Scott Wilkinson

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Premiere Design
Musical Fidelity Titan 2-Channel Power Amp
Scott Wilkinson  |  May 06, 2010

Audiophiles know well the name <A href="http://www.musicalfidelity.com">Musical Fidelity</A>, a high-end British manufacturer for more than 30 years. The self-proclaimed culmination of all that experience is the Titan 2-channel power amp.

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The Big Picture
Must See IPTV
Scott Wilkinson  |  Dec 17, 2010
Apropos of this week's Vote question, I recently came across an item from TVB.org (formerly the Television Bureau of Advertising), which analyzed the November Nielsen data and found that wired-cable service to American TV households has hit a 21-year low, though it's still the dominant TV delivery system at 60.7 percent. Meanwhile, what that group calls "alternate delivery systems" (ADS)—which in this case means only satellite and microwave broadcasting, not over-the-air or online—has hit an all-time high of 30.5 percent.
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The Big Picture
My Debut as a Radio Talk Show Host
Scott Wilkinson  |  Mar 24, 2011

As many of you know, I appear as a regular guest on The Tech Guy, a nationally syndicated call-in radio talk show hosted by Leo Laporte. The show airs live on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 AM to 2 PM Pacific time; some stations carry all or part of the show live, while others play the recording at different times. My segment is usually on Sundays right after the 11:30 AM news break, when I talk about home theater and answer reader and listener questions.

On February 5 and 6, I had the incredible opportunity to sit in for Leo as the guest host of The Tech Guy for the entire show. Leo was on vacation for three weeks, and I happened to be in the San Francisco Bay Area during that weekend, so we agreed that I would host the show from his studio, answering phone questions about—what else?—home theater.

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Premiere Design
My Mistake
Scott Wilkinson  |  Nov 08, 2009

Recently, I posted an <A href="http://blog.ultimateavmag.com/ultimate-tech/let_there_be_let/">entry in the Ultimate Tech blog</A> about a new type of tweeter called the Leading Edge Transducer (LET). In that article, I made some statements to which reader Noah Katz, a structural engineer and, presumably, an audiophile, took exception. At first, I was going to ignore him because he refused to engage in a dialog about it. But, being me, I couldn't resist digging deeper to uncover the truth. After all, one of my guiding principles as a technical journalist is to get the facts straight, and if I don't&#151;which, as a human, is inevitable once in a while&#151;I feel compelled to correct my mistakes.

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The Big Picture
NAB 2012: Christie High Frame Rate 3D Demo
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 20, 2012
By far the most important demo at NAB was presented by Christie, one of the foremost makers of digital-cinema projectors for commercial theaters. It was a comparison of the effect of shooting and displaying 3D movies at different frame rates—24, 48, and 60 frames per second. The entire demo was created and narrated by James Cameron, who started by pointing out that digital cinema cameras and projectors are fully capable of shooting and displaying higher frame rates, which greatly reduces or eliminates the motion blur and stuttering endemic to 24fps.
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The Big Picture
NAB 2012: Dolby 3D
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 20, 2012
Dolby was showing several items in its booth, including an update to Dolby Digital Plus for mobile devices as well as its LED-backlit LCD professional reference monitor with local-dimming control of each LED rather than larger zones—very cool, but very expensive. What interested me the most was Dolby 3D, a new technology developed in collaboration with Philips Research and introduced at NAB.
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The Big Picture
NAB 2012: Epson Moverio Wearable Display
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 20, 2012
Epson had a small booth way in the back of the South Hall, and along with some commercial projectors was the Moverio wearable display. Inside the temple pieces of these glasses are tiny LCD microprojectors with a resolution of 960x540, and the image is directed through special diffusers to appear in front of each eye. The glasses are transparent, so you can see the surrounding environment with the video image superimposed over it.
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The Big Picture
NAB 2012: NICT 200-inch Autostereoscopic Display
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 20, 2012
And now for something completely over the top—an autostereoscopic (glasses-free) 16:9 rear-projection display measuring 200 inches diagonally! This behemoth was developed by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and consists of 200 small DLP projectors behind a special diffuser screen and Fresnel lens. Amazingly, you can walk around and see objects from different angles and even behind them, much like a true hologram. There was some obvious vertical banding in the 1920x1080 image, but I found no one who could explain why.
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NAB 2012: Planar 4K Flat Panel
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 20, 2012
Outside the Red Digital Cinema demo theater, I saw this 60-inch quad-HD (3840x2160) flat panel made by Planar. No one could tell me much about it—the Planar rep wasn't around at that moment—except that it's an LED-illuminated LCD, probably edgelit. It did look mighty crisp and sharp.
The Big Picture
NAB 2012: Red Laser Projector & Player
Scott Wilkinson  |  Apr 20, 2012
The most important consumer-related product introduction at NAB was a new projector and source device from Red Digital Cinema, which is best known for its digital-cinema cameras. As its name implies, the REDray Laser Projector uses lasers as its illumination source, and the red, green, and blue lasers are housed in a separate module (the larger box seen directly above the projector in the photo) that connects to the projector itself via fiber optics. Even more interesting, multiple laser modules can be ganged together to produce more light for larger screens, and the lasers are rated to last more than 25,000 hours with virtually no change in color or light output.
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