Some 4K Demo Material Thanks To The Blender Foundation

January 5, 2015 Steve The Geek Leave a comment

If you are like me and desperately waiting for some content to watch on your new 4K TV and feel let down by the real visual difference provided by 4K streaming (more on that in a later post), the Blender Foundation is there to help. Responsible for the development of open source 3D rendering tools, the group also drives open content movie projects almost every year.

Since 2008, three of their short movies have received a 4K rendition that you are able to freely download and watch on your TV provided it supports the format or if you have a working 4K media player.

You’ll find below the link to the three movie websites where you’ll be able to download them in 4K and I included a Youtube version if you want to preview the movie before downloading.

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Reviews

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Dolby Atmos Review

January 3, 2015 Steve The Geek Leave a comment

How Reviews Are Done On NextGenHomeTheater.com : Here are some ground rules for review on this site. The first thing is that the movie itself will never be reviewed, as this is not the intention and tastes and opinion regarding movies are up to the viewer. Furthermore, the review will concentrate on the next generation element of the content, so in this case the Dolby Atmos track, while presenting the other aspects. A Blu-Ray 4K would for example be reviewed for visual performance only. There will not by any grades either, just comments and a purchase recommandation in the conclusion.

The Movie

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is another reboot in the recent wave of 80’s and 90’s popular culture rebirth. Is this new version, the four turtles, helped by April and Splinter, will try to stop Shredder and his Foot Clan from getting control of New York City.

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Opinion

Three Wishes For CES 2015

January 2, 2015 Steve The Geek 1 Comment

Waking up from the holiday celebrations this morning, I realized that CES was now only four days away. To be honest, the last couple of years I had mostly lost interest in the show. Bigger TVs, almost identical wearable gear and more bluetooth speakers were making the show pretty boring.

2015 is a different story. Maybe it’s personal, but I feel that this year new technologies announced at CES will impact the home theater in a meaningful way. I can assure you that this time I’ll be following closely the announcements next Tuesday and reporting here as soon as possible.

While we wait for the event to take place, here are three things that are not official yet that I would like to see happen next week in Las Vegas.

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Reviews

Step Up All In : Dolby Atmos Review

January 1, 2015 Steve The Geek Leave a comment

How Reviews Are Done On NextGenHomeTheater.com : Here is the first content review on the blog. Before getting into Step Up All In, let’s set some ground rules for review on this site. The first thing is that the movie itself will never be reviewed, as this is not the intention and tastes and opinion regarding movies are up to the viewer. Furthermore, the review will concentrate on the next generation element of the content, so in this case the Dolby Atmos track, while presenting the other aspects. A Blu-Ray 4K would for example be reviewed for visual performance only. There will not by any numbers either, just comments and a purchase recommandation in the conclusion.

The Movie

Step Up All In is the fifth instalment of the series and regroup characters from the previous movies while they regroup in Las Vegas for a dance competition called The Vortex with the ultimate price of running their own show in Sin City for three years.

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Opinion

A New Blog Dedicated To New Technologies In Home Theaters

December 31, 2014 Steve The Geek 5 Comments

I fondly remember the year 1999. Why ? It’s the year where I went back five times to the home audio video store to buy, return and upgrade my first home theater system.

You see, I just had purchase my first home DVD player a couple of weeks before. After learning everything about black bars and aspect ratios and overcoming the shock of not using all of my TV to watch movies (I was young and naive), I quickly realized that listening to movies on my old stereo system was not really an option. I needed to leverage the full capacity of that new player and hear the movie the way it was intended to be : in the right aspect ratio with surround sound.

The first sound system I bought one was simply a Pro Logic system, for a matter of not investing too much I imagine. I came back home, enabled Dolby Surround on my system and waited for something great to happen. And nothing great happened. I sat down, watched a couple of movies, trying to concentrate to hear surround sound coming from the tiny “home theater in a box” speakers that came with the system but could barely hear effects.

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News

DTS announces officially it’s object based format : DTS:X

December 31, 2014 Steve The Geek 3 Comments

After seeing the arrival of Dolby Atmos in home theaters at the end of 2014, it comes as no surprise to see that DTS announced yesterday the release of their own object based audio format called DTS:X. The new format will be launch in March 2015 and already the vast majority of home theater receiver manufacturers has agreed to implement it.

The press release from DTS, coming at a strange time on December 30th, a couple of weeks away from CES, states that among others, Anthem, Denon, Integra, Krell, Marantz, McIntosh, Onkyo, Outlaw Audio, Pioneer, Steinway Lyngdorf, Theta Digital, Trinnov Audio and Yamaha will be supporting the format. It is yet unknown if this will be done through firmware updates on some of those or if new receivers will be needed.

DTS had been a favorite over the last couple of years on Blu-ray with a strong presence of DTS Master Audio tracks, but they will be coming late to the object based format this time. It will be interesting to see if their relationship with studios will be able to help them establish this leadership position over Dolby Atmos.

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Next Generation Home Theater