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Onkyo TX-SR805 AV Receiver Review
The Onkyo TX-SR805 represents the current pinnacle of value at its price point. It sounds good, decodes all the latest HD audio codecs, sports a large power supply, has an impressive feature set, THX Ultra2 certification, and Audyssey MultEQ at a price well below what the competition offers. This high level of value is not just limited to this particular model; Onkyo has spread value and features across their entire product line. Onkyo has resurged into the market as a serious player once again and clearly upped the ante with the TX-SR805. Highly recommended.
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EMP ECA-4 & ECA-44 Compact Satellite Speaker System Review
This is a must have solution for any application requiring a compact clutter free and inconspicuously mounted installation. For a limited time, EMP is extending more than 50% off their MSRP plus FREE shipping which makes this system even more attractive and a very uncommon value. So basically $729 gets you 5 high performance compact satellite speakers and their new high power compact e10S subwoofer. This is a “cubed speaker system” killer for well under $1k.
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Recent HD DVD & BD Reviews
Into the Wild is among the last round of Paramount HD DVD releases. The Golden Globe winning movie tells the story of a young man who tried to escape civilization. It turns out to be one of the great road movies with a captivating musical soundtrack.
Academy Award Nominee Viggo Mortensen teams up for second time with director David Cronenberg for Eastern Promises a hard hitting crime thriller. This HD DVD review contains no spoilers! I highly recommend this film to anyone who likes action movies, thrillers, mystery or even art-house cinema, this film fits somewhere between them all. The HD transfer is brilliant and the multi-channel surround sound is well done.
Once upon a time there were plastic Japanese toys that changed from cars into robots. Now we have huge blockbuster movies that change our childhood toys into reality! Ok, maybe not reality, but the latest Transformers movie does a pretty good job with the flashy animation and popcorn flick thrills. Drop in a kid, a hot girl, some good one-liners, and Michael Bay as the director and you'll get this summer's biggest movie on a plastic disc that's sure to please.
I nabbed the We Were Soldiers HD DVD early on since it was a pairing of Randall Wallace and Mel Gibson. That's as good as calling it Braveheart II as far as I'm concerned. It turns out the HD DVD video quality wasn't all I had expected (OK, it was downright disappointing), but we'll get into more of that that below.
If ever a movie was created to tap into the depths of just how far a DLP or LCD projector can go with regard to black levels you would think it was Batman Begins. Full of scene after scene of dark, detailed imagery, this movie is a veritable smörgåsbord of test clips for just how low your projector will go. Combined with an audio track that will throw you back in your seat, Batman Begins is a wild ride for both sight and sound.
Miami Vice surprised me by being a "straight shooter" in the midst of a series of campy remakes that poked fun at their counterparts. As far as the technological side of the DVD, this is by far the most advanced HD DVD I've yet encountered. If you want to know what the menu system of an HD DVD can do, Miami Vice shows off quite a few of the features. The picture is beautiful, even though much of it is dark and shot in the evening when grain tends to creep into the film.
The Departed is a film that captured our attention for several reasons. First off, as an Academy Award winner it stood out for its apparent merit as a film. Secondly, the number of A-list actors in the film are mind-blowing and I knew the film would be enjoyable regardless of plot due to the sheer presence of the talent on the screen. The last reason we chose this disc was due to the fact that surely for such an eventful film as a Scorsese masterpiece the audio and video quality must have been meticulously attended to in the mastering process to HD DVD.
There are plenty of places reviewing HD-DVDs* these days, so why should Audioholics even bother? Well, we cruised around the web and the usual sources and found a distinct lack of technical information on the various discs with respect to audio and video quality. Since the entire point of HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs is to provide audio and video that far exceeds that of standard definition DVDs, it's important to focus on those aspects when reviewing the new format discs.
HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc Reviews
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