Tom Norton

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Darkest Hour
Tom Norton  |  Jun 15, 2018
Picture
Sound
Extras
Darkest Hour shows the other side of the 1940 events depicted in 2017’s equally superb Dunkirk. The latter showed the evacuations that enabled the British army to survive, the former depicted how Churchill, taking the office of Prime Minister almost by default, navigated around the pacifists in his cabinet who wanted to negotiate a settlement with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. In doing so he cemented his status as arguably the most important national leader of the 20th century.
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Definitive Gets Centered
Tom Norton  |  Sep 06, 2007  |  Published: Sep 07, 2007

Definitive Technology has a new Mythos 10 ($899) center channel speaker to match the company's current Mythos ST ($1799 each). The Mythos 10 was on static display, but the Mythos STs were being played as a left and right 2-channel stereo pair, driven by a rack full of Theta electronics. The system sounded superb.

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CES 2009
Dessert of the Show
Tom Norton  |  Jan 10, 2008

The highlight of a Runco/Planar/Vidikron lunch for the assembled press in the Renaissance Hotel near the Convention Center was this warm, super-rich chocolate cake with fudge sauce, topped with Dolce de Leche ice cream. The many who left after the main course don't know what they missed.

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Digital Living
Tom Norton  |  Jan 09, 2007

Sony's VGX-XL3 VAIO XL3 Digital Living System is essentially a computer with a horizontal form factor, a Blu-ray read-write HD optical drive, a CableCARD enabled HDTV TV tuner, HDMI connectivity, and Windows' Vista operating system. Since Vista has not been released yet, this hasn't either.

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CEDIA 2010
Digital ProFusion
Tom Norton  |  Sep 25, 2010
Digital Projection offers so many models it's hard to keep them straight. They range in price from around $5000 to the sky's the limit, and include 3D designs, LED-lit models, and much more. The only common thread is that they are all DLPs, both single-chip and 3-chip. Most important, however, is the high quality we've consistently seen from them on the screen, both at shows such as this one and in our own in-house evaluations.
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CEDIA 2012
Digital Projection Goes Wide and Scores
Tom Norton  |  Sep 07, 2012
Digital Projection was featuring Its D-Vision 35 LED ($39,000 with lens) and D-Vision Scope ($34,995). Both are single-chip home theater designs, identical in form factor to the photo here, but very different in their features. The D-Vision LED uses LED lighting (duh!) for consistent color and long life, though with some sacrifice in brightness. The D-Vision Scope has a higher than HD resolution chip that enables projection of 2.35:1 films without an anamorphic lens and with an on-screen pixel density of 2560 x 1080. Both looked outstanding, though I favored the brightness and big screen capability of the D-Vision Scope.
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CEDIA 2012
Digital Projection Goes Wide and Scores
Tom Norton  |  Sep 07, 2012
Digital Projection was featuring Its D-Vision 35 LED ($39,000 with lens) and D-Vision Scope ($34,995). Both are single-chip home theater designs, identical in form factor to the photo here, but very different in their features. The D-Vision LED uses LED lighting for consistent color and long life, though with some sacrifice in brightness. The D-Vision Scope has a higher than HD resolution chip that enables projection of 2.35:1 films without an anamorphic lens and with an on-screen pixel density of 2560 x 1080. Both looked outstanding, though I favored the brightness and big screen capability of the D-Vision Scope.
CEDIA 2009
Digital Projection LED
Tom Norton  |  Sep 14, 2009
From Digital Projection we get the M-Vision Cine LED. This single chip DLP projector, if you're following the drift here, uses LED illumination to replace the projection lamp. As with the other digital projectors we saw at the show, from Runco, Projectiondesign, and SIM2, it's not a torch, is rated at a modest 600 lumens. Includes dynamic black for a rated peak contrast ration of 10,000:1 (2,000:1 native), and is best used on screens no wider than 8 feet. The screen it was used with at the show was 5.5' wide Stewart with a gain of 1.3. Or that's what a Digital Projection rep said. It did look a bit larger than that.
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CES 2012
Disharoo Do
Tom Norton  |  Jan 12, 2012
Dish Network’s Hopper greeted everyone passing through the main doors of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
CEDIA 2011
DIY With Screen Goo
Tom Norton  |  Sep 10, 2011
You can pay thousands for a good screen, or paint your own for the low hundreds. Screen Goo Americas (probably the company with the most memorable name in the business) offers four flavors: Reference White (roughly unity gain) HIgh Contrast, Max Contrast, and Ultra Silver 3D (high gain, preserves light polarity). All of them may be rolled or sprayed on an appropriate flat, smooth surface. The even make a screen paint for rear projection! It's also said to be flexible enough that the screen can be moderately curved after painting. We're not saying that it can equal a professionally produced screen, but the demo we saw looked mighty impressive. If the cost of a screen is keeping you from acquiring a projection system, this approach might well help.

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