dharma Initiative? What happens if you don't push the button?
<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/lost5.jpg" WIDTH=200 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Destiny send the Oceanic 6 back to the Island and into the heart of the mysterious Dharma Initiative. Why they had to return to the dreaded place and the fate of those left behind is revealed and many of the most pressing questions are finally answered as the show builds towards its concluding season in 2010.