Thomas J. Norton

QuickMotion. SmartShutter. Dark Detailer. Plush Imaging. Plush720p. Plush1080p. DeepField Imager. SharpEdge. Buzzwords were flying faster than you could swat them at Mitsubishi's April 2005 line show in Orlando, Florida. Journalists were flown in from all over the US to view the latest Mitsubishi televisions, loaded with these exciting&mdash;or at least exciting <I>sounding</I>&mdash;features.

By itself, the Pioneer Elite PRO-505PU, the company's premier plasma display, is just a video monitor with a DVI input. But it's only sold in a package with the Pioneer Elite PRO-R05U Media Receiver. When linked together by two cables (one of them a DVI video connection, the other to send control signals to and from the panel), the two pieces form an integrated system, designated the Elite PRO-1120HD Plasma Display System.

Speaker-industry pioneer Irving M. ("Bud") Fried passed away on March 31 at his home in Philadelphia. A lifelong resident of that city, his first exposure to audio was listening to the sound of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1928. But it wasn't live. Though he was to become a fixture at Philadelphia Orchestra concerts, he first heard the ensemble's music emerging from the theater horns of his father's movie theaters in 1928. That was not only the year movies learned to talk, but also the year young Fried became a confirmed music lover and audiophile&mdash;decades before high fidelity even had a name.

<IMG SRC="/images/archivesart/headshot150.tjn.jpg" WIDTH=150 HEIGHT=194 HSPACE=6 VSPACE=4 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>It never ends. Today's fast-changing AV scene constantly generates an ongoing flow of myths, legends, and other blather that either arises spontaneously or is deliberately manufactured to push the bewildered consumer toward a certain product or technology. I'll make a valiant attempt here to explode a few of these video urban legends, nevertheless secure in the knowledge that, like Don Quixote, I'll find an endless supply of new windmills just down the road.