I Say It's Video!   I believe JA's March "As We See It,"
explaining why Stereophile has no plans to cover video, was
wrongheaded. Sure, some of our readers may consider video
antithetical to audio, but enjoying movies at home, and wanting
to enjoy them as much as possible, is not really different from
doing the same things with music.  I agree with John that audio
without pictures gives the imagination more freedom to visualize
whatever the listener deems appropriate, but I cannot agree that
this is always a good thing. Radio drama—sadly, long extinct in
literal-minded America—works superbly without visual images,
particularly when the listener is invited to imagine things that
are impossible (or prohibitively costly) to show, even on a
movie screen. (Does anyone out there remember Stan Freberg's
vanilla ice-cream mountain with the cherry on top?) Opera
without images can be effective too, if it is specially recorded
for the ears alone. (The Culshaw/Solti Wagner Ring cycle, for
example.) But with a real-life