Scott Wilkinson

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The Big Picture
THX Goes Mobile
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 31, 2005  |  Published: Aug 01, 2005
I really needed a vacation last month. Work was hectic as usual, and I had a few personal problems that piled on top of me all at once, so I felt a strong desire to get out of Dodge (well, Burbank, actually). I was about to hop in my car and hit the road when THX came to my rescue and offered me a far more stylin' ride: a 2006 Lincoln Zephyr with a THX-certified, CD-based audio system they wanted me to review.
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Premiere Design
THX Media Director
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 18, 2010

Filmmakers and musicians spend countless hours tweaking their images and sound to perfection. But when their masterworks are played on home A/V systems, that carefully crafted music might sound nothing like it did in the studio, and that hot video might look lukewarm on the average flat-panel monitor.

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CEDIA 2011
THX Media Director
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 11, 2011
THX has been talking about its Media Director technology for some time, but it's finally being introduced to the marketplace. Media Director embeds metadata in the content itself, describing how the content was created and how it should be rendered in order to preserve the creator's artistic intent and assure optimal presentation. To do so, the so-called content descriptors are created along with the content and remain associated with it all the way to the end user's display and audio system, which automatically adjust their settings for optimal playback, offsetting the calibrated settings as needed for that content only.

The first Blu-rays to include Media Director metadata are the new Star Wars discs, but other studios are ramping up to include it in their new releases. On the hardware side, the first player to have Media Director capabilities is the Dune HD Blu-ray/media streamer from HDI Dune (yeah, I had never heard of them, either). As you can see in the photo above, it was implemented in a Sharp Elite TV at the THX booth, and it will be part of the 2012 Sharp Elites. In fact, starting in 2012, products that hope to be THX-certified must include Media Director functionality.

The Big Picture
THX Tech Training
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 30, 2008

My blog is a bit later than usual this week, but I've been pretty busy. Tom Norton and I are taking the newly developed video-technician training course offered by THX at the company's headquarters in San Rafael, California, just north of San Francisco in Marin County. Tuesday was the first of three full days of instruction and hands-on lab work, after which some of us went out to dinner and caught Hugh Masekela's set at Yoshi's, a famous jazz spot in Oakland. After a wrong turn by Laurie Fincham, THX's brilliant but directionally challenged chief scientist—thanks for the grand tour of San Francisco, Laurie!—I just got back to my room.

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Premiere Design
Tidal Sunray Tower Speaker
Scott Wilkinson  |  Mar 02, 2010

Most of the products on display at CES are new to the world market, but there are a few exceptions. For example, the Sunray speaker from Germany's <A href="http://tidal-audio.com/english/startenglish.htm">Tidal Audio</A> has been available for several years, but not in the USA&#151;until now. North American distributor <A href="http://www.aaudioimports.com">Aaudio Imports</A> used CES 2010 as the venue to introduce the Sunray to the American audiophile community.

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Premiere Design
Tight Squeeze
Scott Wilkinson  |  Nov 02, 2009  |  Published: Nov 03, 2009

What do you get if you cross Japanese audio acumen with daring Italian design? The Squeezophone 360, that's what. Born out of a collaboration between <A href="http://www.kenwooddesign.com">Kenwood Design</A> and <A href="http://www.colucci-design.com">Claudio Colucci Design</A>, this concept speaker cuts a dashing figure as it pumps sound all around the room.

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Ask S&V
Tiled Video, HDMI to Component, Upconversion
Scott Wilkinson  |  Oct 27, 2010
Video Skypeasaurus
I'd like to create a four-TV setup in my media room. Rather than purchasing one large TV, I thought I might buy four medium-size TVs and tie them together so each one can display a quarter of a single program or four separate programs such as football games. Leo Laporte uses a similar system with four PC monitors that show his TWiT logo across all four screens or several individual guests, such as yourself, via Skype.
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Ask S&V
Time to Upgrade
Scott Wilkinson  |  Aug 15, 2011
I have an old (1997) Bose Acoustimass Lifestyle 12, and the AM/FM/CD player has stopped working. I want to know if I can still use the five cube speakers with a new A/V receiver and a new subwoofer. I hate to throw it all away, and I like the look of the cubes. Can I expect the speakers to work, and will I get a good sound out of them?

Dennis Couch

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The Big Picture
Titanic 3D Floats
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 13, 2012
Last night, I saw Titanic in its new 3D release at an AMC ETX (Enhanced Theater eXperience) venue. Using two projectors and RealD passive glasses, the image was brighter than single-projector RealD and way brighter than Arclight's Xpand active-glasses system. So how was the 3D conversion?
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TiVo HD XL
Scott Wilkinson  |  Sep 04, 2008  |  Published: Sep 05, 2008

Like its immediate predecessors, TiVo's latest DVR, the HD XL, has garnered THX certification for video and audio. The whopping 1TB (yes, that's 1 terabyte) hard disc can store up to 150 hours of HD content, and it can be yours for only $600.

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