James K. Willcox

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Beyond DVD
James K. Willcox  |  Feb 19, 2005

For the past five years, DVD has been the bright beam of sunshine spreading across the home-entertainment landscape, not only heating up movie sales and rentals but also, with its first-rate images and sound, helping to spark the whole home theater trend.

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Inner Workings: Inside an LED-based Light Engine
James K. Willcox  |  Dec 02, 2007

Lost in the rush of attention being lavished on sleeker and sexier flat-panel HDTVs is the fact that there's still a lot of innovation going on in rear-projection microdisplay sets. In the past year, we've seen developments ranging from the prosaic - bigger screens, more models with 1080p resolution, and slimmed-down cabinets - to the exotic, such as 3-D video.

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Inner Workings: Inside a Media Server
James K. Willcox  |  Feb 07, 2008

In the beginning - well, at least 5 or 6 years ago - music stored on a PC generally either stayed there or was downloaded to a portable player. But as more and more audio and video content has become available online, people want to hear and see it on home entertainment rigs.

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The Basement Home Theater Jim Built in the House that Jim Built
James K. Willcox  |  Sep 01, 2008

For nearly a decade I've been profiling custom home theaters for Sound & Vision, and in all that time I've never really had my own - or even a space carved out exclusively for watching movies or listening to music. And let me tell you, envy can be an ugly thing.

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The House That Jim Built, Part 3
James K. Willcox  |  Sep 14, 2008

Has it really been 2 years since I last wrote about my efforts to install the A/V and networking systems in the new addition to my home?

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Movies on Demand
James K. Willcox  |  Mar 09, 2003
This past fall, astute subscribers to the Time Warner digital cable service in New York City began to notice something unusual-and no, it wasn't that their bills were going down. It was the appearance of Channel 1000 on the onscreen program guide, accompanied by the letters MOD. Was this a new retro fashion channel? Actually, the truth is more interesting.
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Where Have All the CDs Gone?
James K. Willcox  |  Jun 02, 2003

Illustration by Dan Vasconcellos

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HDTV Showcase
James K. Willcox  |  Oct 14, 2003

For more than a decade, the arrival of high-definition television was trumpeted with all the bluster of a carnival barker and the sincerity of a contestant on a reality-TV dating show.

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The Case of the Invisible Speakers
James K. Willcox  |  Oct 28, 2004
For years, in-wall and in-ceiling speakers were the 98-pound weaklings of the speaker world. Lacking the muscle needed for realistic-sounding music playback - let alone action-movie soundtracks - they were ignored by anyone who took sound seriously.

But the once-ridiculed category has re-emerged, surprisingly pumped and ready to kick sand in the face of that conventional wisdom.

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Inner Workings: Inside an In-Wall Speaker
James K. Willcox  |  Oct 11, 2007

In-wall speakers have come a long way since the first models, which were essentially re-purposed car-stereo speakers. That dramatic improvement over the past decade is due largely to the boom in "architectural" audio products driven by the advent of flat-panel TVs, any-room home theater systems, and whole-house audio.

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