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  • Page 1 New Products From Runco, Revel, NAD, Pioneer, Linn & Lexicon Sony G90 Size D o e s M a t t e r ! $5.95 US • $7.95 CAN www.theperfectvision.com...
  • Page 2 Highlights: Sandow in Cuba at the Buena Vista Social Club; Seydor on the Cutting Room Floor; Rogers on Color; Rogers on Runco & Sony; Miiller in the War Room with Revel; Rawlinson with the Alchemist of Linn. Valin with Queen Elizabeth (he’d rather be with Mrs.
  • Page 3 Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut – HP Film Forum Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (DVD) – Jonathan Valin S I G N O F F For the Reader Information about TPV VisionWatch Prognostications: Our staff predicts the future Front Cover: Sony VPH-G90U Multiscan Projector...
  • Page 4 Barco so that it was correctly distanced from the 8-foot Stewart screen. Instead, they used the ceiling- mounted plate Sony had installed for their projector. Thus, I couldn’t get an accurately sized 4:3 picture, which meant I couldn’t watch full-screen discs (this means anything before...
  • Page 5 E D I T O R I A L I: Can All That Counts Be Counted? A Forum Begins We are running Charles Hansen’s response to Issue 24 as the beginning of a forum in which we explore how we will blend the observational and the empirical (tests and measurement programs) in our video and audio sections.
  • Page 6 DVD players, which does a pretty good job. My monitor is the Toshiba 35- inch direct view, and I heard that the Sony DVD player looks a little soft when not in 16.9 enhanced mode (although that appears not to be a problem with the S7700).
  • Page 7 Down the Primrose Path Toward Perfect Vision Forever? E d i t o r : I’ve been with TPV since the first issue, and was thankful, even delighted, when you covered the remaining issues on my subscription from five years back. That’s perfect honesty.
  • Page 8 Good to see him handling his end of things – he’ll keep the hardware guys on their toes. (I saw him beat a Sony rep into submission at CES over the lack of blacker-than-black display on the DVP-S7700.) Speaking of hardware, saw Te x a s Instruments’...
  • Page 9 When we embarked upon the re-launch of The Perfect Vision, I envisioned the experience as a great adventure – an opportunity to explore uncharted territory in home entertainment. Everywhere I looked and listened, there were new experiences, as the emergence of digital technology shattered the old notions of what is pos- sible in home audio.
  • Page 10 RPTV, home theater means a front projector with at least a six foot wide, 16.9 or 1.85 screen. In this issue I review front projectors from Sony and Runco that will really make your home-theater experience happen. But you can’t have large screens without HDTV or upconverters, unless you want to stare at scan lines.
  • Page 11 M U S I C The Vexed Question of Multimedia… …is it just a random mesh of sight and sound, or does some- thing really new emerge? T h i s gets another look in this issue from Andrew Quint, who saw a performance in New York that made him think the much-hyped phenomenon might be real.
  • Page 12 Making a technology portable frequently triggers this sense of awe. I recall when Sony introduced its first portable CD player, not long after the introduction of CDs to the market, and it was only slightly larger than a jewel case.

  • Page 13: The Human Interface

    D E S I G N recall as a seven-year-old switching on the system that my father had designed, made, and housed in a meticulously crafted and veneered cabi- net. One satisfyingly large circular knob served as on/off switch and volume con- trol, another selected between radio (wireless!) wavebands, and a third tuned the radio.
  • Page 14 INFOCOMM I visited last June to attend INFOCOMM International 1999. This annual trade show, sponsored by the International Communications Industries Association (ICIA), is the most important event of its kind for vendors of presentation products. An estimated 25,000 people attended the show this year –...
  • Page 15 in the world of displays. As with many trade shows, the city hosting Infocomm changes each year. But the general organization of the show remains much the same wherever it occurs. This year it was the huge halls of the Orange County Convention Center that were filled with manufacturer’s exhibits.
  • Page 16 to recreate the theater experience in the home. The dominant display technology today for home-theater screens larger than 40” diagonal is CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) projection. It is used in almost every rear-projection TV and most HDTVs just recently introduced. But it is an old technol- ogy near its limit and its days are numbered.
  • Page 17 based on DLP with a native resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels (16.9). Hitachi and Mitsubishi have signed agreements to develop consumer HDTVs based on this technology for sale in late 2000. The image quality of the prototype was, to my eyes, excellent.
  • Page 18 W h a t d o e s a f i l m e d i t o r d o ? A n d w h a t e f f e c t d o e s t h i s h a v e o n t h e f i n a l v e r s i o n N OT ometimes I think that every position on a moviemaking crew comes with its special privi-...
  • Page 19 there appear to be a movie here at all? Sometimes technical problems develop – shots go out of focus, the director loses the light at the end of the day and doesn’t get some angles he fears he needs, the negative gets damaged in the lab. When this sort of thing happens, it is imperative that the director see the scene cut together as soon as possible so he can deter- mine if additional shots are needed or, perish the thought, the...
  • Page 20 guess, in working with this kind of direc- tor only once. Most of the time I get few, if any, notes, and the directors seem to trust me to use my abilities to select the takes and structure the sequence of shots.
  • Page 21 the emotion, the mood, the action, the transfor- mation lead the cut, rather than the other way around. I don’t like to let picture cuts fall on hard consonants, as that emphasizes a cut. I enjoy prelaps to pull the narrative along –...
  • Page 22 audience for the first time. There are always surprises. Things you worried were unclear the audience tracked perfectly; things you never imagined would be a problem turn out to require a lot more thought and work. Previews were useful for studios, too, helping them determine the kind of movie they had, the more effectively to market it.
  • Page 23 F E A T U R E D Lexicon MC-1 Controller Sonic Flavors To Slake Every Thirst exicon is unique among companies building multi-chan- nel digital controllers (see “What You Should Know About Controllers,” which follows this review). Rather than approach the product category after designing two-chan- nel analog preamplifiers, Lexicon enters the multi-channel arena with a decades-long history of creating professional dig- ital-signal-processing gear.
  • Page 24 ment. A “Bass Split” feature takes bass infor- mation filtered from the center channel (assuming you have a small center speaker) and directs it to the left and right channels. Inside, the MC-1 uses AD converters and DACs from a company called AKM. Both are delta-sigma devices that are supposedly better performing than the con- verters used in most controllers.
  • Page 25 o v e r, detail resolution in the surround channels was excellent. Moving next to Logic 7, Lexicon’s process for deriving 7 channels from 2-channel or 5.1-channel sources, I found the effect worked remarkably well on film soundtracks. (Logic 7 enhancements can be combined with some THX process- ing on discrete 5.1-channel sources such as Dolby Digital and DTS.) The addition of rear speakers driven with Logic 7 produced a more vivid feeling of sound effects moving...
  • Page 26 should mention that my loudspeaker array is less than ideal for assessing Lexicon’s surround modes. The side loudspeakers are bi-polar (the Revel Embrace set to bi-pole for music sur- round, di-pole for films), and the rear speakers were the point-source Mirage Reference Monitors. Lexicon rec- ommends seven timbre-matched loudspeakers in an acousti- cally absorbent room.
  • Page 27 No product better exemplifies the fundamental shift in home-entertainment technology than the controller. Also known as a surround-sound processor or audio-video pre- amplifier, the controller is an entirely new product category that combines many diverse functions in a single chassis. To understand what a controller is and does is to understand the technologies that are trans- forming the way we reproduce sound in our...
  • Page 28 nal had to be encoded as a radio frequency (RF). If you don’t want to immediately replace your cherished laserdisc collection with DVDs, you’ll probably need a controller that can decode those RF-encoded Dolby Digital discs. If your controller doesn’t have an RF digital input (typ- ically labeled “AC-3 RF”), you’ll need an exter- nal RF demodulator box.

  • Page 29: Bass Management

    process takes about eight minutes, can be per- formed with the AVP installed in your system, and doesn’t erase your set-up and configuration settings. New software can add capabilities such as DTS or MPEG decoding (by changing the DSP code), refine the user interface (by updating the operating system), or configure the unit to accept formats not available when the product was designed (by changing the input-receiver software).
  • Page 30 speaker systems. For example, if you have five small loudspeakers and a subwoofer, you tell the controller to filter bass from each of the five channels, and to direct it, in sum, to the subwoofer. When watching a Dolby Digital or DTS movie, the bass from the LCR and sur- round channels is mixed with the Low Fre- quency Effects channel to drive the subwoofer.

  • Page 31: Component-Video Switching

    copy-protection problem), DVD-Audio and SACD players will have six analog outputs for reproducing multi-channel music discs. Unless your controller has a discrete six-channel ana- log input, you won’t be able to play high-reso- lution multi-channel music through your sys- tem until the copy-protection dust has settled. The six-channel analog input approach has its drawbacks: You’re paying for six DACs in the DVD- A or SACD player and for six DACs in the controller.
  • Page 32 Revel Ultima Speakers – From 2 to 7.1 Channels Episode One: The Ancient Enemy t is a conflict as old as good vs. evil. It is the war that came before wars between peoples. It is the battle between humankind and its environment and it is being fought to this day in your house.
  • Page 33 Now that your head is swimming, choose your dimensions. The actual dimensions you select based on a ratio such as those listed below will determine the exact frequencies at which the modes will develop. Jim Thiel, the engineering brain behind Thiel speakers, calculated the fol- lowing set of ratios: by 1.6 by 1...
  • Page 34 letting Room Optimizer search out different solutions (just hit “start” and go get a beer, or two). Room Optimizer is concerned only with the low-frequency characteristics of your room. Its search is based upon the fre- quencies from 20 Hz to 300 Hz. It is possible to set the high and low points within that 20-300 Hz range.
  • Page 35 established now that dead flat 20 kHz treble response in your room is an unpleasant expe- rience. I’m not sure if that’s because 20 kHz flat is just too much treble or too much distorted treble. I find that treble distortions are the most pernicious throughout the entire chain from recordings to speakers.
  • Page 36 Similarly, trying to follow the bass synthesizer lines in Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from the Ti t a n i c soundtrack [Sony SK 63213], a worthwhile test disc for bass performance, was an exercise in frustration.
  • Page 37 cians often use emphasis in the intensity of notes to build rhythmic structures within the measures of the music – it’s one of the things that separates artists from technicians. Bass that won’t get out of the way (and other distortions) mars the fine artistic emphasis applied by the musician, denying us access to the performance’s inner architecture.
  • Page 38 I have one minor sonic criticism of the Sub-15. Until the vol- ume is advanced to higher levels, it doesn’t resolve the sensa- tion of air moving in the recording venue. This is a sensation that exists in the concert hall and I have heard it reproduced by the Audio Artistry dipole subwoofers.
  • Page 39 LINN-AV5103 AKTIV Multi-Channel System In Search of the Mythical Beast: I he gleaming white livery of the Fed-X truck splintered the morning calm with a fusillade of gravel against the stone griffins sternly guarding the massive oak front door. Upon the FedEx man’s announcement: “Two items,” the door opened to reveal a man who might well be a stone Grif- fin himself, his face bearing a stern and raptor-like stare.
  • Page 40 was withdrawn from its shell and consigned to its whirring drawer mechanism. Messages darted again over the screens, followed by music that materialized throughout the room, a large gentle beast trembling the wooden floor, stalking along the walls, palpating the window panes. In the Company of the Beast I am listening as I write this to the latest release on the Water Lily Acoustics label, entitled Fascinoma, a virtuoso vehicle...
  • Page 41 again that this instrument was the first attempt at a full-range home music center, a range rarely captured or replicated by electronic devices today. All systems are biased in some way, and the three principal biases are toward time coherence, phase coherence, or tonal production.
  • Page 42 appears on the displays when the “surround” button is pressed while playing an AC3-encoded source. Also useful would be a last-source-selected memory. Now if you play a disc and adjust one of the speaker level controls, then hit “Play” to start the track again, you will discover you have to press the relevant source button before regaining use of the transport controls.
  • Page 43 that are DD compatible. There are preamp outs for all five channels. Build quality in gen- eral seems up to NAD’s usual fine standards. Also included are the NAD Link jacks, which allow other NAD components (with NAD Link) that are not remote controlled to be driven via the T770’s con- troller.
  • Page 44 plished with gain biasing to the surround channels, either. I set up the speakers fair and square. But clearly, the T770’s steering in DD mode is precise and smooth. Finally users are going to have to decide for themselves which features they can and can’t live without. At its suggested list price, the T770 faces some stiff competition from AVRs with higher stated power ratings and prodigious features.
  • Page 45 M U S I C Major Labels’ Plans for Classical Music on DVD f you’re looking for DVD movies at the Lincoln Cen- ter Tower Records in New York, there’s no prob- lem: Just head down the escalator and there they are – banks and banks of them.
  • Page 46 England, Charlotte Church: Voice of an Angel in Concert, are in the plans. Most of the Sony titles are old Herbert von Kara- jan performances – the Great Stone Face conductor (see review) up close and personal.
  • Page 47 “DVD was originally skewing toward older fans and clas- sic releases,” agrees Leslie Cohen, VP of business develop- ment for Sony Music. “But now with DVDs from groups like Oasis and Savage Garden and Pearl Jam, we’re obviously reaching out to younger listeners, and also trying to capitalize on the existence of a fairly large CD-ROM population, which is completely underserved.
  • Page 48 for classical music at BMG, explains, “We decid- ed to do it because the format had become stan- dard, and projected volume of hardware for last Fall was so high. This was an elaborate joint venture between various Bertlesmann compa- nies.
  • Page 49 Puccini: Turandot (at the Forbidden City of Beijing). RCA Victor Red Seal 74321-60917-2. ’m inclined to be kind to the lavish RCA Turandot, and not just because – as I sample a smorgasbord of available big- name classical DVDs, in this and a succeeding review – it’s the only one seriously crafted for the medium.
  • Page 50 dramatic confrontation, in the second scene of Act Two. Princess Turandot of China suffers from an icy heart, and a jones toward men. Any male of royal blood may woo her, but must answer three riddles. If his answers are correct, she marries him;...
  • Page 51 dot’s looks. Maybe, on a deeper level, he senses her own need to shed her obsession, but all we hear from him is that she’s beautiful. Maybe in the 1920s, when Puccini composed the piece, a preoccupation like that made more sense, but now it sounds silly.
  • Page 52 Entertainment ID4362PUDVD. Dvorák: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” (Her- ˇ bert von Karajan conducting), Sony Classical SVD 48421. Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (Herbert von Karajan con- ducting), Sony Classical SVD 46380. New Year’s Concert, Vienna 1987 (Herbert von Karajan conducting), Sony Classical SVD 45985.
  • Page 53 We know that it was faked, not to mince words, in the Karajan releases (see Heidi Waleson’s piece, in this issue, for Sony Music’s acknowledge- ment of that), and when I listened, I found I’d choose the merely “stereo”...
  • Page 54 Paging through the chapters is an eerie experience. At the start of each one, there’s Karajan on screen, his face inscrutable, a mask of – what? He projects, at best, a statue- like institutional persona, “Herr Music Director of All Europe,”...
  • Page 55 Roger Reynolds: Watershed (Mode 70, DVD) Jargon ere we have a first that needs attention – “the first music DVD [the package says] designed to totally utilize the medium’s full 5-channel capability.” I just wish it were better, and less pre- tentious.
  • Page 56 attention only if you care to give it some. I admit I’m skepti- cal about the need for so much commentary. Shouldn’t the music speak for itself? But then maybe the techniques really are so new that we all need orientation. Still, I knew we were in trouble when Reynolds tells us, with all the emotion of a librarian reading the phone book, that “meaning”...
  • Page 57 wandering, questing wiggles to a pulsing, stylized sun, all choreographed to the music, but far more gripping. (Imag- ine a dance with choreography more interesting than the musical score.) The largest, longest work we’re given is a 1996 compo- sition with the name Watershed IV, and it’s a tour de force for Schick’s percussion.
  • Page 58 Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare. Rhino 74469. $19.99 (DVD). alvador Dali saw his paintings come alive in it. Groucho Marx said it was great vaudeville and the last chance that burlesque had of surviving. Disney designed its costumes. It combined ele- ments of A Clockwork Orange, What Ever Happened to Baby J a n e, D r a c u l a, James Bond,...
  • Page 59 creatures surround him, place him in a wooden coffin, but suddenly, to our surprise, he bursts out, runs through the screen, and lands on stage, while the dancing spacemen remain in the film. Soon, the aliens locate Cooper, and one by one they smoothly jump from their places on film to the stage.
  • Page 60 reviews scrolling across the screen, and the many images of endless pave- ment, tunnels, and indistinct automo- bile headlights vaguely glowing from neon-lit gridlock. Much rock journal- ism might as well be printed in a tabloid, because of its sensational pur- suit of rumor and hype.
  • Page 61 practicing its independent philosophy before “Internet” was even part of our vocabulary. By remaining true to its standards, Fugazi is, without question, in a league by itself. Champi- ons of free speech, free thought, the homeless, minorities, AIDS research, and the elderly, the group rejects violence, racism, homophobia, war, alcohol, drugs, and slam dancing.
  • Page 62 rock show. Furthermore, Fugazi’s principled way of being a rock band doesn’t tend to appeal to the kind of people (i.e. frat boys, wanna-be’s, rednecks) who attend rock concerts in order to get high or smashed or both. One thing Instrument does not provide is a sense of Fugazi’s musical evolution.
  • Page 63 Voices of Light/The Passion of Joan of Arc rom the moment of its rebirth two issues ago, The Per - fect Vision has addressed itself squarely to the difficult concept of “multimedia.” Essays from Greg Sandow and HP in Issue 24 sought to define what multimedia is and is not, and to imagine its possibilities.
  • Page 64 (all but the very end is filmed indoors), Joan’s vulnerability and spiritual core, and the viciousness of her inquisitors. Voices of Light has had an excellent Sony recording [SK 62006]. That CD features, as the voice of Joan, the four...
  • Page 65 Middle French. Needless to say, translations are necessary and they were provided in the program at the concert, as they are with the Sony recording. But in the darkened hall, it wasn’t possible to follow along. Would Einhorn consider projection of the texts in some fashion –...
  • Page 66 VIDEO INSIGHTS An Introduction to Digital Video Part 2: Video Color Concepts olor is critical to the performance of any home the- ater. Most of us instantly recognize the problem with our neighbor’s TV, orange faces that look painted for Halloween or dull washed-out colors in a parade.

  • Page 67: Hue And Saturation

    normalized in the diagram. We are actu- ally about 20 percent more sensitive to the green curve than the red, and about 40 times less sensi- tive to the blue curve. As the wavelength of light varies, the probability that a cone will absorb that light depends on its spectral response, but all light absorbed by the same cone contributes equally to its response regardless of wavelength.

  • Page 68: The Cie Chromaticity Diagram

    Commission on Lighting) was created in 1927, and in 1931 established a colorime- try system to describe colors using a simple system of numerical coordinates. I won’t delve into the details behind that system other than to say it is based on the tristimulus response principles discussed earlier and experiments that were done with human observers.
  • Page 69 White Yellow 0.3127 0.421 0.3290 0.507 is that colors created by following the video signal’s “recipe” for mixing light from the red, green, and blue primaries will result in wrong colors. Hence, the colors from consumer monitors must be wrong! How wrong is a function of their deviation from the standard, and I’ll look at how to measure it below.
  • Page 70 are used in some circumstances. Remember that although the signal lev- els are the same, the actual brightness of light from each primary is not the same, that is determined by calibrating the reference white color to D65. Changing the signal levels of all primary colors together does not change the CIE (x,y) chromaticity of a c o l o r.
  • Page 71 C o n v e r s e l y, Sony now includes addi- tional service level adjustments in its top-end products to improve the conversion and color accuracy.
  • Page 72 9” CRTs may have come a little closer to reality. Physical The G90 has a huge physical presence, not unlike other 9” CRT projectors. At over 240 pounds, it is one of the heaviest projectors I’ve encountered. It was deliv- ered in a Styrofoam-padded cardboard box screwed to a wooden pallet.

  • Page 73: Installation And Setup

    I began setting the G90 up on a Saturday and was stymied by this omission. Fortunately, a quick query to an Internet newsgroup brought several correct solutions.
  • Page 74 A ride in a raft down the mighty Colorado river may convince you that it might be better to watch on the G90 than to actual participate. After sitting glued to my chair watching...

  • Page 75: Specifications

    Runco DTV-930 Multiscan Projector ne of the more exciting announcements at the last Consumer Electronics Show was the introduction of the Runco DTV-930, which significantly altered the price-performance curve for CRT projectors. The DTV-930 was cloned from one of Runco’s most successful products, the widely acclaimed IDP-980 Ultra.
  • Page 76 RGB outputs. But some HDTV set-top boxes provide only YPbPr outputs (Pana- sonic, Pioneer), while others provide RGB outputs (Sony, RCA) or both. This is a common limitation of a large installed based of projectors, so hopefully future set-top boxes will be designed with both RGB and YPbPr outputs to maximize their market opportunities.
  • Page 77 The resulting color accuracy is excellent. The green primary of the Sony VPH-G90U is shifted toward ye l l ow. This results in a gap of non-reproducible colors between its RGB color triangle and the SMPTE C triangle. The cyan color is desaturated (shifted toward white) and magenta is shifted toward blue.
  • Page 78 HDTVs on which I’ve viewed the same mater- ial. Picture clarity and definition on the Runco is far superior. The gap between the Runco and the Sony G90 is not as wide, but the G90 really does capture that sense of looking through an open window.

  • Page 79: Remote Control

    IEV Turboscan 1500 Line Doubler Any home theater that uses a CRT front projector capa- ble of graphics- or data-grade resolution needs a way to reduce the visibility of scan lines and remove inter- lace artifacts, which become painfully unpleasant on a big screen.
  • Page 80 Performance My primary source for evaluating the IEV was a Sony DVP- S7000 DVD player, using its composite, S-Video, and compo- nent outputs to test the various Turboscan inputs. I also used a Pioneer CLD-97 laserdisc player with its composite and S- Video outputs.

  • Page 81: Look And Feel

    Turboscan’s artifacts significantly affected per- formance on real-world film sources. Summary At first I used the Turboscan for viewing DVDs from the Sony DVP-7000. Later I discovered the joy of watching line-doubled laserdiscs from the Pioneer CLD-97. Laserdiscs look very good through the Turboscan, as long as you don’t have an...
  • Page 82 As with the Theta Vo y a g e r, it is an accurate meter, unlike that on the Sony p l a y e r s .
  • Page 83 On the Pioneer and Theta Voyager, these lines twitter a little but are sharp; on the Sony they are stable but with a slightly softer focus. This is a common dif- ference between downconversion algorithms: stability with softer focus or sharpness with aliasing artifacts.
  • Page 84 The performance of the YPbPr and RGB outputs were essentially the same when connected to a Sony VPH-G90U front projector. I also didn’t see any of the earlier VCR Macrovision problems using my Sony SLV-R5 S-VHS deck.
  • Page 85 Celebrate Film. Edinburgh Intl. Film Festival August 15 – 29, 1999 Edinburgh, Scotland Montreal World Film Festival August 26 – September 26, 1999 Montreal, Canada Black Filmworks Festival of Film and Video September 1 – 3, 1999 Oakland, CA Telluride Film Festival September 3 –...
  • Page 86 F I L M Classic Comedy’s Second Coming: o many Americans, Roberto Benigni and his film Life Is Beautiful materialized out of nowhere. Who was this odd foreigner who suddenly jumped to the front of the line and garnered three Oscars: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Actor (a first for an actor in a foreign subtitled film), and Best Dramatic Score? Recently, in television interviews and in print, Benigni has been depicted largely as a crazy but charm-...
  • Page 87 Though a number of films in which Benigni appears have not reached the US, many of his ear- lier efforts have been available for some time on home video in this country. As of this writing, none of his films have been released on DVD (with the exception of the just released Seeking Asylum –...
  • Page 88 persona, it is the second that gives us a glimpse of his remark- able chameleonic abilities as an actor. While comical, gang- ster Johnny is also a menacing figure and one to be feared, even if not taken completely seriously. This basic premise is not unlike that of the little known Buster Keaton film, The King of the Champs-Elysée, a 1934 French comedy in which Keaton plays both a variation of his usual screen character...
  • Page 89 original Pink Panther film – go figure). Sad to say, though, the film just doesn’t work. The dramatic plot of international intrigue (the kidnapping of the Princess of Lugash played by Debrah Farentino) is murky and uninteresting. The comic plot with which it is intertwined –...
  • Page 90 Kubrick and The Space Monsters he fanatics among you will know, by the time you read this, that the long-awaited Stanley Kubrick boxed set of seven films, released through Warner Home Video, is a great big disappointment. I am, at the time of this writing, just experiencing that first wave of anger and incredulity.
  • Page 91 hanced) that came from UA/MGM some months ago, with all the flaws of that release, including the image “sharpenings” that leave everyone, from man to apes, outlined by fine miniature halos. The picture is soft and the colors a bit on the pink side (on both my viewing devices).
  • Page 92 Alien Resurrection – we find each at its correct aspect, 2.35:1 for all save the James Cameron-direct- ed Aliens, done here at 1.85:1. All are enhanced for widescreen displays. All are in Dolby 5.1 surround, which, as we shall soon learn, is not always an unmixed blessing. And all have value-added features, ranging, at the simplest, from Resurrection’s making-of featurette, to the chock full of goodies on the original Alien, now in its “20th Anniver-...
  • Page 93 goes beyond the film itself, since through video we have come to, essentially, the preservation of film history. But is, for instance, The Last Starfighter really all that his- torically significant in the pioneering of digital effects as its liner notes proclaim, as does an included documentary? Do I really care, I ask myself, hoping by the asking I can pump up some enthusiasm for the subject? Nope, not really and truly.
  • Page 94 – opportunity to run riot with the colors and they do. Dreams has some of the most beautiful visuals you’re going to see short of the next world and this transfer does them full, full justice. It is one of those rare instances where high-tech movie reproduction in the home is fully justified by the visual content of the film you’re seeing.
  • Page 95 Biopics: Three British Royals Elizabeth. Shekhur Kapur, director. With Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth), Joseph Fiennes (Leicester), Geoffrey Rush (Walsingham), Christopher Eccleston (Norfolk), Richard Attenborough (Cecil). 1.85:1 Widescreen. Dolby 5.1. Polygram Video. Enhanced for 16.9. Mrs. Brown. John Madden, director. With Judi Dench (Queen Victoria), Billy Connolly (Brown), Antony Sher (Disraeli).
  • Page 96 you regularly hear on ER, all of whom act as if they were in a Tudor version of The Godfather – is to turn high drama into high kitsch. Director Kapur’s florid, melodramatic visual style only makes bad matters worse. Kapur dotes on short, punchy, M T V-like takes, in which he typically ratchets up the fore- boding (the one effect he seems to have mastered) by shoot- ing in very low light from lots of quick, “arty”...
  • Page 97 ing a number of successful mainstream films such as Waterloo Bridge (1930), Showboat (1936), and The Man in the Iron Mask (1939). But it is his wildly popular horror films – Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) –...
  • Page 98 and the Monster in one, he killed off the poor, undereducated outcast he was born and – using pieces of other lives real or imagined – reconstituted himself as the sophisticate he always wanted to be. The only vestiges of the old “Jimmy Whale” are found in his films, which, like the patchwork monsters they’re about, turn the bits of horror, loneliness, and alienation that Whale repressed from his past into an art that was quintessen-...
  • Page 99 Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut yes Wide Shut is one of those films that has the main- stream movie reviewers (I don’t dare use the word crit- ic in this context) in cloud cuckooland, with their assessments reading more like Rorshachs than having much to do with Stanley Kubrick’s last film.
  • Page 100 The Seventh Seal. Ingmar Bergman, director. 1957. B&W; 96 minutes; 1.33:1; Dolby Digital Monaural. Criterion DVD. he Seventh Seal was the film that made Ingmar Bergman internationally famous. After The Seventh Seal (and Wild Strawberries, which appeared later that same year, 1957), Bergman the brooding Swede was an inter- national succès d’estime, instantly elevated to the top tier of the art-house pantheon alongside Fellini, Antonioni, Kuro- sawa, Truffaut, Ray, and Buñuel.
  • Page 101 whose existence he can no longer quite believe; the cynical squire has learned to take life as it comes, without the prop of divinity. Together they are Everyman (and Bergman), and together they face the questions that vexed and haunted the Fourteenth Century and our own: In a world beset by evil, in a world that God has seemingly deserted, in the face of cer- tain annihilation, how does one live one’s life with value, and,...
  • Page 102 feelings breaks through the allegory with moving power. The great set piece on the hillside, where the knight and the squire share “communion” – here a bowl of milk and a plate of straw- berries – with Jof and Mia has a beauty of spirit and gor- geousness of language that are as deeply moving as Bergman intends the scene to be.
  • Page 103 What The Perfect Vision Is About: The Perfect Vision positions itself as “The Journal of Digital Audio and Video.” We cover major facets of the home enter- tainment arena: video equipment (HDTV); audio equipment (speakers, digital power amplifiers); convergence technology (DVD drives, digital-signal processors);...
  • Page 104 Aerial Acoustics ......Page 2 www.aerialacoustics.com Alphasound & Vision ......Page 76 www.alphasound.com Audio Products International .
  • Page 105 EVENT First consumer Dolby EX products go on sale High-resolution, multi-channel digital audio output on DVD-A and SACD players (IEEE1394 or Universal I2S) C: Important to achieving formats’ sonic potential. Electronic cinema (digital video projection in theaters) exhibited in ten cities Digital download kiosks appear in music-retail stores C: Any kiosk can download any title at any time;...

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