Welcome back, Dina!! How lovely to hear your cheerful voice back on the podcast 😀

Tom, what ARE you going to do about subwoofers? I know you’ve got room treatments coming over on the slow-boat, but did you ship your subwoofer as well?

I have to say, the whole debacle with the over-priced and non-cross-compatible shutter glasses is pretty much the only reason I haven’t purchased a Panasonic TC-P65VT25! I keep telling myself to wait at least one more year to see if the manufacturers work out some sort of “universal” shutter-glasses standard. I’m also still holding my breath to see if that 72″ LG/Vizio full-array, local-dimming LED backlit 3D LCD ever actually comes to market (I know it ain’t coming out this year!)

As ridiculous as it might look, I do still fancy the idea of having the 2D-to-3D conversion feature as an option. Not so much for movies or TV, but mostly for games! With the new Panny GT25 line getting the 2D-to-3D processing, I wonder if the VT25 series can be updated with a firmware patch or if early adopters of the top-end line just get screwed over!

Lastly, as much as the prequels sucked and as much as I prefer the original versions of the original trilogy over the bloated and CG-looking “Special Editions”, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist picking up the Star Wars saga on Blu-ray :p

Like Leif and I were talking about, there are just too many demo scenes throughout Star Wars to pass it up. And ever since I saw some high def footage from Attack of The Clones, I’ve been fantasizing about the Blu-ray versions. I really just can’t watch DVDs anymore; so dull-looking and blurry :p

Rob and co. did a great job standing in for you two but there’s nothing quite like the original recipe – welcome back!

I will reluctantly buy Star Wars on Blu-Ray. I vowed never to give George Lucas any more of my money unless I got the original cuts of the trilogy (the only trilogy that counts) but I just can’t stand watching Star Wars in SD on my projector. Maybe it’s because of the size… I dunno but the amount of noise and grain in the DVD is pretty astounding. I personally thought the Laserdisc version looked better than the DVD.

Either way, I’m glad to see the big titles coming to Blu-Ray (very excited about Aliens this fall) as it gives us hope for some of the other big titles that we’re missing like Jurassic Park.

Great to have the crew back at AVRant!

It’s so funny how I used to watch Star Wars and Jurassic Park on DVD using my 720p LCD front projector on a 92″ screen from 14′ away. I thought it looked just as good as a movie theatre; better, in fact!

But now? I just can’t tolerate DVD; even on a “tiny” 60″ screen :p

Of course, I wasn’t wrong about DVD on a 720p FP looking better than a movie theatre. I saw Scott Pilgrim in the theatre last week. Awesome movie; very funny 😀 But, man, talk about a low-quality viewing experience! Major overscan, pretty fuzzy-looking compared to Blu-ray on my Kuro. We had the stupid ‘exit’ signs casting a bit of a red glow onto the side edges of the screen. And worst of all, the Dolby Digital soundtrack kept screwing up and reverting to the stereo “backup” soundtrack for moments throughout the movie!

So DVD on an old LCD FP had that beat! But Blu-ray has just totally ruined me for all content of lesser quality 😉

Speaking of upcoming BD releases October is going to be a wallet busting month. You’ve got Alien Trilogy, Back To the Future Trilogy, Last of the Mohican’s, Iron Man II, Apocalypse Now (Yeah!), Grindhouse, The Exorcist, and in November Highlander…awesome! I have been waiting for them to come up with a decent release of that one the DVD’s were so bad. Apocalypse is going to come with “Hearts of Darkness” documentary included. I have seen it a couple of times over the years but it is nice that they are including it. Am i the only one that didn’t like the “Redux” version?

You’re not alone on disliking Redux, xego!

I’m really pissed that we aren’t getting Blu-ray releases the way they ought to be though. How should they be? They should be like the Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind release or the Blade Runner release!

If there are multiple versions of a movie, then ALL versions should be included! Use the seemless branching feature, for Pete’s sake! Close Encounters got it SO right. Why is it that no other releases seem to follow that (awesome) template?

Oh yes,and in regards to universal 3D specs, have you seen these?

http://www.xpandcinema.com/news/43/

Sure to be real pricy but they sound excellent.

Spread the word!

Totally off topic, but “The Walking Dead” will begin its first season on AMC and AMC HD starting Halloween, Sunday, Oct. 31 at 10pm ET/PT !

For those who are unfamiliar with the (awesome) graphic novel of the same name, “The Walking Dead” is a character-driven horror/drama about an injured police officer in search of his wife and child in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. While there are certainly similarities and allusions to many other “zombie” movies and stories, the real brilliance here is the character interaction and the tense and emotional situations that arise when virtually impossible choices must be made in the name of survival and family.

AMC’s television version comes in the form of a short 6-episode first season, but there is a lot of reason to hope for future seasons. The early footage is faithful (though not slavish) to the comic book and extremely compelling, so it is my hope that word of mouth and very positive critical reviews will result in very high ratings so that this show will continue!

So, Tom, get ready for me to be like “a dog with a bone” (as you once put it) about this one! I’m still after the HT Guys about “Breaking Bad” :p But I actually think that Tom – and everyone else! – will really love “The Walking Dead”, even without me pestering the heck out of them 😀

So check it out! I can’t wait!!

Yea, I’m looking foward to “The Walking Dead” myself, should be awesome.

Welcome back to the dynamic duo! Thanks to Rob, Leif, Tim and Hollis for keeping us all engaged in home theater talk while Tom got his posts dug in.

Tom, where are the Audioholics deals that AV Rant used to feature?

I read an interesting piece on universal 3D glasses awhile back on HDGuru:

http://hdguru.com/compatible-3d-glasses-no-such-thing/1959/

The main point being, even if you can do the timing correctly on the various brands of sets, they all have a different color filter in the stock glasses, which is not easily simulated by a theoretical “universal” pair of glasses.

They really need to standardize. I think it would help the whole industry, just like how once Blu-ray finally won, sales grew faster.

Until that happen, people like me will sit out a market they aren’t that interested in anyway.

Andy S – you hit the nail in the head there! I’m more interested in 3D than most people, but the glasses are holding me back! There absolutely needs to be a standard! I’d want a Panny plasma ( or better yet, a 3D 1080p front projector ) in my theatre room, but I’d for sure want a matte-screen, full-array, local-dimming 3D LCD – like the upcoming XVT3D line from Vizio – in the living room and for gaming! There is no way in heck though that I’m going to buy multiple pairs of glasses for each display!

Who knows, maybe Toshiba’s recent announcement that they will show a glasses-free 3D LCD before the end of the year will render the whole issue moot! I’m not holding my breath for that though :p

I think we’ve got a long way to go before non-glasses 3D sets with wide enough functional viewing areas are reality. From what I understand, the non-glasses sets have very defined “sweet spots”.

Wasn’t there a Taiwanese manufacturer at CES that was promoing a 3D set that did not require glasses and had 64 ‘sweet spots’?

To me that seems like plenty.

Dina, welcome back! I’m still two podcasts behind and trying to catch up, but great to hear you both back in action. Kind of funny, when you were talking about new movies it sounded like you kept saying “The Last Earbender”. I was trying to figure out when my wife made a movie 🙂

Ducking and running….

Mike