Expertise

The kit I carried
9 countries. 5 weeks. 3000+ photos. Lot’s o’gear.
The Connected Car: 2013 Edition
New in-dash receivers play nice with smartphones. Plus: Sync and MyLink app updates.
HTC One Video and Audio Measurements
A serious piece of hardware... mostly.

What's New

Access Denied II

Hollywood wants to gain remote control over HDTV. Will it succeed?
- By Stephen A. Booth
- Posted August 22, 2002
You're all set to record a pay-per-view movie through the digital set-top box your cable provider installed just hours ago. But when you program it to record, your DVD recorder flashes a cryptic message indicating that the show can't be copied. Must be the usual screw-up by the cable company, you reason. No big deal: you'll just watch it live and call service in the morning.
» Read More
Access Denied II

Hollywood wants to gain remote control over HDTV. Will it succeed?
- By Stephen A. Booth
- Posted August 22, 2002
Illustrations by Sandra Shap
You're all set to record a pay-per-view movie through the digital set-top box your cable provider installed just hours ago. But when you program it to record, your DVD recorder flashes a cryptic message indicating that the show can't be copied. Must be the usual screw-up by the cable company, you reason.

» Read More
Speakers, Step by Step

Whether you are buying a bookshelf stereo system or equipping a 6.1-channel home theater, here are the basics.
- By Daniel Kumin
- Posted August 22, 2002
Digital satellite receiver with high-definition digital outputs? Check. Widescreen HDTV with progressive-scan display? Check. Digital surround receiver with 100 watts each for six channels and lots of digital audio inputs and outputs? Check. DVD player with DVD-Audio and progressive-scan outputs? Check.
Great picture, but where's the sound? Oh, yeah - better throw in some speakers, too . .

» Read More
The Setup: Speakers

What You Need to Know to Get the Most from Your Stereo, 5.1-Channel, or 6.1-Channel System (Originally published in: /Sound & Vision/, May 2001)
- By Frank Doris
- Posted August 12, 2002
You probably already know that good speakers are essential to putting together a high-quality stereo or multichannel music system or home theater. You can invest several months' mortgage payments in first-rate audio/video components, but without good speakers you're simply not going to hear your system's full potential.

» Read More
Is Everybody Happy?

How to get great home theater performance without having to file for divorce
- By Doug Newcomb
- Posted July 30, 2002
Photos by Tony Cordoza
I consider myself very fortunate to have a wife who indulges my obsessions. There's the time last summer when she sat in a rental car on a sweltering beach in Baja while I surfed for more than an hour.

» Read More
15 Minutes with Chris Isaak
- By Mike Mettler
- Posted July 30, 2002
Chris Isaak can't sit still. The second successful season of Showtime's art-imitates-life-imitating-art pseudo-reality series The Chris Isaak Show is wrapping up, but that leaves little time for the quick-draw 45-year-old crooner to relax. The third season is already in development, and a summer tour supporting his latest album, Always Got Tonight (Reprise), is coming up.
» Read More
Action Figures

Portables on four platforms offer plenty of options for musical excitement.
- By Michael Antonoff
- Posted July 30, 2002
Photos by Tony Cordoza
Over the years personal stereo has evolved from an offensive weapon (think boombox) to a defensive one. When you're wearing earphones in a crowd, you're ensconced in a zone of privacy. People don headphones at a health club or on the street in part to signify they don't want to be approached.

» Read More
How to Audition Speakers

(Originally published in: /Stereo Review/, Sept. 1998)
- By Daniel Kumin
- Posted July 23, 2002
Surely there are few more subjective tasks than evaluating speakers solely by listening. One audiophile's meat is another one's poison, after all.
» Read More
Strings Attached

Thanks to wireless technology, there's never been a better time to install a home network.
- By Brian C. Fenton
- Posted July 22, 2002
Photos by Eric Yang An Intel AnyPoint PC Card wireless network adapter ($99).
Computer networking isn't a subject you'd necessarily expect to read about in Sound & Vision.

» Read More
No Strings Attached

Thanks to wireless technology, there's never been a better time to install a home network.
- By Brian C. Fenton
- Posted July 22, 2002
Photos by Eric Yang
Computer networking isn't a subject you'd necessarily expect to read about in Sound & Vision. But because more and more home-entertainment gear wants to get connected to the Internet and because networking is a viable way to distribute compressed audio and video, it makes sense for us to look at where home networks are today.

» Read More
Satellite Radio A to Z

XM and Sirius go head to head in a Rocky Mountain road trip.
- By Ken C. Pohlmann & Leslie Shapiro
- Posted July 10, 2002
Photos by Brian Payne The temperature was chilly - at least to two southerners - but even the coldest day in Rocky Mountain National Park is sweltering compared to the frigid -450° void of outer space.
» Read More
Mighty Cam

Sony's Internet-savvy MicroMV camcorder.
- By Michael Antonoff
- Posted July 10, 2002
Photos by Tony Cordoza The launch of a new cassette format in 2002 made me wonder whether those who invented the Walkman were back in charge at Sony. The payoff is that the tape cassettes, so tiny they could be mistaken for audio microcassettes, are for high-quality video recording in Sony's new MicroMV camcorders.
» Read More