Innehållsförteckning för May 2017 från Sound & Vision

A couple of things in this issue triggered my inner consumer advocate as we went to press. First was the reader letter from James Deas (see page 14) in which he describes being trapped in the surprise sinkhole created by the TV industry’s choppy transition from HDCP 1.4 to HDCP 2.2. Remember a few years back? The manufacturers were selling cutting-edge Ultra HD televisions that had the requisite HDMI 1.4 or HDMI 2.0 interface for 4K signals, but mated with a soon to be outdated chip for copy-protection management. Didn’t really matter at first until—whammy!—Hollywood turned on the new encryption. If you have one of those early 4K sets and buy yourself a new 4K Roku or UHD BD player, you’ll be watching 4K content in 1080p, or else buying…

DIRECTV NOW Free DirecTV Now? That’s what T-Mobile is offering to AT&T Wireless subscribers who activate two lines and transfer their cell numbers to T-Mobile ONE. So T-Mobile is using an AT&T-owned video service to poach mobile customers from AT&T—cue demonic laughter... Smart TV Platforms are consolidating. Ten TV makers are using Roku and Chromecast in lieu of rolling their own... Interactive Movie Extras are being added to Comcast’s X1 video platform. Titles from Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony, and Universal will get elements such as photo galleries and video clips that are updated as the movie unspools... Sinclair’s TBD is a digital multicast network aimed at millennials. Multicast means TV stations will carry it as a secondary channel, allowing broadcasters to seek new revenue while leaving traditional network and independent channels…

Back in the days before Blu-ray, companies like ClearPlay and TV Guardian offered parents a way to filter their children’s DVD viewing to screen out material deemed offensive. Some may call it censorship; others, a necessary tool for parents The latest attempt to provide such a service ran into a legal roadblock when a federal district court in California ordered Utah-based VidAngel to cease operations. The company says it’s trying to help parents protect their kids against nudity and foul language. But the court preliminarily agreed with Disney, Lucasfilm, Fox, and Warner Bros. that the process circumvented the CSS (Content Scramble System) digital rights management built into the DVD format VidAngel argued that its decryption was legal under the Family Home Movie Act of 2005, which exempts DVD encryption if…

PRICE $649 THE ATH-A2000Z IS THE TOP model from Audio-Technica’s Art Monitor Series, and its polished titanium earcups are a not-so-subtle hint about the headphone’s status in the company’s pecking order. It’s made in Japan, just like Audio- Technica’s very best headphones (such as the ATH-W5000). The company has been making ’phones since 1974. The ATH-A2000Z is an overthe- ear, closed-back design with a Double Air Damping System to better control the driver’s sound within the earcup. That’s cool, but it doesn’t do much to isolate the wearer from external noise compared with, say, my Audeze EL-8 closed-back headphones; that one does a better job hushing noise. The ATH-A2000Z bears a striking resemblance to the ATH-A2000X headphones that debuted in 2008. The biggest and most noticeable change between the two…

PRICE $599 BEYERDYNAMIC IS A PRETTY conservative company, and its sound hasn’t really changed all that much over the last decade. I started to sense something was up in 2015 when I reviewed the flagship T 1 second-generation headphone that took the brightness down a smidge. Now the smoothing trend continues with the Amiron Home open-back, over-the-ear headphone. The look is also fresher, and this headphone definitely has a warmer, sweeter sound than the model it replaces, the T 90. Beyerdynamic is onto something new, and I like it. The Amiron Home’s velvety-soft velour padded headband also feels great, and the Alcantara-covered pads coddled my ears. The headphone’s real star attraction are the newly designed Tesla technology 45mm drivers. Solid aluminum side yokes enhance durability, and maybe it’s just me,…

Breaking the 4K Barrier PRICE $35,000 WHILE 4K HAS BECOME THE NEW norm for the flat-panel industry, its adoption into the home projection market has been slow, to say the least. Until now, Sony has been trailblazing native 4K for the consumer home theater market while others have offered quasi-4K options that use techniques to deliver near- 4K quality with 1080p imaging systems at more affordable pricing. Among those manufacturers, JVC led the way with their e-shift system, which over time has matured to contend quite convincingly with native 4K designs. But e-shift has always been seen as a temporary measure until the day we finally get true 4K D-ILA chips from JVC. Thankfully, that day has come with the company’s new flagship, the DLA-RS4500. This design is a departure…

PRICE $300 WHY IS IT THAT EVERY YEAR, TVS seem to get bigger while speakers seem to get smaller? Back when Stereo Review became Sound & Vision, a nice home theater had a 34-inch tube TV and a decent 5.1- channel surround sound system with floorstanding tower speakers. Now, many years later, the TV has grown to 65, 70, or even 80 inches, but the speakers have shrunk to the point where they’re small enough to get lost at the bottom of the massive screen. Perhaps we simply need to recalibrate our thinking. Back when cars with big V8 engines ruled the day, the car guys would say that there’s no replacement for displacement. But today, you can get a brand-new 2017 Mustang with a puny 2.3-liter EcoBoost four-banger that…

UHD Star-Lord? PRICE $549 WE’RE NOW INTO THE SECOND year of the Ultra HD Blu-ray era, but up to this past January, Samsung, Philips, and Panasonic pretty much had the UHD player market all to themselves. That month’s Consumer Electronics Show, however, saw the introduction of models from LG and Sony, together with new ones from Samsung and Panasonic. Still, the player that has been eagerly anticipated by videophiles in the know is the Oppo. Why? Because Oppo has carved out an enviable niche for itself in a market largely ignored by the majors—charging slightly more for disc players that do virtually everything an audio/video enthusiast could want, and typically offering superb build quality, to boot No question that the first Ultra HD Blu-ray models we reviewed from those mass-market…

PRICE $699 BUDGET 1080P PROJECTORS targeted at sports fans are a staple of many manufacturers’ lineups. These usually come with a promise to “transport you to the stadium” by projecting a bright, 100-inchdiagonal picture from just a few feet out from a wall or screen, and they include a Sports picture mode to give Astroturf that hyper-real, greener-than-green look. In some cases, however, such projectors can deliver surprisingly accurate images. Pair one of them with an equally affordable screen, and you’ll get a satisfying big-screen movie-viewing experience for under $1,000. BenQ’s $699 HT1070 is one example of a sports projector that can be moved from your rec room to your home theater. It uses a 6Xspeed, six-segment (RGBRGB) color wheel and features Texas Instruments’ BrilliantColor, an image processing technology that…

“Isn’t that amazing? I mean, there it actually is. I can’t believe it. I lived long enough to hear it right.” That’s Lou Reed, lifelong audiophile, commenting to his longtime friend and producer Hal Willner while listening to the in-studio playback of the remastered version of “I Wanna Be Black,” from his landmark 1978 album, Street Hassle And yes, you read that right: Lou Reed was an audiophile. Many assume the critically acclaimed punk poet laureate, who passed away in 2013 at age 71, was a lo-fi enthusiast at best, but nothing could be further from the pale blue truth. As the overall broadstroke sonic palette of the recently released 17-disc The RCA & Arista Album Collection consistently proves, Reed held to a steadfast aural vision for his solo career,…

E-mail them to HTLetters@sorc.com. Please note: 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 Sound & Vision magazine and TEN: The Enthusiast Network. We reserve the right to edit letters for brevity. Due to the volume of mail that we receive, we regret that we cannot respond to every letter. A Tale of Two Speakers I enjoyed the reviews of two great value speaker systems in the January issue, the Elac Uni-Fi UB5 and the Emotiva Airmotiv T1. But two different reviewers and absolutely no comparison between…

PRICE $399 WITH THE ISINE 10, AUDEZE completely reinvented the in-ear headphone. I’m not exaggerating. While every other in-ear headphone uses dynamic or balanced armature drivers, the iSine 10 has planar magnetic drivers, the same thin-film driver technology Audeze uses with all of their on-, and very high-end over-the-ear headphones. The driver isn’t the only unique design feature, though. The iSine 10’s wild-looking earpieces are a good deal larger and designed in a completely different way than any other in-ear on the market. At first I was concerned about the size of the relatively large earpieces. But the iSine 10 weighs next to nothing, at just 0.7 ounces, and they come equipped with ear hooks that wrap up and over your ears to secure the headphones in place. Even when…

PRICE $599 LUNA IS NOT YOUR FATHER’S Adcom. As the first speaker to bear the familiar red logo, from a relatively recent licensee of the venerable old brand, it has no common heritage with the fine power amplifiers and preamplifiers on which the original company built its name in the ’80s and ’90s, except for its dominant color—black. Funny thing is, at a glance you probably wouldn’t even know it’s a speaker. It could easily be mistaken for an accent piece. It’s beautiful to look at, but even if you’re not a fan of its modern design, there’s no denying that Luna is unusual in the world of portable wireless speakers.. Adcom’s sonic discus is about 13.5 inches across and expands gracefully from 0.75 inch on its metal edge to…

How to Win at Wi-Fi The network is rapidly becoming the most important tool in a modern home, connecting a growing number of devices both inside and outside the house. In last month’s column, I discussed various tips to help maximize your home’s network performance, including things like making sure your internet subscription plan was up to par, double-checking that your ISP is actually delivering what you’re paying for, getting a good modem, keeping your firmware up to date, and using hard-wired Ethernet connections when possible. This month I’m going to discuss the area where many homes still struggle: Wi-Fi performance. Fortunately, once you have the basics of your network squared away, there are a few simple things you can do to improve your Wi-Fi performance. Location, Location, Location As…

The Download on Netflix The latest upgrade from the always-evolving Netflix—the ability to download content for offline viewing—is restricted to users of its mobile apps. Unlike streaming, this means you’ll be able to watch specific movies and TV shows on a phone or tablet without being connected to the internet and incurring pesky data charges. To get a sense of how the download experience differs from streaming or playing a disc, I pulled out my iPad and Android phone and made sure the latest Netflix app was installed as well as iOS 8.0 (or later) or Android 4.4.2 (or above). When deciding what to watch from the app, you’ll see “Available for Download” listed on the menu. You won’t see the option by accessing Netflix from a smart TV, Bluray…

THIS MONTH’S HOT STUFF... LG UP970 Ultra HD Blu-ray Player A year ago, there was exactly one Ultra HD Blu-ray player. Now there are several, including LG’s first player, the UP970, which is compatible with both high dynamic range (HDR) formats— HDR10 and Dolby Vision—and facilitates 4K streaming from Netflix and YouTube. The player also supports 10-bit color and the expanded Rec. 2020 color space. Future Vision: You’ll be able to watch the first round of 4K movies encoded in Dolby Vision when LG makes a firmware update available later this year. Warner Bros., Universal, and Lionsgate have committed to releasing movies in the Dolby format this year. In addition to a USB port, the player has an optical audio output and two HDMI outputs, one of which supports Version…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF Contrast Ratio: 150,000:1 MEASUREMENTS were taken in a variety of conditions as described with the bulk taken in the Natural preset with the laser set to Mid brightness. The gamma correction preset was selected as Custom 1 (2.3). All of the calibration was done with the lens aperture in –10 and the dynamic laser disabled. The contrast ratio measurements were done in a variety of different modes for the aperture as noted. All viewing and measurements were done on a 120-inch-diagonal Stewart StudioTek 100 screen (1.0 gain). THE full-on/full-off contrast was measured with a Minolta T-10 meter from 4 inches away from the lens face. I tested the projector in various laser levels with the lens aperture in various conditions. The highest native contrast ratio (dynamic laser disabled) was…

Projection for All? PRICE $2,000 I’VE BEEN PROJECTOR-LESS FOR a good two years. It began with a 2015 move across the country from California to Florida. Then came a steady stream of flat-screen TVs as that technology progressed from the 2K era to the age of Ultra HD with 4K resolution, advanced color, and high dynamic range (HDR). Still, it’s not like I’ve been exiled to the proverbial desert island. Those top-of-the-line TVs have been a treat, and there’ll be more to come. I’ve missed having a big screen, however, with the sense of image immersion that only a frontprojection setup can provide The arrival of a not exactly cheap but still surprisingly affordable projector from Sony forced my hand, so I finally installed my two retractable projection screens, a…

PRICE $8,000 IF VIDEO PROJECTORS HAVE ONE serious limitation as display devices, at least for the home, it’s lamp life. Manufacturers make glowing claims for this, sometimes as high as 6,000 hours; that’s to half brightness. However, the video perfectionist is unlikely to get to half that figure, or even a third of it, before he or she senses that the picture is growing dim. It’s not unheard of for critical users to replace the lamp at 1,000 hours to maintain the projector’s youthful good looks. But projection lamps aren’t cheap. Neither, of course, is the Epson PowerLite Pro Cinema LS10500. But it replaces that ubiquitous lamp with two lasers—a first in a projector at anywhere near its price. Kris Deering reviewed its predecessor, the LS10000, in our November 2015…

PRICE $11,395 as reviewed AS A MEMBER OF GENERATION X, I sometimes get paranoid about being target-marketed when I see a product name appended with an “X”—for instance, MartinLogan’s new ElectroMotion ESL X speaker. I, for one, would be an easy target: An eX-MartinLogan owner, I’m very familiar with the detailed, almost eerily present sound that the company’s hybrid electrostatic speakers deliver. Consider me a fan Why did I move on from my Martin- Logans? Adaptation to change, mostly. The big A/V console I had custom-built to accommodate my oversize MartinLogan center-channel speaker suddenly felt like it was overwhelming my space. I also thought that dynamic speakers might be a better fit for the mostly rockmusic diet I was consuming. After I made the switch, however, I would often become…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF Contrast Ratio: 1,706:1 PRE- and post-calibration measurements were made in the BenQ HT1070’s Cinema preset. Maximum contrast measurements were made in Cinema mode with the Economic lamp setting active. With this configuration, the BenQ’s black level measured 0.015 ft-L and peak white 25.6 ft-L, for a contrast ratio of 1,706:1. HIGHEST peak brightness was delivered by the default settings in the Bright preset: 72.4 ft-L. The projector’s Sports and Vivid presets both yielded around 50 ft-L. Fan noise in this and other presets with lamp mode set to Normal was noticeable at my seat 4 feet behind the projector. BEFORE calibration, the BenQ’s Normal color temperature preset in Cinema mode delivered a mostly accurate but slightly bluish grayscale, with the Delta E averaging out to a respectable 2.2. Calibration…

15 Minutes with HDMI Forum Chairman Chris Pasqualino When HDMI hit the scene in 2003, it was welcomed as a godsend, enabling enthusiasts to replace a rat’s nest of audio and video cables with a single connection. The specification has evolved steadily over the years to keep pace with the ever-changing A/V landscape and encountered a few bumps along the way. In January, the HDMI Forum announced Version 2.1, a forward-looking upgrade of the current HDMI 2.0b spec. We recently caught up with HDMI Forum Chairman Chris Pasqualino to learn about the implications of HDMI 2.1 now and in the future. —Bob Ankosko S&V: Let’s start with some background on the Forum and the role it plays in the ongoing evolution of the HDMI audio/video interface CP: The HDMI founders…

Home Audio Comes Roaring Back In the Golden Age of Audio, a good playback system, along with a good music collection, was truly an aspirational goal. Your home, and maybe even your life, just wasn’t complete until there was a stereo in the living room and a shelf of recorded music. Enthusiasts had the tallest speakers and the most discs, but from the ’50s to the ’80s, the paradigm was well rooted in the mind of every American consumer. Then, as paradigms always do, it shifted Maybe it was the Sony Walkman, maybe it was portable CD players, maybe it was the ever-fiercer competition for consumer dollars posed by everbigger TVs, but the bloom slowly came off the home audio rose. Then when MP3 players, iPods, and smartphones came along,…

Dolby Atmos, the new object-oriented and height-enhanced surround codec, is already well entrenched in Blu-ray Disc releases and A/V receivers. Now it is coming to Xbox One (and One S) gaming consoles and Windows 10 computers. But wait, don’t gamers often use headphones? They can still experience Atmos using any headphones. But of course they can also use an Atmosenabled soundbar or Atmos-enabled component system with upward-firing speakers, or a no-holdsbarred Atmos system with ceiling speakers. Bring it on! Xbox also announced that the two Atmos-savvy Xbox consoles will pass the Blu-ray bitstream to a receiver or other audio device for the movie pleasure of Xbox Preview members. The console must be connected via HDMI to an Atmos-compatible receiver, the Blu-ray player may need an update, and you should enable…

Big changes are in store at the Federal Communications Commission, the government agency with the biggest influence over what you see on your various screens. The FCC is ending its longtime TV station and newspaper cross-ownership ban, so your local channels are more likely to be under the same ownership as your local newspapers. The change was already afoot before the presidential election and is now, at press time, all but certain. This means opinions in your community will still be shaped by powerful media people—but by fewer of them. FCC chair Tom Wheeler left the commission ahead of the change in administration. Contrary to what we predicted when the former cable lobbyist took office, he left a pro-consumer legacy on issues like digital cable readiness and net neutrality. No…

Marantz SR7011 A/V Receiver PRICE $2,199 THE D+M GROUP WAS FORMED IN 2002 with the merger of Denon and Marantz, each a powerhouse in A/V receivers and other audio categories. Through several changes of ownership, the two brands have remained distinct, with different cosmetic looks, slightly different feature sets, and slightly different voicings; each team has its own sound-tuning engineers and expert listeners. But as a reader once pointed out, popping the lid on comparably priced models from the two brands may reveal a close kinship in circuit layouts, suggesting certain economies of scale. And the new top-of-the-line AVR from Marantz further mimics its sister brand by adopting HEOS multiroom connectivity, a feature previously associated with Denon. Our review sample of the receiver arrived with Denon’s HEOS 7 and HEOS…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF Contrast Ratio: 5,650:1 FOR the picture settings used in this review, go to soundandvision.com. MEASUREMENTS were made using CalMAN software from SpectraCal, together with Photo Research PR-650 and Klein K-10A color meters, and an AV Foundry VideoForge pattern generator. All calibrations and measurements were performed in 2D. IN the Reference Calibrated Preset with the Brightness setting at 53, the Contrast at 96, the Lamp Control on Low, and the Gamma Correction at 2.4, the measured peak white level was 22.6 ft-L and the black level 0.004 ft-L, resulting in the contrast ratio shown above. I also measured the full-on/full-off contrast ratio for different combinations of the Brightness (53 and 54) and Gamma Correction (2.4 and 2.2) controls, and in both the High and Low Lamp Control settings. I used…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF Contrast Ratio: 24,950:1 FOR the picture settings used in this review, go to soundandvision.com. MEASUREMENTS were made with SpectraCal CalMAN measurement software, Photo Research PR-650 and Klein K-10A color meters, and an AVFoundry VideoForge pattern generator. All calibrations and measurements were made with a 1080p input signal in standard dynamic range. IN the calibrated Digital Cinema Color mode, with Brightness at 0, Contrast at –5, Power Consumption on High, and Gamma at –1, the measured peak white level was 24.95 ft-L and the black level 0.001 ft-L, resulting in the contrast ratio shown above. This measurement was made with the pause bug from an Oppo UDP-203 Ultra HD Blu-ray player displayed in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, which kept the lasers from shutting down completely as they…

UHD BLU-RAY The Girl on the Train Getting Back on Track Rachel (Emily Blunt) is a lost soul who eases the lingering pain of her divorce with ample doses of alcohol, particularly on her daily rail trips to and from Manhattan. Her only diversion is an elaborate fantasy about someone she sees from her moving window, Megan (Haley Bennett), and projecting all of her longing onto this stranger. And then one day Rachel spies Megan doing something she ought not to, threatening the idyllic life the voyeur has imagined for her. She even goes so far as to attempt a confrontation with Megan, but it quickly becomes a boozy blur of violence. Rachel awakens bruised and bloodied, and soon Megan is reported missing. The police investigating the disappearance have no…