Avatar, Interstellar, The Rolling Stones and Breakfast at Tiffany’s: I took a look at the Blu-ray reference library used by the world’s biggest AVR maker to develop its home theater gear | Tech Radar
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Avatar, Interstellar, The Rolling Stones and Breakfast at Tiffany’s: I took a look at the Blu-ray reference library used by the world’s biggest AVR maker to develop its home theater gear
The 130 titles on the shelves of a 9.4.6-channel Dolby Atmos test room
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I recently visited the Japanese factory where Denon and Marantz make the hi-fi and home theater gear, and the best part of the seeing the facility was getting a demo of the reference home theater listening there, with its 9.4.6 channels of Dolby Atmos sound delivered via $250k of Bowers & Wilkins speaker.
While snooping around the room, the shelving in the corner that houses their disc library naturally caught my eye. Marantz's engineers had already told me that they consider Gravity to be one of the ultimate stress tests for AVRs (you can read why in the piece I linked above), but what else do they keep on hand for testing AV receivers and other gear?
I wanted to make a list to share with the many 4K Blu-ray and home theater enthusiasts out there, looking for fresh demo disc ideas — but given that we had limited time in the room and a major portion of the movies are in Japanese, I took a few photos of the shelves, and came back home to analyze them.
The list is below, and it's in two sections: movies, and concert discs. I excluded anything that isn't a Blu-ray or 4K Blu-ray — the shelves were obviously also full of CDs and SACDs (and a few DVDs).
It's not an exhaustive list: I used Google Gemini to help me translate Japanese titles that I couldn't discern myself anyway (I did not need help identifying which disc was Mad Max: Fury Road, naturally), and sometimes its translations were either vague or otherwise uncertain, so I didn't include those titles unless I could verify them another way. And also, I probably missed some because this whole exercise made me go a little stir-crazy.
I heard a reference 9.4.6-channel Dolby Atmos home theater system, and now I can't go back
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So if you want to see the shelves and comb through yourself, here they are — but my written-out list is just below.
Click the icon in the bottom-right corner if you want to see the image bigger(Image credit: Future)
Click the icon in the bottom-right corner if you want to see the image bigger(Image credit: Future)
Click the icon in the bottom-right corner if you want to see the image bigger(Image credit: Future)
Click the icon in the bottom-right corner if you want to see the image bigger(Image credit: Future)
The list is inevitable in places — Blade Runner 2049 and 1917 are obvious inclusions, and two versions of Interstellar is the normal number of versions of Interstellar to own, in my opinion — but it was also really interesting and surprising in places.
I loved seeing Bridge of Spies in there; I didn't expect Hairspray (2007), but it makes a ton of sense; I'm very curious what makes Taxi 3 specifically a good disc to have; it absolutely rocks that they have RRR, and I can't recommend it enough for your own library; and in contrast to Interstellar, I really don't think anyone needs two copies of Pixels…
The music side includes a fun mix of jazz sets, classical music, movie music and huge stadium events — and with a very healthy dose of metal.
Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures [Doesn't include Dial of Destiny]
Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7: Wiener Philharmoniker
Chihiro Yamanaka: Somethin' Blue Quintet – Live at Blue Note Tokyo
The Great Jazz Trio Hank Jones – The Legend of Jazz: Live at Blue Note Tokyo
Vienna Philharmonic: New Year's Concerts – 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021
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