HT Staff

Bang & Olufsen
For a widescreen plasma display, B&O's BeoVision 5 might at first appear to be strangely shaped. Upon closer inspection, though, you'll see that its beautifully finished aluminum frame incorporates a 42-inch-wide, 16:9 plasma screen and a pair of magnetically shielded, front-firing speakers mounted below the screen. The BeoVision 5 measures 42 inches wide, 45.25 tall, and 6.75 deep, and it arrives with a stand, as well as a wall-mounting bracket. With a retail price of $19,500, the BeoVision 5 might not qualify as a budget plasma; however, its unique industrial design and your choice of a silver, red, black, blue, or green brushed-aluminum frame are sure to appeal to the décor-conscious theaterphile.
Bang & Olufsen
(847) 590-4900
www.bang-olufsen.com

Los Angeles, CA—May 2003—A ticket to Home Entertainment 2003—The Hi-Fi and Home Theater event, to be held June 5-8, 2003 at the Westin-St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, will offer attendees a chance to hear more than a dozen live musical performances from some of the great artists of contemporary jazz, blues, rock and classical music.

DVD: The Mission—Warner Brothers (Web Exclusive)
Video: 2
Audio: 3
Extras: 2
Despite its ambitious intentions, Roland Joffe's treatise on sin and redemption in the South American rain forest falls well short of epic proportions, the main problem being a script (penned by David Lean collaborator Robert Bolt) that fails to rouse any strong emotions. The film is beautifully photographed, though. While its picture clarity is on the soft side, Argentina's lush greenery and awe-inspiring waterfalls are pleasing to the eye in this 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer. The audio is sufficiently powerful, whether the newly mastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack delivers the rush of cascading water, the whiz of arrows, or Ennio Morricone's simultaneously mournful and hopeful score.

V INC.
You gotta love value, and V Inc.'s offering of a 46-inch plasma display for only $3,999 represents a value indeed. The Visio P4 display has a native resolution of 852:480, and it's compatible with 480p, 720p, and 1080i HD formats. It comes with an integrated 181-channel NTSC/PAL tuner, an attractive stand, and a fanless cooling system, which should provide you with nice, quiet viewing. The Visio P4 offers a good compliment of video inputs, including RGB, component, S-video, and composite, as well as a DVI connection. You'll also enjoy this 16:9 plasma's motion-adaptive deinterlacing, 3:2-pulldown recognition, and four adjustable aspect ratios. There's not much that the Visio P4 doesn't have on board, except, of course, a hefty price tag.
V Inc.
(714) 962-4848
www.vinc.us