I'm constantly amused by Stephen Mejias' blog over at Stereophile. In particular the self congratulatory postings they have been making about their covers lately, especially since they are so damn boring they literally put me to sleep. When I get a copy I have to quickly turn the cover so I don't collapse in a narcoleptic fit before I get to any of the articles.
Seriously Stephen, you put out a magazine cover that is exactly like every other cover Sterepohile has published in the last thee years and you want to crow over you choice of border color? Wow, that's just delusional. Do you think that covering up a couple of letters on the end of "Stereophile" makes you edgy? Or was it your daring choice of plum for the border? Give us a break, please! What I think you guys do over there is have a pair of dice. One has colors on it, from which you'll pick the border color, the other which side of the speaker you'll take the cover photo from. You wake up, roll them and that's what you go with, then get all giggly like a school girl if you do something clever, but please don't' tell me that took you more than an hour. Yes, I am including the time it takes to unpack the speaker and take the picture in your single back drop. Come on, splurge a little, rent a cat or a backdrop or something. How about a pug? No, how about a plant on top of those Wilson's from last week? A nice fern growing out of the top of them would be nice. You really want to shock me? Put a mezzo soprano on the cover.
What is it with you sick fascination with sterile hardware and page after page of technical data on the performance of a new DAC? Puhleese. Talk about repetitive. I am glad you are doing it, really, but page after page? What a total waste of valuable space.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Theta HDMI A Year Later
In September of 2008 Theta Digital announced HDMI support for the Casablanca III. I just wanted to say it's a full year later and I haven't yet seen any evidence any HDMI product has ever shipped to a customer from Theta Digital, and December is not looking any better.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Meridian - That's What I'm Talking About
So about one month after I suggested that Theta Digital was amongst the living dead, and suggested that they should have built an out-board adapter instead of completely re-working the Casablanca cashcow from the ground up, Meridian introduces a product along exactly the lines I was suggesting, for about $3,000 meridian owners of several different processors can purchase the HD621 and upgrade to full HDMI.
They could probably sell 3x as many if they could make it work with Casablanca's instead! Hah!
They could probably sell 3x as many if they could make it work with Casablanca's instead! Hah!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
NHT changes it's name to NDY!
For Not Dead Yet! Hahah.
Speaker Manufacturer Now Hear This has announced they are back in business, and plan to re-launch themselves as an Internet only company.
If you like a lot of presence, efficiency and volume, NHT are your speakers.
Sadly, I've never heard a pair of NHT's I liked, or felt were natural on anything other than brassy big band jazz or rock and roll.
Good luck to them just the same!
Nigel
Speaker Manufacturer Now Hear This has announced they are back in business, and plan to re-launch themselves as an Internet only company.
If you like a lot of presence, efficiency and volume, NHT are your speakers.
Sadly, I've never heard a pair of NHT's I liked, or felt were natural on anything other than brassy big band jazz or rock and roll.
Good luck to them just the same!
Nigel
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The New York Citty Ballet's "Romeo + Juliet"
I was only able to watch Peter Martin's "Romeo + Juliet" on television. Most of it in HD via WGBH, the rest through a lower res version sent out via DirecTV. Both versions suffered from a maddening tick on the right channel.
I could kvetch a full pages worth, but here it is in a few sentences. The best dancing happens well before the interlude. The lead's are entirely believable, but I'm afraid there's just not enough pretty dancing, and most of the group dancing scenes were choreographed "loosely." What I mean is that most group dance numbers were very individualized. It would have been nice to see this fine troupe doing at least a couple of really tightly synchronized pieces.
If you love ballet for ballet's sake, this R&J will leave you feeling like you just had Chinese food. Full, yet hungry. On the other hand, if you are looking for an experience that will sate your hunger for drama and moves at a good clip, this may be just the ticket!
I could kvetch a full pages worth, but here it is in a few sentences. The best dancing happens well before the interlude. The lead's are entirely believable, but I'm afraid there's just not enough pretty dancing, and most of the group dancing scenes were choreographed "loosely." What I mean is that most group dance numbers were very individualized. It would have been nice to see this fine troupe doing at least a couple of really tightly synchronized pieces.
If you love ballet for ballet's sake, this R&J will leave you feeling like you just had Chinese food. Full, yet hungry. On the other hand, if you are looking for an experience that will sate your hunger for drama and moves at a good clip, this may be just the ticket!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Theta: We're not dead yet!
Finally we see 1 piece of evidence from Theta that they're not dead yet and are actually doing something customer facing. The Theta Digital website has been completely redone, though there's precious little new useful content in it.
Even if they manage to revive the brand, I think any current Theta owner is going to be better served by selling their current units and getting other processors if BluRay is your thing. Whatever business Theta gets in their next product cycle will probably be built on entirely new customer base. I hope their ready to start from scratch.
Even if they manage to revive the brand, I think any current Theta owner is going to be better served by selling their current units and getting other processors if BluRay is your thing. Whatever business Theta gets in their next product cycle will probably be built on entirely new customer base. I hope their ready to start from scratch.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Why BD-Live Sucks
BD Live sucks for several reasons. First, it's almost impossible for developers to stop upgrading "features" they want to offer, that means that while your BD player may work today it may not tomorrow. Second, it delays release of movies previously released on DVD. Third, honestly, I want as LITTLE computing in my appliances as possible. I don't want my fridge to run Windows CE, I don't want Windows in my car, or Linux in my DVD player or toaster oven.
Why? Because I want them to just work. I stick a movie in, and it should play. The only features I really care about are the resolution of the sound and video, compatability with my surround hardware and the usual forward/backward/scene selection controls. I don't want it to go online and check for updates, I don't want to conference with the same jack-asses that are busy twittering CNN what they think of octuplets, and I don't want to come home one day to find that an upgrade that happened while I was at work suddenly is preventing some disks from working. Also, I was really disapointed in reviews of early players which seem to indicate that they just didn't have the horsepower to play movies correctly, or that some movies didn't have the bandwidth necessary to create a seamless experience. For heaven's sake, stop wasting useless time on features I can't possibly care about and focus on as broad a range of movies being BD ready as possible. It's been 8 years since the release of the Fellowship of the Ring and it's still only on DVD, but in the mean time every crap action movie that's come out has gone straight to BD. Ugh!
Why? Because I want them to just work. I stick a movie in, and it should play. The only features I really care about are the resolution of the sound and video, compatability with my surround hardware and the usual forward/backward/scene selection controls. I don't want it to go online and check for updates, I don't want to conference with the same jack-asses that are busy twittering CNN what they think of octuplets, and I don't want to come home one day to find that an upgrade that happened while I was at work suddenly is preventing some disks from working. Also, I was really disapointed in reviews of early players which seem to indicate that they just didn't have the horsepower to play movies correctly, or that some movies didn't have the bandwidth necessary to create a seamless experience. For heaven's sake, stop wasting useless time on features I can't possibly care about and focus on as broad a range of movies being BD ready as possible. It's been 8 years since the release of the Fellowship of the Ring and it's still only on DVD, but in the mean time every crap action movie that's come out has gone straight to BD. Ugh!
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