Sorry, not a lot of pressing news stories AND, the wife and I decided to pick up a new home theater system. We had another one, but it was over 5 years old, was developing a few quirks, Also getting wireless back channel speakers makes setting it up in a room far more easy. Also we have one blue ray DVD player, which gives us the option to watch Blue Ray Movies (which do look really awesome, also they can condense multi-disk DVDs into just one disk) but only one location. Blah Blah Blah, the time was right for an upgrade.
So here’s an interesting Phenomenon, when testing out a new stereo system do you have a musical piece, or film scene that you use to test the system?
Vector likes to use the “Lobby Scene” from The Matrix. (Sorry, can’t Embed that one)
A good scene, lots of bass, a good quiet intro, that turns very loud, and good use of surround sound. I used this to set up my first Home Theater system. But I discovered my personal favorite for testing a system. Tears of the Sun.
Actually I like to start listening about 5mins before this scene where they get spooked by a feral pig. Absolutely one of the best mixed for surround sound I’ve heard to date. You can tell what fire is incoming and what’s outgoing, and you sound like you are exactly in the middle of this nasty firefight. Also the yelling and gunfire is interspersed with whispering, as well as lots of bass in the explosions, so it can test the dynamics of your system. Very fun.
For not explosions and death, I’ll note that the film “The Others”
Has a bunch of scenes where you’ll suddenly hear bumps behind you, and eerie noises passing by, that really add to the creepy nature of this fine film if you have a good surround sound system.
So what do you use and enjoy?
Bose HT set up… and Tears is a good one for checking it… There was also a scene from a James Bond flick that used to be a great surround sound checker, but I’m not at home and can’t pull it up.. How do you like the Blu-ray? I’m still debating spending the $$, since I really don’t go back and watch that many shows again.
When you get a chance look it up, because when you say “A James Bond Film” you’re not narrowing the field very much.
I like Blue Ray a lot. Its nothing like the quality and convenience difference between VHS and DVD, and I will add that we did not spend the obscene amounts on true HD TVs so we can’t push the disks to their maximum resolution. But it IS better picture, and higher storage so if you’re a special feature junkie there’s more of that without having to get up off the couch and flip the disk or change to disk 2.
Really my big interest is that blue ray prices are coming down to striking distance to the same film on DVD for new releases (you still can get the big deals on older DVD titles, but who knows how long the market will support the old medium) and our massive DVD collection still plays on the new players. Its just a wise investment at this point given that HDDVD lost the format wars.
Any of the battle scenes from “Last of the Mohicans”. Music, gunfire, arrows, axes, crazed Indians, orders being shouted, etc. Or the battle scenes from “Glory”.
Hey, the classics work :).
We don’t have “Glory” (actually I think netflix streaming is running it, so we can test the streaming quality with that) we DO have Mohicans, may have to run that through the ringer. The wife won’t protest, its one of her favorites.