Articles about amazon

Toy Story Trilogy 3D Blu-ray Coming in November

by Jeff Kleist on Aug 18, 2011 at 06:39 PM

Amazon Canada appears to have jumped the gun on a tasty trio of Toy Story coming our way the first week of November, for the first time on home video in 3D. Though the cover art is cluttered up with French, as is required by law to sell in Quebec,… Continue Reading »

4 Hour Criterion Lightning Sale Today on Amazon

by Jeff Kleist on Aug 16, 2011 at 08:57 AM

Starting at 9AM EDT/6AM PDT today (August 16, 2011), Amazon will be holding a special morning sale on the Criterion Collection. From Amazon’s Facebook page: Amazon.com Movies & TV Cinephiles and film geeks! Don’t miss out on an awesome Criterion event starting tomorrow, 8/16 at 6am. We’ll be featuring four… Continue Reading »

How Much Bass is Too Much Bass?

by Dennis Burger on Aug 9, 2011 at 10:38 AM

About this much, I’d say… Granted, I’m entirely convinced that this is a hoax, but it makes me giggle nonetheless. And I’m obviously not the only one; in barely over a week, the video already has over a million and a half views. Meanwhile, DaTechGuru‘s critical analysis of the video… Continue Reading »

Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Pre-Order Dropped to $69.99 at Amazon

by Jeff Kleist on Jun 23, 2011 at 09:19 AM

Hurry up and take 50% off of the list price picking up the Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition right now at Amazon.com. The extended versions are close to an hour longer apeice, bringing scads of additional action, character development and flavor to the Middle Earth experience. Never bought the… Continue Reading »

Voyage of the Dawn Treader Blu-ray 3D: Sony Exclusive

by Jeff Kleist on May 26, 2011 at 12:53 PM

Many people wondered whyFox didn’t launch a 3D version of The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader along with the standard Blu-ray release, and now we know. The Fox-distributed movie is exclusive to Sony 3D starter kits for at least the next few months. The good news is… Continue Reading »

Save $8 on The Lion King Blu-ray for a Limited Time

by Jeff Kleist on May 25, 2011 at 09:25 AM

For a limited time, you can snag the Lion King on Blu-ray for $8 less if you couple it with another Disney combo pack, like say the upcoming Dumbo. Additional titles include Bambi, Spooky Buddies, Tangled, Beauty and the Beast, Princess and the Frog, and more. You can even go… Continue Reading »

Amazon Goes Gaga and Offers Full-Length “Born This Way” Album for $0.99, then Breaks

by Dennis Burger on May 23, 2011 at 01:53 PM

If you’ve been thinking about picking up Lady Gaga’s new album, Born This Way, today (and if you haven’t, srsly, did you not see this week’s SNL?), this oughta make the decision a little easier: to celebrate the release, Amazon is offering the complete album for only 99 cents. That’s… Continue Reading »

Samsung Launches New Site for Free 3D Glasses Promotion

by Jeff Kleist on May 19, 2011 at 11:47 AM

Those lucky Samsung customers who bought or will buy a new Samsung 3DTV between April 24 and June 25, 2011, but didn’t manage to snare themselves some 3D glasses from the retailer as part of the deal, now have an outlet. By hitting up http://www.samsung.com/us/3Dglasses and submitting a scan of… Continue Reading »

$6 Midnight Madness At Amazon

by Jeff Kleist on May 19, 2011 at 11:20 AM

A pile of great titles like Casino, CaddyShack, and SpyGame are on sale at Amazon for 24 hours only, through Thursday July 19’s witching hour, all for $6. So load up on catalog titles at a bargain.  So let those virtual tires Scream and latch on before it Terminates or… Continue Reading »

Up to 50% off The Criterion Collection at Amazon

by Jeff Kleist on Apr 26, 2011 at 02:05 PM

Amazon.com is having a huge sale on the Criterion Collection for a limited time, with great deals on recent titles like Sweet Smell of Success and classics like High and Low, The Seven Samurai, or The Red Balloon. For those not in the know, Criterion is one of the oldest… Continue Reading »

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Was looking for a DVD/VCR recorder combo and had basically chosen this unit, the came across your article - question: are you still happy with it??

Thanks,

J.


HBO requires a level of content protection that is not currently supported by Airplay/Apple TV. This is a capability that might be offered in the future as per HBO GO

kate on
HBO Debuts HBO GO App for iOS, and Android
September 12th 2011 9:42 AM

Way to go Aidan! Congratulations on your discovery and deserving award.


Is there anyone that has use this 3D adapter kit, How good or bad do this adapter do ?


Good points John.  For me it sort of helps to answer my question but for different reasons. That is: in those instances where i have a fully DDD recording on LP, the CD will probably serve me just as well.  I will note that many early CDs sounded bad because they were made from compressed-for-lp slave copies of master tapes or (in the case of some “twofers” (2 albums on one disc) a smaller size file was used to squeeze all the info on a single disc (zappa’s overnight sensation/apostrophe disc was way tinny sounding and fared much better—after complaints—breaking them out into two discs at fuller CD resolution

Regqrding the sound of vinyl vs CD and distortion “hidden” in the LP, more times than not I was amazed to find out that distortion I heard on vinyl—and which I attributed to my less than perfect condition pressings—were actually on the original recording. I was surprised hearing certain records by Zappa, The Velvet Underground, Dylan, The Moody Blues and others on CD for the first time and discovering that my LPs didnt sound so bad after all ... it was the way the recordings were made!

I do believe that analog masters contain more sonic info than 44.1/16-bit clones would be able to capture.  But I have to assume (unless someone explains otherwise) that for recordings made natively in the digital domain, then those recordings are what they are…. they’ll never be anything more than what the original was recorded at.

So there is probably no good reason to keep a digitally recorded LP if I can get it on CD these days… unless of course it contains a mix that was later changed/remixed


Hi Mark,

This has been my life’s work since about 1978.  We had some of the first digital multitrack recorders that 3M ever built, and a huge part of my life was supervising the cutting of analog (and later digital) tape masters into vinyl, following those lacquers through electroplating, and then the actual pressing into vinyl.  We had our own pressing plant, so I got to see it all happen every day, from trombonists coming through the front door to record jacket fabrication and excess vinyl re-grinding to make audiophile records.

The bigger point is not which sounds “better”—it’s what sounds most like what the mixer heard when he was working on it in the control room.  If you had the privilege, as I did for years, of sitting beside a mixer listening to control room monitors and watching as he went for a particular “sound”, often worrying himself about the accuracy of the speakers and the room acoustics, you would understand that the whole goal was to try to replicate what he heard. 

Analog tape was very good at that, but always lost a bit of transients, and increased the noise floor a bit, simply because of the limitations of tape.  Indeed it was often quite difficult to tell whether you were listening to the console output or the one-second-delayed playback head of the 2-track master.

When digital mastering came on the scene, first on videotape (we used black and white U-matics, which is why the weird sample rate of 44,100 came to be—it’s a multiple of the horizontal sync frequency of black and white videotape) we were all amazed at the transparency.  What we heard coming back from the digital deck was an identical sonic clone to the console itself, indeed showing the limitations of the console electronics.

Many consumers, however, had grown accustomed to the tracking and tracing errors and distortions that vinyl records inherently have.  No vinyl record truly sounded like what we were hearing on the mix console; it was several layers of distortion removed, with the distortions coming from the cutting angle of the cutterhead, the “de-horning” process which cut off the bottom of the grooves so that the vinyl would release from the stamper, and the inherent noise of the vinyl medum itself.

A CD is a much, much closer replica of what the original mixer heard on his board than an LP could ever be.  Now does that mean that you would rather experience what the mixer heard or experience what an LP listener of the era heard?  That’s actually a very serious question.  Almost no one who didn’t work in recording studios heard “clean” audio, and it was a very foreign sound to consumers, resulting in a lot of reluctance to accept digital media.  Consumers simply didn’t understand that they were, for the first time, hearing what we had heard in the production control rooms.  In many cases, the noise floor and distortion of the vinyl helped to cover up the limitations of the original master—making the CD sound “worse”.

I hope this helps, but I fear it may only add to the confusion.


NW. I bet a tactile transducer connected straight to the desk couldn’t even do that.

BB1 on
How Much Bass is Too Much Bass?
August 09th 2011 8:53 AM

I have the streaming-only service.  One thing that ticks me off is - I am using a web-based service, right - but there are no web-based methods of contact with Netflix - go ahead, try to find a “contact us” that isn’t a phone number!  No email, no chat, nothing!

I wanted to complain about how they had lured me into their service, only to start dropping some titles I had expected to be able to watch (such as all of the, admittedly limited, selection of James Bond flicks).

I also wanted to complain that for weeks, the “Recently Watched” listing was missing.

MikeG on
Netflix's Latest F-You Communiqué
August 02nd 2011 10:59 AM

Wow i would be pissed if i was a Netflix user pisssssed. Here is a secret people. Corporations only get away with what you let them get away with. Hit their pocket book and they will suddenly start whistling another tune.

Carmen on
Netflix's Latest F-You Communiqué
August 01st 2011 3:48 PM

I don’t work for Netflix and I think the author of this article is a huge baby-man with an entitlement complex.

HORTENSIO. on
Netflix's Latest F-You Communiqué
August 01st 2011 3:23 PM