Mark Fleischmann

Sort By: Post Date | Title | Publish Date
Audio Video News
Court Overturns Kaleidescape Ruling
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 14, 2009
A federal court has handed a defeat to Kaleidescape, whose superb video-server technology has been fighting for its life in the courts for several years.
Continue Reading >
Audio Video News
RealDVD Deemed Illegal
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 13, 2009
In a curiously ambiguous ruling, a federal court has declared the RealDVD disc copying application illegal. However, the court also left open the possibility that copying DVDs for personal use may be legal in some circumstances under the copyright law's fair use doctrine.
Continue Reading >
Audio Video News
Director Castigates Widescreen Butchery
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 11, 2009
Director Steven Soderbergh is mad. And he has every right to be. His work is being deliberately butchered for television. This was once routine in a world where widescreen films had to fit onto a 4:3 screen. Yet even now, in the age of 16:9 and high-def, widescreen films continue to be cropped in ways that horrify the artists who made them.
Continue Reading >
Audio Video News
Toshiba Blu-ray Coming This Year
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 10, 2009
This will be the year when Toshiba introduces its first Blu-ray products.
Continue Reading >
Audio Video News
080709seeadsanyway
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 07, 2009
When the phrase "video revolution" was in vogue, a generation of viewers weaned on commercial broadcast TV suddenly found they could skip ads in a whole bunch of new ways. With a VCR, they could time-shift programming and fast-scan through ads. They could rent ad-free movies at a video store (trailers don't count). And they could subscribe to pay-TV channels, paying for hipper programming almost without ads. But the heirs to those technologies--DVRs and video on demand --are increasingly overrun by ads, even though consumers have paid to avoid them.
Continue Reading >
Audio Video News
HDTV Takes Over
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 06, 2009
HDTV now dominates the American livingroom, with 52 percent of households owning a high-definition display. This is a big percent improvement over 2008, when HDTV was in just 35 percent of households. We've gone from a third to more than half in just a year. You go, American households!
Continue Reading >
Audio Video News
Panasonic Blus Get Amazon VOD
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 05, 2009
Amazon Video On Demand is now available in Panasonic's 2009 Viera Cast Blu-ray players, having already come to Panasonic's Viera Cast plasmas in April.
Continue Reading >
Audio Video News
Trade Shows Shrink a Bit
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 04, 2009
The two largest trade shows in the audio/video world are shrinking--just a bit. Since they've grown pretty large and unwieldy over the past several years, a little backtracking is not necessarily a sky-is-falling proposition.
Continue Reading >
Bookshelf Speaker Reviews
Acoustic Energy Radiance 1 Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 03, 2009

Performance
Value
Build Quality
Price: $4,200 At A Glance: Ring radiator tweeter civilizes high frequencies • DXT lens matches tweeter’s dispersion to woofer’s • Subwoofer includes adjustable notch filter

Lord of the Ring

Sometimes a single moment of greatness defines a person or a company, even if other moments of greatness follow. For Judy Garland, it was “Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz. For Acoustic Energy, a British loudspeaker brand, it was the AE1. The monitor took recording studios by storm when it made its debut in 1988, and it soon became a favorite among consumer-level audiophiles as well.

Continue Reading >
Home Theater Systems Reviews
Yamaha YHT-591 HTIB
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 03, 2009
Price: $650 At A Glance: A/V receiver, five slim speakers, and powered sub • Slightly rolled-off treble, but pleasing sound • Good remote, lousy supplied cable

Home Theater Comfort Food

On my first trip to London, when I was much younger, my first meal was a mediocre steak in a fifth-rate restaurant full of reveling Australian soccer fans. It was one of the most disappointing meals I’ve ever had. While Britain doesn’t exactly lead the world in cuisine, you can eat well there if you know what you’re doing. The reason I got stuck with a leathery, tasteless, uninspiring piece of meat was that I was jet-lagged and desperately hungry, I didn’t know my way around, and I couldn’t find anything better. HTIBs can be like that. People who might be better served by a higher-quality component system settle for a less fulfilling one because they don’t know their way around the labyrinthine world of A/V receivers and speaker systems. Mixing and matching surround gear can be too steep a hill to climb.

Continue Reading >

Pages

X