Tabla de contenidos para Oct-10 en Home Theater

For those of us who started early in this hobby, perhaps the funnest trip down memory lane is to count up all of our firsts. First steps for us always meant being the first guy in the neighborhood with something new. For me, the journey started with my first Pioneer Laserdisc player, followed shortly by my first Dolby Pro Logic surround sound receiver, which had two surround speakers fed by a single mono surround channel (but with discrete amplification, thanks). My amazed friends loved the images they saw, even if they wondered what the heck those black bars were all about. And even that mono surround channel had them craning their necks to be sure the stampede wasn’t really coming from the other room. After that came my first Dolby…

Tell me you’ve never imagined what you’d do first if you won the lottery. Even if you never play and you know you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than winning $10 million or (it’s a dream, isn’t it, so why go small potatoes?) even $100 million. Sure, if you take it all at once rather than in $5 million drabs over 20 years, that will drop to $50 million out of the gate. After Uncle Sam gets his cut, you’re down to $25 million. There goes your chance to buy the Seattle Seahawks. But not your chance for a killer home theater rig. Yes, you can get an impressive home theater projector for less than $10,000. Throw in a reasonably sized screen, an audio system, and…

PRICE: $18,000 AT A GLANCE: Audio is smooth yet highly detailed • Amp has power to drive cattle • Great ergonomics • Spartan video Girly Men, Keep Moving HT editor Shane Buettner laughed at me when I told him I spent two months strength training before the Revel Salon2 speakers arrived at my home last year. “They’re almost 200 pounds apiece,” I said in defense of the improbable truth. Now a year later, running has consumed my life and strength training has fallen to the wayside. It was time to start using Planet Fitness as something other than a place to shower after a run. The five-times 300-watt-per-channel, Classé CT-5300 was coming—all 113 pounds of it, and I had to get in shape. In a world that’s content with mediocrity…

PRICE: $999 AT A GLANCE: Desktop stereo integrated amp, including tube preamp and DAC • Apple-approved digital iPod connection • Jitter reduction We’re Not in Kansas Anymore Like many surround-sound audiophiles, I listen to a lot of two-channel material as well. It’s part retro sacrament, part necessary evil. Although I haven’t turned on my ancient stereo amp and preamp in months-their presence in the rack is mainly symbolic-I regularly run my 5.1-channel system in stereo mode when the nature of the content demands it. I also get a lot of use out of the cheap speakers and chip-amp in my kitchen, not to mention the powered iPod speakers in my bedroom. I use my 2.1-channel desktop rig throughout the day-not only when I’m at my desk, with the inevitable YouTube…

PRICE: $300 AT A GLANCE: Elegant touch-sensitive screen o Decodes multiple audio formats o Internet radio support o Integrates with Facebook and Flickr An Easier Way to Stream Remember the days when you stacked hundreds, if not thousands, of CDs into towers or bookshelves so you could have your entire music collection at your fingertips? The CD player evolved from a single tray to a multi-disc changer that allowed up to 400 discs per unit, but you still had to find a place for all of those pesky cases. In 1999, the music world turned upside down when 18-year-old Shawn Fanning created Napster, and a new way of music delivery was born. Millions of people around the world digitized their music into MP3s, which compromised quality in favor of convenience.…

SUCH A WASTE OF A GOOD KRAKEN Swords? Check. Sandals? Got ’em. Hunky, tanned stars and beautiful women in togas? Yep. Now, did anyone remember to get a coherent plot? No? Well, no big deal. How about characters we care about? Left them behind, too, huh? All right then, let’s center this movie around one single moment when Liam Neeson, looking like one of the Oak Ridge Boys wearing shiny armor, turns to the camera and orders his staff to release the kraken. Should be enough for a film, right? If only amusing Internet memes were enough to sustain a nearly two-hour film. But alas, all Clash of the Titans serves up is a largely charisma-free performance from Sam Worthington, who runs, jumps, fights, and grunts his way through a…

HIS HEART’S JUST NOT IN IT Just to be clear, Repo Men is not a sequel to ’80s cult oddity Repo Man. It might be a whole lot more interesting if it were. Instead, the movie is a sci-fi thriller set in an unspecified dystopian future where a corporation called the Union has a monopoly on (very expensive) artificial organs. When clients fail to make their payments on time, the company dispatches repossession agents to reclaim its property-by slicing these organs out on the spot. It’s a bloody but lucrative job. Jude Law is one of the Union’s top repo men, and he enjoys his work a great deal. That all changes after a repo goes sour. An accident leaves him with an artificial heart he can’t afford and an…

SIX DAYS OF PERPETUAL DAYLIGHT Between 2001’s breakout Memento and 2005’s blockbuster Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan made Insomnia, a remake of a late ’90s Norwegian film. Al Pacino’s Will Dormer is a hardboiled L.A. cop tracking the murderer of a 17-year-old girl in the perpetual summertime daylight of Alaska. The structural oddity is that there’s so little time spent identifying the murderer. The twist is that the murderer (an inspired casting choice rewarded by a palpably creepy Robin Williams) gets something big on Pacino and attempts to extort his way out. The stark difference between the two men is the way each carries the weight of his actions. The Alaskan setting is peculiar and unsettling for the material. The characters are familiar archetypes, but the writing, acting, and Nolan’s…

SHOW DICK SOME RESPECT! My friends and I were 15 when The Breakfast Club came out, and it’s definitely the movie of our generation. We looked like that. We dressed like that. We talked like that. The Breakfast Club is very funny, and in ways that aren’t nasty or gross-out like so many teen movies of today (you darn kids!) but are still edgy and smart. The late, great John Hughes made entertaining and convincing movies about teens that didn’t shortchange their strengths or weaknesses, and The Breakfast Club was the best of the bunch. While The Breakfast Club might not have defined my generation, like the box for this Blu-ray says, it spoke to us, and it spoke volumes about us. I always liked the triumphant confidence at the…

CALIFORNIA (northern) STEREO UNLIMITED Don’t analyze... be mesmerized! We’ll show you! 1545 Locust St., Walnut Creek, CA 94596 (925) 932-5835 www.stereounlimited.com Arcam, AMC, ARC, B&G, JoLida, LINN, Magnepan, MBL, Marantz, PrimaLuna, Quad, VIVA & many more! CALIFORNIA (southern) GNP AUDIO VIDEO 1254 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91106 (626) 577-7767 www.gnpaudiovideo.com Home Theater, Home Stereo and Custom Music Systems since 1977. “Best Stereo Shop” by LA Magazine. ARC, AUD, B&K, DWI, FUJ, LEX, MAR, MLN, MER, NEC, NIL, NUV, TNY, PSB, ROT, THI, UNV, AND MORE DAVID VINCENT DESIGN*# Jim Zoyiopoulos, Owner Home theater and music systems showroom. Lighting control and whole home automation. 26384 Carmel Rancho Lane Carmel, CA 93923 www.davidvincentdesign.com info@davidvincentdesign.com Lutron, Kaleidescape, Crestron, JVC, Sony, Denon, Niveus, Triad, Speakercraft, Pioneer FLORIDA HOME THEATER INNOVATIONS/BOB’S TV. Hwy. 441…

WE WELCOME QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS. E-mail them to htletters@sorc.com. Please note: Be sure to check the FAQ page on our Website (HomeTheaterMag.com) to see if we’ve already answered any questions you might have. Questions about the features and functions of a particular product are best directed to the manufacturer. Questions about what product you should buy are best directed to a dealer who knows all the details of your system, your preferences, and your personal habits. All submissions are considered the exclusive property of Home Theater magazine and Source Interlink Media. Due to the volume of mail that we receive, we regret that we cannot respond to every letter. Finally, Some Respect Contrary to your statement that Caddyshack (1980) was Rodney Dangerfield’s first film (August 2010 issue), he had a…

Going back several years, I remember my first reaction to learning of the Kaleidescape paradigm. Then, media servers didn’t exist, and a Kaleidescape starter system cost a startling $30,000. On paper, it looked like its principal novelty was ripping and playing back DVD movies without having to load a disc into a player. My first thought was something like, “Wow, life is really expensive for people who don’t want to get up and walk a few feet to grab a disc and put it into a DVD player.” Of course, this was exceptionally ignorant and shortsighted. My cynicism lasted roughly two and a half to three seconds into actually using a Kaleidescape system. Much like the Apple products that are so near and dear to my heart, Kaleidescape’s power is…

PRICE: $88,500 AT A GLANCE: A unique listening experience • Unprecedented detail and transparency • Exceedingly good bass Jaw-Dropping Home Cinema Somewhere on the audio quality scale, a home theater system crosses an imaginary line and becomes a home cinema system, one that’s capable of truly extraordinary music and film sound reproduction. I’m not exactly sure where that line is, or at what price, but I know it when I hear it. A true home cinema system delivers music that rivals a live event and a movie experience that surpasses even some of the finest commercial cinemas. In this rarefied universe of ultra-high-end audio systems, I tested a no-holdsbarred home theater speaker system from Wisdom Audio based on the company’s L100i and C150i in-wall speakers and Suitcase Sub. As you’ll…

PRICE: $6,995 (optional Schneider Optics lens: $7,995) AT A GLANCE: Big, bright, punchy image • Black level and shadow detail compete with the best • Excessively wide color gamut Broaden Your Horizons If you’ve investigated the subject of constant-height projection, you know that it can be a complicated, slightly intimidating business. We covered the ground rather thoroughly in "Beating the Black Bars" (HT, October 2008). Constant-height display generally involves placing a so-called anamorphic lens in front of a projector’s native lens when viewing true widescreen films-that is, films with an aspect ratio of around 2.35:1 (oft en called scope films). Such a setup also employs a 2.35:1 screen. For material with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 or less, the lens is normally moved out of the way and the image…

1991’s Beauty and the Beast is the creative peak of Disney’s decades in traditional animation and the centerpiece of Disney Animation’s renaissance of the late 1980s and ’90s. It was the first of only two animated films in the Academy’s history to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (the other is Pixar’s Up), all of which only begins to describe how wonderful it is. Beauty and the Beast is a timeless fairy tale that pays homage to Disney’s classic animation formula but breathes so much new life into it that the entire experience feels fresh. It succeeds on all levels. The characters are endearing, the animation is sensational, and the song-and-dance numbers by the incomparable Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are rousing showstoppers. The core of the story is…

A FAIRY-TALE F*@%#ING TOWN In Bruges is a small gem of a movie that did almost no box-office, in part because the title is lousy. Few people know, or care, that Bruges (rhymes with rouge) is a quaint medieval town in Belgium. It’s also in part because the studio promoted it as a mindless action thriller when it’s a smart, darkly comical, deliberately paced study of character and codes of honor. Lunatic codes of honor, because it’s about two hired killers sent to lie low in Bruges after one of them accidentally shoots a child. Writer-director Martin McDonagh is one of the most wildly inventive young playwrights to come along in years. Like his most daring stage works (The Pillowman, The Cripple of Inishmaan, and The Beauty Queen of Leenane),…

SNAKE’S STILL A CHARMER Escape from New York is in set the far-off dystopian future year of 1997. By my calculation, the Predator should be visiting Los Angeles to hunt Danny Glover around this time, and Skynet will launch its apocalyptic Judgment Day any minute now. In the meantime, rampant crime has overridden America. When Air Force One crashes into the maximum-security island prison of Manhattan, no guards, police force, or military can rescue the president. The rules there are simple: "Once you go in, you don’t come out." Only one man can save the day. Snake Plissken is a convict with Special Forces training and a bad attitude. He’ll do the job, but don’t cross him, or you won’t live to regret it. Considering its reputation as an action…

SUCCESS BREEDS EXCESS In 1975, the notion of an all-girl rock band was as foreign in America as the 10-pound note. But 15-year-old Joan Jett has dreams of stardom and is haunting the clubs of Hollywood looking for a way in. A chance meeting with flamboyant record producer Kim Fowley opens the doors to new possibilities. A band is formed, and blonde bombshell Cherie Currie is handpicked from a crowd to be the lead singer. The Runaways do attain a certain level of notoriety, but there are many potholes on the rocky road to stardom. Inevitably, the band self-destructs from paranoia and jealousy. Twilight star Kristen Stewart plays Jett, and it’s nice to see her stretching her acting chops. She seems keenly aware that her gig as vampire girlfriend is…

MURPHY’S LAW COMES TO PAY ITS LAST RESPECTS The practice of recycling popular Asian and European films continues. This new version follows the original practically note for note, but something gets lost in the translation. What makes the original film so appealing are these sophisticated Brits who are trying feebly to maintain their dignity amid the absurdity and utter chaos surrounding a family funeral. Here, the theme doesn’t play quite as well. Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence play bickering siblings who are forced to contend with a lot more than just their father’s funeral. And in what may be a cinematic first, Peter Dinklage reprises the same role he played in the original film and unfortunately has to endure the same ignominy that the part requires all over again in…

Michael J. Nelson is the former host and head writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the proprietor of rifftrax.com, which offers his commentaries on A-list films, including Star Wars: Episode I, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Matrix. In days gone by, marketing was easy. If you had a product that you felt sure would benefit the general public, say, a nerve tonic (or an herbal tincture, suspension, or unguent), you would simply emblazon its name on the side of your covered wagon. You’d take care to correctly spell invigorating, rejuvenatory, and Dr. Southerby’s, of course, and then travel from town to town extolling its marvelous benefits. You’d be certain to mention how it can clear up milk leg in a fortnight, soothe nettle rash, and possibly even…

In the world of audio, there are few people who, when they talk, cause the rest of the industry to stop what they’re doing and listen. Sandy Gross is one of those people. In 1972, he started a company you might have heard of—Polk Audio—with Matthew Polk, George Klopfer, and Craig Georgi. In 1990, he was at it again, this time with Don Givogue and Ed Blais, with the creation of Definitive Technology, one of the top picks of audiophiles everywhere. After he left his position at Definitive Technology in 2009, he didn’t stay quiet for long. Gross has teamed up again with Givogue to start GoldenEar Technology. In July, GoldenEar saw the addition of Jack Shaft on, formerly of Paradigm. GoldenEar debuts its products at this year’s CEDIA, including…

Nowadays, an integrated home entertainment system is just as much about the interior design as the technology—if not more so. In fact, the most sophisticated custom installations reveal little to no technology to the naked eye. However, behind the walls and artwork, or hidden in the ceiling, you just might find some amazing state-of-the-art audio and video gear. AUDIOVISIONS recently turned its Lake Forest, California, showroom into the ultimate Experience Center. AUDIOVISIONS isn’t selling customers on the cool products of the day; instead, it treats customers to a complete environment where form and function are far more relevant than what’s behind the curtain making it all work. According to Mark Hoffenberg, president of AUDIOVISIONS, “We have a very refined consultative sales process that allows us to really hone in on…

PRICE: $14,500 AT A GLANCE: Diamond-domed tweeter in tapered Nautilus tube housing • Center well matched to other speakers • Focused highs, controlled bass The 800 Dynasty Continues The world is full of B&Ws. Former and current users of the acronym include Bra & Wessels, the Swedish department store chain; Burmeister & Wain, the Danish shipyard; Boeing & Westervelt, the predecessor of Boeing; and the Black & White Audiovisual Festival of Portugal. The most notorious B&W would be Brown & Williamson, depraved tobacco pushers. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that B&W, the formidable British loudspeaker maker, has reverted to its original name-Bowers & Wilkins-even though John Bowers and Roy Wilkins are no longer in the picture. The company takes its name from two men who met in the British…

PRICE: $4,925 AT A GLANCE: Soft-dome tweeter and solid piston woofer • Absolute phase crossover keeps drivers in polarity • Wireless servo-controlled subwoofer Set Your Phaser on Stunning Whenever I hear a surround speaker demonstration that uses only movie content and ignores music, I always feel like something has been missed—or even deliberately hidden. As Phase Technology notes in the brochure for its Premier Collection speakers: “We engineer our speakers to the highest standards, knowing that if a speaker reproduces music with true transparency, then it will faithfully reproduce movie soundtracks with the same clarity.” Now I’ll put my oar in the water. The reverse is also true: Some of the highest-quality recordings I’ve heard in recent years—with the most moving dynamics and the most complex layering—have been movie soundtracks…

STAY OFF THE LAWN! A young boy and his buddy notice odd goings-on in the decrepit house across the street. When the elderly homeowner gets hauled off in an ambulance, things get even stranger, leading to a confrontation that… well, you don’t expect me to give away the whole story, do you? The title Monster House pretty much tells you all you need to know about the plot of this computer-animated feature. It’s not complicated, or even particularly believable. But is food raining down from the sky, monsters and aliens battling it out, a little girl entering an alternate universe, or dinosaurs living side by side with talking woolly mammoths any more real-world? Such are the fantasies we accept with modern computer animation, and such are the available 3D movies…

I GUESS THEY’RE THE B-TEAM Officially, The Losers is based on a "hugely popular" comic book that I doubt you or anyone you know has ever heard of. I sure hadn’t. Really, it’s based on The A-Team. You know it, I know it, and anybody who saw the trailer knows it. When Fox locked down the rights to a big-screen A-Team remake for the summer of 2010, Warner Brothers decided to rush out a knock-off for release a couple of months earlier. Sadly, audiences this year haven’t been nearly as interested in the revival of ’80s-style action as the studios that are making these movies. Both pictures, as well as parody MacGruber, flopped at the box office. The ’80s are dead; long live the ’80s. Jeffrey Dean Morgan from Watchmen…

WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer is as much of a page-turner as a movie can be. The smashing setup has Ewan McGregor hired to ghost-write an autobiography for a Tony Blair—ish former Prime Minister played with proper magisterial gravitas by Pierce Brosnan. The catch is that the previous ghost writer died under mysterious circumstances, and soon everything about the lucrative job starts going wrong. It has genuine suspense, style to burn, and ominous atmosphere. McGregor’s at his sly, charming best as a Hitchcock-style everyman reeled into machinations much bigger than he (in this case, global politics). My only gripe is that the conspiracy that’s so masterfully unraveled doesn’t quite bear the weight of what’s come before it.today’s real conspiracies are more disturbing than the fictional…

SIXTH GRADE IS HELL. THANKS FOR REMINDING ME. Greg Heffley is starting his first day of middle school. When I was Greg’s age, it was called junior high, but the fundamental rules are essentially the same: Run very fast or spend the afternoon headfirst in a garbage can. And run like your life depends on it, because it does. Ah, sweet memories. Diary of a Wimpy Kid functions as something of a survival guide for youngsters leaving the sanctuary of grade school and entering the cold, harsh, brutal reality that is middle school. Everyone knows the most important thing in a kid’s life isn’t his grades; it’s being cool. In Greg’s misadventures in his obsessive quest for popularity, he ends up achieving exactly the opposite. I feel your pain, Greg;…

HDTVS ENTRY LEVEL Sony BRAVIA KDL-40V5100 LCD HDTV, $870 Reviewed September 2009 Replaced with BRAVIA KDL-40EX500 LCD HDTV, $820* Panasonic VIERA TC-P42G10 Plasma HDTV, $1,200 Reviewed September 2009 Replaced with VIERA TC-P42G25 Plasma HDTV, $1,200* Panasonic VIERA TC-P46G10 Plasma HDTV, $1,500 Reviewed July 2009 Replaced with VIERA TC-P46G25 Plasma, $1,400* Panasonic VIERA TC-P50G20 Plasma HDTV, $1,500 Reviewed August 2010 MIDRANGE Panasonic VIERA TC-P50VT25 Plasma 3D HDTV, $2,600 Reviewed September 2010 Panasonic VIERA TC-P58V10 Plasma HDTV, $2,700 Reviewed January 2010 Replaced with TC-P58S2, $1,900 Samsung UN46C8000 LCD HDTV, $2,800 Reviewed July 2010 LG INFINIA 47LE8500 LCD HDTV, $2,900 Reviewed June 2010 Samsung UN55B7000 LCD HDTV, $3,500 Reviewed August 2009 Replaced with UN55C7000 LCD HDTV, $3,300* HIGH END Samsung UN55B8500 LCD HDTV, $4,500 Reviewed January 2010 Panasonic Premiere TH-65VX100U Plasma HD Monitor,…