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Front Page News
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Like almost all audio nuts, I had picked up most of whatever early information I had from various sources, some of the most fruitful being the question sections of various magazines. Joseph Giovanelli and Herman Burstein offered scads of useful stuff...
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Mentor Floyd Toole with his amazing 1970s sideburns My first few days on the job as an audio journalist all those years ago seemed like winning the lottery. In earlier jobs, I had always been the guy people came to to waste time talking about hi-f. Now,...
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Today, it seems hard to believe, but when I was growing up, the ultimate in high technology was audio. How I managed to get interested in the field is a mystery to me, as it certainly was to my family -- my parents thought they had spawned some kind of...
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Editor's Note: Please join TheaterFocus in welcoming Ian G. Masters to his first blog. Ian G. Masters Excuse me, let me just move a few of these boxes to make some space. As long as I'm going to inhabit this small corner of the blogosphere, I should give...
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Remember the monster sized man-eating HDTV ? It was Panasonic’s 103” inch plasma the largest production plasma screen made to date. The cost is outrageous, get ready to pay some $70K for the devil’s HDTV. That’s almost as much...
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EISA or European Imaging and Sound Association gives out awards every year for excellence in consumer electronics products. Like many awards they announce the winners before the actual event which seems a bit anti-climatic. EISA is a collective of Editors-in-Chiefs...
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You thought stereo was dead, didn’t you? At a time when manufacturers are moving to nothing but multi-channel systems aimed at home theater, Onkyo has introduced a different idea. We hear about new HTiB systems and more channels being tacked on...
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This link has been going around lately so I decided to chime in with it because it’s very good guide. It also verbalizes the state of TV/IP as we stand today. It’s Jeff’s Quick Guide to TV on the Net (TV/IP) found on Jeff Pulver’s...
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Integra is a front company of Onkyo that ships higher end versions of its Onkyo counterparts. Now Integra has brought its "high end" approach to HTPC which is a bit of a surprise. Integra is known for components like DVD players. The company's highly...
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I had an interesting chat yesterday with my local high end dealer. He has a store in town called Soundstage that specializes in really esoteric high end stuff. His store carries names like Conrad Johnson, Martin Logan, Arcam and a whack of others I've...
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Personally, I don't see what the big deal is but … This is a new all in one Home Theater system coming up from Sony this summer. Model TAV-L1/R combines a Bravia 32" LCD screen with some integrated audio components designed for HT. The audio portion...
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Advanced Micro Devices, AMD the world's second largest microprocessor developer and bane of Intel announced that it agreed to buy ATI for $5.4 Billion dollars. ATI Tech is a Canadian graphics processor (GPU) manufacturer who makes many of the world's...
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"The poor girl didn't stand a chance." Witnesses said at the scene. Panasonic unleashed a monster when it unveiled its world record breaking 103 inch plasma HDTV. Crowds gasped when the monstrosity was first unleashed at a public display. The crowd was...
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Hollywood is slowly coming to grips with new economic opportunities to sell content over the internet. Movie and TV studios are actively seeking out contracts to distribute media files through the web. Both download to burn and media files that are playable...
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Outlaw announced that it has had to roll with the times and increase prices on some of its most popular offerings. The 7500 and 7700 multi-channel amps are still the most affordable products in their class despite the modest price increase. Effective...
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D&M Holdings is the hi-fi collective that owns names like Denon, Marantz and Boston Acoustics. Their products by Denon and Boston Acoustics have been picked up by Circuit City . D&M Holdings is originally a Japanese corporation that formed with...
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Well, tie my mullet with a bandana! Xbox Live is throwing an 80s Arcade game revival . I don't know about where you are right now but it's very hot and humid outside over here in HomeTheaterFocus land. Generally sitting around indoors playing video games...
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In our last look at digital media we covered some of the oldest formats including the ever present MP3 and Apple's AAC . The AAC file is Apple's codec based on the audio/video compression used by MPEG or the Moving Picture Experts Group - version 4. Another...
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A story about CableCard technology ran in the New York Times this month that quotes Richard Doherty of the market research firm Envisioneering Group saying: "The CableCard is essentially dead, It will go down in history like the Edsel." Heralded as successor...
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Have you ever tried to make sense of all the different types of digital audio and video ? Ever thought of creating a digital media library of your own but feel a little overwhelmed by all the formats? Welcome to the first installment of a series that...
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The NY Times put out a convincing rumor yesterday about Microsoft's plans to get into the MP3 player business . The Times says they received information about a Microsoft digital media player that would be launched by Christmas from: “… entertainment...
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This is the weekend that most of North America is united in sitting outside on lawn chairs drinking cold beverages and maybe catching some fireworks (well, not literally catching but - you know what I mean). The US celebrates its hard fought independence...
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The acoustic quality of digital audio players is a controversial topic on the best of days, but so are the merits of tube amplifiers. Some old school audiophiles swear by them claiming tubes provide warmer, richer sounds than a transistorized amplifier....
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I think the BD and HD DVD format war can be retired as a topic of lightweight discussion, at least by me. It's become a very politically charged matter. I submitted an editorial piece to Audioholics the other day , posted by Clint. It got a lot of attention...
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THX began life as a series of specifications for movie theaters back in the early 1980s when George Lucas was appalled by the varying audio/video quality that movie goers had to suffer. The first THX showroom opened in 1983 when the THX division of Lucasfilm...
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