Al Griffin

Westinghouse LVM-42w2 42-inch LCD HDTV Monitor

By Al Griffin
Posted June 2, 2006

What We Think With its deep, inky blacks and sharp detail, this HDTV excels in most areas of picture quality. Flat-panel LCD HDTVs typically cost more than their big-screen plasma

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Test Bench: Vizio P42HDTV 42-inch Plasma HDTV

By Al Griffin
Posted May 12, 2006

Color temperature (User mode before/after calibration): Low window (20-IRE): 6,220/6,425 K High window (80-IRE): 6,472/6,517 K Brightness (100-IRE window before/after calibration): 48.7/37.5 ftL

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Samsung HP-S5053 50-inch Plasma HDTV

By Al Griffin
Posted July 4, 2006

Samsung has its hands in so many different TV categories - front- and rear-projection DLP TVs, flat-panel plasma and LCD sets, even old-school cathode-ray tube models - that it's hard to keep track of all the stuff they sell.

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Test Bench: Samsung HP-S5053 50-inch Plasma HDTV

By Al Griffin
Posted July 4, 2006

Color temperature (Movie preset/Warm 2 Color Tone before/after calibration): Low window (30-IRE): 6,885/6,431 K High window (80-IRE): 6,431/6,524 K Brightness (100-IRE window before/after calibration): 31.6/26.6 ftL

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Test Bench: Westinghouse LVM-42w2 42-inch LCD HDTV Monitor

By Al Griffin
Posted June 5, 2006

Color temperature (Color 1 preset before/after calibration): Low window (30 IRE): 7,438/6,758 K High window (80 IRE): 6,833/6,355 K Brightness (100-IRE window before/after calibration): 61.1/40.4 ftL

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DVDs: Reference Disc

The New World

By Al Griffin
Posted July 6, 2006

The New World (New Line; Movie •••½, Picture/Sound ••••, Extras •••), Terrence Malick's film about the fateful collision of English settlers with Native Americans in 1607, is short on dialogue and long on trippy shots of sunlight leaking through virgin forests.

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Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc Player: Second Opinion

Blu's Clues

By Al Griffin
Posted September 2, 2006

I'd been eagerly looking forward to the arrival of a Blu-ray Disc player at Sound & Vision since - well, ever since the rival HD DVD format launched last April. But our first round of Blu-ray movie watching ended with executive editor Rob Sabin and I walking away disappointed and confused.

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Audica CS-System 3 Speakers

By Al Griffin
Posted August 3, 2006

Just how slim can speakers get? It's a question I find myself pondering these days as wave after wave of skinny speakers arrives on my doorstep for testing. Looking over the elegant, metal-clad CS-System 3 speakers from British newcomer Audica - a company of audio veterans who previously did time at established UK speaker outfits like Mission - the answer is: remarkably slim.

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JBL Cinema Sound Speaker System

By Al Griffin
Posted August 4, 2006

If forced to list common traits of the many new flat TV-friendly speaker systems that have crossed my path of late, I'd document them as follows: slim form factor, two-grand price point (approximately), generous application of shiny metallic and gloss-black surfaces in the cabinet design. The components of the new JBL Cinema Sound speaker system fit into that mold perfectly.

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The Future of Flat-Panel TVs

New flat-TV technologies promising better pictures — and some other surprises — are gearing up to challenge plasma and LCD

By Al Griffin
Posted September 4, 2006

After it was introduced in the middle of the last century, the TV set remained basically unchanged for decades.

While there were minor design variations along the way, it wasn't until flat-panel plasma and LCD sets arrived that manufacturers finally gave us a new take on the tired old tube.

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