Dolby was showing us something we'd heard about at Cedia, but which they weren't quite ready to show last fall. This time, using video from three different programs, they did a before and after demo of how Dolby Volume equalizes disparities between sources. It worked well enough in the demo and one thing I did note was that it <i>wasn't</i> heavy handed. For example, the program that was clearly lower in volume in the "before" condition, was still softer than either of the other programs.
The soothing sounds of Frank Sinatra singing "What's New" (CD, originally a Capitol Records recording) were a welcome treat in the BAT / Wilson room. A pair of Watt Puppy 8 speakers sounded as smooth and inviting as the pair I heard in Denver last September, telling me the new, kindler, gentler Wilson wasn't a figment of my imagination. The BAT Rex preamp uses 18 tubes and fed dual 150SE tube monoblocks. Jeff Pour of Balanced Audio Technology turned off the house lights so we couldn't leave.
Another ask-the-editors session, this one about improving your home theater, was full of sage advice and even a few pretty good one-liners. We made it through almost 40 minutes of give and take until someone asked us which high definition disc format was better, Blu-ray or HD-DVD. Bottom line, we're not sure. The only thing about which we all agree, however, is that this format war stinks for everybody.
That’s right, don’t buy an Xbox 360, especially if you live in Connecticut. This just out – the models being distributed in Connecticut are defective <i>and</i> Microsoft’s warranty has a special Connecticut exclusion clause which invokes double secret arbitration as the consumer’s only remedy in the case of a defect, odds of which are, I’m told off the record, in the very high 90th percentile.
My wife always wanted twins. I got her the next best thing: DWINs. Hanging on the ceiling is my DWIN HDP-500 CRT projector (wow, has it really been seven years already?), while on a table below and slightly behind it is the new DWIN TransVision 4 DLP projector. Actually, the new DWIN, like the old DWIN, is not just a projector, but a full projection <i>system</i> that manages all your critical video switching and processing needs. Seven years. I feel the itch.
Denmark is home to Dynaudio, one of the world's finest speaker manufacturers. After beginning modestly as a maker of speaker drivers, Dynaudio rapidly gained accolades from OEMs and the international do-it-yourself speaker-building conspiracy. But don't let their industrial background mislead you. Dynaudio's Contour and Confidence speaker lines are among the most classically striking speakers in the market today: business and beauty bundled together, in a high-end showroom near you.
Dynaudio make great sounding speakers, but they're usually very pricey. The new DM series, made in Denmark, start as little as $875 pair for the DM 2/7, a two way with a 6-1/2" woofer (first on left) and as high as $1,350 a pair for the two-way DM 2/10 with a 10" woofer. Available in faux cherry or black, they're yeoman-like, but look promising.
Sennheiser, makers of some fantastic headphones, now make a $79 in-ear earphone. With soft silicon tips, these won't abrade your ears like the crap Apple gives you with their $300 player.
Shane already nailed the Epson Cinema Pro 1080 UB ("Ultra Black") demo. It was amazing to see this kind of performance from an LCD. I'll add that Epson might be claiming a 50,000:1 contrast ratio, but that's with what has to be an awfully aggressive auto-iris in play. Kevin Miller, whose work continues to amaze, flew without a net using the chipset's native contrast ratio of 4,500:1, which is pretty outstanding on its own.
Don't say "Gesundheit!" That wasn't a sneeze, but it is a mouthful. The company, eWoo, and their amazing not-so-little iPod doc, <a href=" http://www.ewoo.com/products/efizz.html" target="new">the eFizz</a>, all twenty pounds of it, has been holding down my credenza at work for almost six months. Things got off to a grinding halt with this review as the remote control for the first unit became utterly crippled when I tried to up load the latest firmware version as recommended by eWoo's PR firm. Another victim of the Microsoft Vista system I think.