David Ranada

Pansonic DMR-HS2 DVD-RAM Recorder

Hard recording made easy

By David Ranada
Posted October 22, 2002

Photos by Tony Cordoza

At a glance, you'd probably think that Panasonic's $1,000 DMR-HS2 looks pretty much like every other DVD recorder out there-including the Panasonic DMR-E30 that I reviewed just last month. But the DMR-HS2's chassis carries clues that something more is going on here.

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A DVD Christmas

Three players that deliver all the goodies without breaking the holiday bank.

By David Ranada
Posted November 11, 2002

Photos by Tony Cordoza

Like Santa descending a chimney every year with an ever-larger bag of goodies, DVD players have been coming down in price while their bundles of features have expanded.

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Behind The Numbers

How to read our lab tests for DVD players

By David Ranada
Posted August 6, 2001

Some readers shy away from the "in the lab" boxes in our test reports, probably because it's hard to judge what represents desirable performance if you don't have a lot of experience with the kinds of figures we publish.

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Behind The Numbers: Digital Surround Receivers

How to use our lab tests for digital surround receivers

By David Ranada
Posted December 22, 2001

Digital surround receivers are by far the most complicated products we test. Not only do they have two primary modes of operation - two-channel stereo and multichannel surround sound - both using their digital inputs, but today they may also be called on to handle multichannel high-resolution analog signals from a DVD-Audio or Super Audio CD player.

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Digital Audio's Last Frontiers

Radio and Speakers Developments at 2003 CES

By David Ranada
Posted January 14, 2003

This CES saw the official introduction of what used to be called the IBOC (in-Band, on-channel) terrestrial digital radio system, freshly renamed HD Radio (for high-definition) by its promotor, iBiquity.

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Toshiba SD-4800 DVD-Audio/Video Player

TEST REPORT

By David Ranada
Posted January 14, 2003

Finding a product that performs better than its price would lead you to expect is always a pleasure for a reviewer. Toshiba's SD-4800 is just such a product-a relatively inexpensive DVD player that's packed with all the latest features. For example, it plays DVD-Audio discs through its multichannel analog outputs, which also serve for Dolby Digital playback.

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Samsung DVD-V2500 DVD Player/VCR

TEST REPORT

By David Ranada
Posted March 26, 2003

Most of the Samsung DVD players we've tested have had something "different" about them. There were, for example, a couple of models with Nuon game-playing capability, and the last one we looked at could reproduce still pictures stored on Memory Stick flash-memory cards.

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Get 6.1 Channels Now!

By David Ranada
Posted February 1, 1999

I felt as stupid as Dorothy must have felt near the end of The Wizard of Oz when Glinda, the Witch of the North, tells her that she always had the power to get back to Kansas.

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Bravo D1 Upconverting DVD Player

TEST REPORT

By David Ranada
Posted April 30, 2003

Photos by Tony Cordoza Just when you thought you had mastered the intricacies of video connectivity-having sorted out composite video, S-video, and the two flavors of component video (interlaced and progressive-scan)-V Inc.'s Bravo D1 comes along to make life complicated again.

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NAD L70 DVD Player/Receiver

TEST REPORT

By David Ranada
Posted May 13, 2003

Photos by Tony Cordoza Anyone interested in an ultra easy-to-set-up home theater system usually has only one recourse: a system-in-a-box, comprising a combination DVD player and A/V receiver, five satellite speakers, and an optimistically designated "subwoofer." The weakest links in most of these systems are generally the speakers.

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