The TARDIS returns!

We’re celebrating the return of Doctor Who (Sundays on BBC AMERICA) with a rundown of what makes Doctor Who the world’s longest-running sci-fi series and a unique, ever-evolving program with generations of fans. You can explore the universe with the Ninth and Tenth Doctors in our first article here. Whether you’re a passionate fan or a total beginner, BBC’s new DVD collections, featuring some of the most popular Doctors, will inspire you to join this epic adventure through space and time.

In 2010, the Tenth Doctor regenerated into the Eleventh, played by Matt Smith. Then 27 years old, Smith became the youngest person ever to play the Doctor. The quirky Time Lord’s favorite accessory? A bow tie — as he said himself many times, “Bow ties are cool.” (The occasional fez was a close second.)

Smith’s run saw the first married couple to live on the TARDIS, the regular appearances of fan-favorite characters like the Paternoster Gang, and the show’s 50th anniversary celebration. It was an action-packed run, with lots of exciting events to take in, and plenty of new things to learn about the Doctor and the Doctor’s world.

Now that you know the basics — the TARDIS, the sonic, regeneration — it’s time to travel with the Eleventh Doctor and see what else the show has to offer.

The Doctor’s Friends 

The Doctor almost always travels with someone. Whether they’re called companions, assistants, or friends, they’re the Doctor’s fellow travelers through space and time. They often offer a human touchstone for difficult decisions, give the audience someone to relate to, and (perhaps most important of all) give the Doctor someone to impress.

Often, the Doctor travels with only one person. Once in a while, though, the TARDIS will be home to multiple extra travelers. This dynamic means not only lots of friends for the Doctor, but also the opportunity to watch the relationships of these characters grow as they face new challenges.

After traveling alone with the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond brought her fiancé, Rory Williams, on board. The betrothed couple brought a whole different vibe to the series, as well as allowing for new perspectives on the different alien worlds and historical times visited. Plus, story arcs focused not only on the Doctor’s interaction with his friends, but also on their relationship with each other. Amy and Rory, it’s safe to say, had a distinctly unique married life!

New viewers enjoying adventures with the Thirteenth Doctor’s three friends may see a bit of that same chemistry in Mrs. and Mr. Pond: a human couple with a life of their own, who walk hand-in-hand right into the Doctor’s adventures. At the close of “Vampires of Venice,” Amy made no secret of how much she loved having a full house as she traveled through space and time.

Familiar Faces from History

Doctor Who was created in part to get kids excited about history, and that love of our past hasn’t changed. To that end, the Doctor often travels back in time to meet some of Earth’s historical greats. It’s always exciting when that happens, too, because the Doctor makes no secret of being a fan.

In the modern series, the Doctor has met Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Winston Churchill, and William Shakespeare, to name just a few. This season, Rosa Parks joins the ever-growing list of historical figures to cross paths with the Doctor. 

The encounters are rarely just a chance to fly in and shake hands, though; aliens love to play with the course of human history, and these famous figures seem to find themselves in the midst of their monstrous schemes.

Historical episodes aren’t just a chance to learn about the past, either. As the Doctor and friends spend time with these historical greats, the audience gets to learn more about them as people. In “Vincent and the Doctor,” Amy gets to know fellow redhead Vincent van Gogh. At the end of the episode, she and the Eleventh Doctor take Vincent to a modern museum to show him just how much he means to future generations — a rare opportunity for any artist.

Holiday Specials

For Doctor Who fans in the 21st century, gathering around the television and watching a brand-new adventure in time and space has become something of a Holiday tradition. Starting with “The Christmas Invasion,” every season of Doctor Who has an additional long-form episode that airs around the holidays, usually stand-alone in nature and with a festive or magical theme.

Pretty much anything goes in these episodes. Past holiday specials have had the Doctor meeting Santa, wandering into a superhero story, and traveling to a Narnia-esque world. They’re also a prime spot for celebrity cameos with stars like Nick Frost, Ian McKellen, and Richard E. Grant making appearances.

Holiday episodes have also become the venue of choice for regenerations, so you can often expect an emotional, action-packed finale for one Doctor and an intriguing welcome for the next one.

The Eleventh Doctor’s first Holiday special, “A Christmas Carol,” was just what it sounds like: a re-telling of the classic Charles Dickens story. Since this is Doctor Who, of course, there’s an alien spin on the concept. The Doctor encounters Scrooge-y Kazran Sardick (played by Michael Gambon) and, using Dickens’s tale as an outline, travels through Sardick’s childhood to alter events and make him kinder.

Since it’s the Holidays, the Doctor also can’t resist making an on-brand entrance.

Home Is Where the Hearts Are

The Doctor travels all through space and time, seeing the sights and putting things right. Fortunately for us, there’s always been a soft spot in those two hearts for Earth.

Humans are the Doctor’s favorite race in the entire universe. If you were to ask why, you’d get a different answer for every Doctor but it always comes down to the same sentiment: the Doctor loves Earth and will always be here to protect us.

The Time Lord is so invested in the planet that UNIT — the UNified Intelligence Taskforce — even has the Doctor on their payroll as a consultant. The Doctor is also de facto President of Earth in global states of emergency. Plenty of other organizations, both human and alien, recognize the Doctor as Earth’s greatest and staunchest defender, and for good reason.

In “The Eleventh Hour,” the first episode of the Eleventh Doctor’s run, an alien known as Patient Zero finds out just how ready the Doctor is to defend Earth. It only takes a little bit of sorting through their database to see how the Time Lord, time and time again, has deflected multiple alien threats. Earth is defended, and the Doctor only has one word of advice for the monster: run!

 A Whole Universe to Explore

Doctor Who is a unique television show thanks to its longevity. Just as new friends and foes join the fray each episode, familiar faces from the past are bound to pop in every once in a while. Whether it’s the Doctor’s companions from days gone by or even previous Doctors coming in to lend a hand, the show’s vast and varied history is accessible and ever-“wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.”

In fact, Doctor Who has been around so long that it celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. “The Day of the Doctor” was a global event, uniting the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors with John Hurt’s War Doctor. The stakes were high, and the Doctors were ready, joining forces for one of the show’s biggest adventures ever.

At the end of the episode, another Doctor came back for a cameo: Tom Baker, who famously played the Fourth Doctor from 1974-1981. Just who and what The Curator is… well, you can decide for yourself. But his appearance in “Day of the Doctor” was a reminder of the show’s rich history and a lovely moment for new and long-time fans alike to share.

That’s one of the most wonderful things about Doctor Who as a show: there will always be something that’s new to you! 

Although there are exciting changes to the show’s format in Series 11, some things will always ring true. The Doctor will always have friends to help save the universe, get excited over meeting famous people from history, and protect Earth from whatever else is out there. Doctor Who will always be accessible to new fans at any point in its long history, and you can count on sharing the adventure through space and time with family and friends.

Next up, we wrap up our look at the first ten seasons of Doctor Who in the 21st century with the era of the Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi!

To own the Doctor Who DVD Collections click here and enter code 5OFFWHO11 for $5 off The Matt Smith Collection on Amazon

To continue to explore the world of Doctor Who visit DoctorWho.TV

Watch new episodes of Doctor Who Sundays at 8pm on BBC AMERICA      

“The internet is nothing to laugh at. It’s new and different and we should fear it.”

It’s an odd line to hear in 2018, when everyone from your 4-year-old nephew to your 95-year-old grandmother knows their way around a Facebook page. 

In Ralph Breaks the Internet, though, it’s being said to what might be the last demographic to never have heard of the internet: fictional characters whose video games have never been connected to wifi. And if the version of the internet they encounter doesn’t quite mesh with the reality the rest of us have been living in for 20+ years, Ralph gets enough of it right to be worth signing on for.

SEE ALSO: ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ sequel will take on the darker side of the internet

Ralph Breaks the Internet revisits Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) a few years after the events of Wreck-It Ralph, and their lives couldn’t look sweeter. The BFFs work hard at their respective games all day, and then hang out with each other all night. Come sunup, they separate to start the cycle again.

But this blissful routine is shattered when Vanellope’s game breaks down, leaving her not just without a home but without a sense of identity and purpose. Ralph, however, knows exactly who he is and what his job is: He’s Vanellope’s hero, which means he’s going to save her game. Even if they have to venture into the internet in order to do it. 

As envisioned by Disney Animation, the internet manifests as an infinite mega-city filled with enormous buildings (i.e., websites) and teeming with blocky visitors (i.e., user avatars). It looks sleek and colorful in the same way your home screen looks sleek and colorful, and it feels as full of infinite possibility as a blank browser window.

Through this vastness, Ralph and Vanellope set out on a convoluted voyage that takes them from the glittering towers of BuzzTube (a fictional YouTube-Buzzfeed hybrid, in case you couldn’t guess from the name) to the sketchy alleyways of the “dark web,” and everywhere in between. 

Ralph takes a while to get where it’s going, and not just because Ralph and Vanellope are exactly as bad at navigating the internet as you’d expect two total newbies to be. It’s not until halfway through the film that the real central conflict comes into focus, and once it does, it becomes apparent how hard the narrative was straining to get us there. 

Even then, the plot logistics require quite a bit of squinting and hand-waving to make work in any real-world sense. Like Ralph’s moneymaking scheme, which is definitely not how any of this works – take it from someone who works in an industry that’s famously struggled to monetize content. Or the mechanics of the third-act crisis, which I won’t spoil here.

But a bit of fuzziness is easy to forgive when Ralph is so sharp on so many other details. Everything about Slaughter Race – a game set in a dystopia so hilariously gritty, Mad Max would be at a loss – feels instantly recognizable, even though Slaughter Race doesn’t actually exist. And while that Oh My Disney setpiece feels almost creepily synergistic, it’s also hard to deny that C-3PO stage-managing Disney princesses is a childhood dream come true.

Wreck-It Ralph has a knack for distilling complicated grown-up concepts into kid-simple terms.

Ralph nails some bigger stuff, too. Like Zootopia (also co-directed by Rich Moore, who teamed with Phil Johnston for Ralph Breaks the Internet), Ralph has a knack for distilling complicated grown-up concepts into kid-simple terms. There’s shrewd messaging about toxic relationships, gender dynamics, and self-esteem, and a subversion of princess tropes that runs surprisingly deep. 

Also like Zootopia, it works because Ralph delivers all that without ever losing sight of the heart and humor driving the entire narrative forward. Ralph and Vanellope’s adventure is entertaining even when it’s not quite clear where it’s headed, thanks to its dynamic central duo, their willingness to embrace the absurd, and a heavy dose of spot-the-reference, and the emotions of the finale feel earned. 

Which, come to think of it, kind of sums up the online experience in a nutshell. Ralph Breaks the Internet is a two-hour journey down a series of rabbit holes filled with laughs, tears, a ton of self-referential meta gags, and a Tumblr-worthy reinvention of familiar characters that eventually delivers something you didn’t know you always needed. 

What could be more internet than that?

(PS: There are two post-credits scenes, so stick around to the bitter end.)

This post is part of our High-tech High series, which explores weed innovations, and our cultural relationship with cannabis, as legalization in several U.S. states, Canada, and Uruguay moves the market further out of the shadows.

Cannabis users have always been fine-tuning their experience. Rolling a joint tighter or grinding bud finer will result in a different high, so it’s no surprise that users want that option when it comes to vaping. So what’s the best temperature to vape at? That depends on what you want out of your high.

Thanks to the rise of sate-level legalization in the U.S., vaping cannabis went from being a somewhat clunky and niche experience to a convenient and discreet norm. Whether you’re vaping oil or flower, the high tech gadgets being produced today allow users to curate their own experience, offering up a high they can learn to expect.

Vaping oil is the new standard

In recent years, vaping cannabis oil has exploded, and it’s helped introduce many to the world of legal pot. While smoking weed or downing an edible can offer an intense adventure, vaping oil can give users a more mellow and manageable experience. Additionally, it’s less smelly, there’s no smoke, and it’s an overall cleaner ordeal.

SEE ALSO: Stop tattling on people smoking weed, Toronto police warn in cheeky tweets

“You have all of this plant matter when you light it on fire you’re creating smoke. There’s a lot of that plant matter that doesn’t impact your high whatsoever — your experience whatsoever. So what vaping does, especially in the non-flower form, is it extracts all that plant matter and provides you just with the active compounds,” JJ O’Brien, VP of Strategy at Pax Labs said in an interview. 

When you purchase vape oil from a legal store, it usually comes with a standard fitting. Users can then purchase a battery relatively cheaply, which can be reused and recharged. 

While some batteries allow users to select between a few set temperature settings, companies like Pax allow people to set the temperature they’d like down to the degree.

At $29.99 the Pax Era is the company’s response to the industry’s oil boom. But there’s a catch — you can’t just go buy any type of oil you want because it does not use the industry standard 510 threaded batteries. Instead, the Era uses its own pods which are sourced from cannabis manufacturers they trust. Sure, while this may be a little inconvenient and limit the variety of oils you can buy, this model and others like it feel like a little bit more of a high-end experience. 

The Era is app-connected, which allows you to unlock a number of features, including temperature control from your smartphone. The vape can be set as low as 430 degrees Fahrenheit, and as high as 790. To set a temperature that’s right for you, it all depends on what you want out of the vape.

No temperature is the right temperature

“The unique part about temperature when it comes to cannabis consumption is that every single one of those active compounds — all your cannabinoids … all of your terpenes … add to your holistic high and they all have different boiling points,” O’Brien explained. “Temperature is incredibly important in any type of cannabis experience because you’re wanting to consume all of those compounds at the right heat, which vary on the map, and you can’t necessarily consume the full spectrum as easily as you want sometimes.

While some cannabinoids — compounds found in cannabis that can provide the consumer with different effects — can withstand a higher temperature, terpenes, the essential oils of the plant which give it its taste and smell, cannot. So, vaping at a lower temperature will give a more perfume-like flavor, while a higher temperature will produce more vapor and will be a more intense high. 

Activating these compounds is essentially what provides the user with an experience, one that is getting increasingly easier to manage thanks to technology. 

“The joint is actually the best vaporizer out there.”

“The joint is actually the best vaporizer out there,” O’Brien admitted. “You’re combusting on one end, you’re pulling hot air through a controlled environment because you’ve wrapped the paper, and you’re actually hitting that flower with different heats as the combustion cools coming into your mouth.”

How to find your best temperature? 

If you’re experimenting with different vape temperatures, the best thing to do is start low and try to be as mindful of your experience as possible. Take notes! Starting at a low temperature and waiting a decent amount of time between hits will allow you to take in how your body and mind are altered.

For the best results on the Era, select a dosage on the session control section of the app and slowly  increase the temperature each time you vape. Remember that the effects of cannabis are cumulative, so this may take a few different days or even weeks before you find the perfect temperature for each situation. 

 If you don’t have an Era and can’t control the dose of your session, try to be aware of how hard and how long your pulling. For the most accurate results, remember to charge your vape battery often.

The future of fine tuning 

While we can use things like vape temperature to help manage our highs, there are still so many factors involved in proving the same, repeatable experience which is essential to the mainstream acceptance of cannabis. How intense did you inhale and how long did you keep it in your lungs before exhaling? What was the THC percentage in the oil you purchased? CBD?

Temperature is only one factor in the very confusing and often overwhelming world of cannabis. A shot of whiskey is a shot of whiskey every single time. A hit of a joint or a puff off a vape can vary extensively.

Companies like Pax are allowing users to set their own preference through apps that fine tune temperatures and dosages. But without more research on how these compounds can effect us, many cannabis consumers are still playing guinea pigs with their highs. Widespread legalization at the federal level, like in Canada, may help us learn more about activating these compounds, and how we can better manage them.

Netflix is testing cheaper subscription options in some overseas markets. The catch: The plan only allows users to stream content on a mobile device.

The first trial run has already rolled out in Malaysia, where users can currently sign up for a cheaper, mobile-only subscription for just RM17 (or about $4) per month. 

The plan allows users to stream movies and TV shows to one mobile device, either a smartphone or tablet. High-definition video is not included in the plan. The next cheapest option, called the Basic Plan, is roughly double the cost at RM33 (about $8). It allows users to watch content on a laptop or TV, but also only streams in standard definition. HD content is included in the Standard Plan at RM42 (about $10) per month.

SEE ALSO: Netflix cancels ‘American Vandal’. WTF?

Last week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explained that the company was looking to experiment on pricing in Asian markets. The test run puts Netflix’s new plan structure more in line with pricing options from local streaming services like Iflix, which offers plans starting at around $3 a month.

While Netflix doesn’t currently offer a cheaper, mobile-only option in the U.S., Malaysia’s Basic and Standard plans come in at about the same price compared to the equivalent plans in the states. According to Malaysia’s Department of Statistics Salaries and Wages Survey Report, the average Malaysian worker only makes about $400 per month. Tying Netflix plan pricing structure in Malaysia to its U.S. offerings clearly wasn’t keeping it competitive when compared to the local market.

Netflix currently boasts 137 million subscribers globally, with 79 million of those users coming from outside the U.S. The company would obviously like to boost those numbers, wherever possible, in a market that’s about to become even more saturated with new streaming services like Disney+.

Google just made one of the best Google Home features a lot more powerful. 

I’m talking about the “broadcast” feature, which essentially turns your Google Home device into an in-home intercom system. 

SEE ALSO: Google’s Home Hub is an incredible digital photo frame that’s also a smart speaker

First rolled out a year ago, the feature lets you send messages using the Google Assistant app or another Google Home speaker in a separate location. But up until now, those messages could only go one way.

So, for example, you could broadcast from your phone that you were on your way home, or send one from a kitchen speaker letting the rest of your family know that dinner is ready. But the person receiving the message had no way of responding, so you could never actually be sure your message was heard.

That’s now changing. Google is adding reply functionality so you can reply to broadcasts with your own voice messages — essentially turning your Google Home not just into an intercom, but a walkie-talkie. The feature will be rolling out “in the coming weeks,” according to Google, but you can see it in action in the video below. 

What’s more, the update also does a little to solve the problem of how you receive broadcasts if you have more than one Google Home. Though the initial incoming message will still play over all your devices, subsequent replies will only play over the speaker you reply from.

In addition to broadcast replies, Google is adding a few other new features to its Home speakers, including:

• A new recipes feature that surfaces “suggested recipes” on Google Home products with a display. You can also save recipes you like in a dedicated “cookbook.”

• A kid-oriented feature that lets you set alarms in the voice of cartoon characters, like the Ninja Turtles.

• New playback controls for audiobooks and podcasts so you can change the playback speed to be faster or slower.

Looks like Home speaker users have more reason to utilize the tech more often now. 

You would think a company like Dolby with its 50 years-plus history of pushing audio and video fidelity would have released its own consumer product some time ago, right?

Maybe the timing wasn’t right or it didn’t have a special enough product before, but it seems now is the moment. Dolby’s first consumer product is Dolby Dimension, a pair of high-end wireless headphones it says was designed and engineered for content bingers.

But with a million and one headphones to choose from, why would anyone pay $600 for the Dolby Dimension? While the pricing isn’t exactly affordable for most people, the wireless headphones provide the kind high-quality audio experience you’d expect from a similarly-priced home theater setup, only sans the roomful of speaker gear.

SEE ALSO: 10 of the best wireless headphones for watching TV

LifeMix, which disables the active noise-cancelling (but not the audio altogether) and filters in the ambient sound around you is clever and practical for, say, parents who still need to keep an ear on their baby. 

Other features like the seamless Bluetooth connection switching between three devices (i.e. phone, tablet, and TV) and the sleek magnetic charging dock are just as thoughtful.

The Dimension isn’t without issues. Though I’ve mostly enjoyed using them to watch movies on an Apple TV 4K (with Dolby Atmos) and shows like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix, the headphones don’t always play nice with YouTube for some reason. 

Depending on the kind of YouTube content, the audio would randomly lag. Sometimes the audio synced up to the video and sometimes it didn’t. I tried the Dimension with different phones, tablets, laptop, and game consoles and it was always hit or miss.

Seeing as most people are spending more time watching longer YouTube videos, it’s a shame the audio’s sometimes out of sync. It’s possible Dolby could fix things with a software update, but out of the gate, the inconsistent audio syncing is a deal-breaker for me, especially when you’re dropping so much dough for the cans.

Comfy fit and classy finish

Maybe you like your headphones decked out with embellishments worthy of its high sticker price, but I don’t.

That’s why I like the Dimension’s industrial design made of stainless steel, aluminum, and synthetic leather. The all-black design is minimal and stealthy. It doesn’t scream at everyone like a pair of Beats or seem too snooty like a pair of Bose QC35′s or Sony 1000X’s designed for use on planes can.

The Dimension look classy. I’ve received compliments while wearing them on the train and even some of my friends who initially felt $600 for synthetic instead of real leather came around to after trying them on.

In the two weeks that I’ve been using them at home and on the go, the Dimension have held up quite nicely. The large earcups have yet to show signs of distress from being tossed around or sweated in.

Dolby’s made a pair of very stylish and comfortable wireless headphones, but there are a few things that could use some fine-tuning. For instance, it wasn’t something that bothered me often, but they can start to feel a little heavy after a couple of hours on your head (no doubt because of the stainless steel).

It’s also nice the headphones come with a little pouch to carry them in your bag, but whatever it’s made of is super linty and dust particles get all over the headphones. A damp paper towel wipes the dust right off, but like what the heck?

It’s also a bummer the headphones don’t fold flat like Bose’s or Sony’s aforementioned headphones. That said, it’s an issue you can easily overlook because the Dimension are first and foremost designed to be used at home. 

Dolby’s special sauce

As crazy as it sounds, Dolby intends for the Dimension to be mostly kept at and used at home —  really as a substitute for a lofty surround sound setup.

Dolby says its research has shown that most people simply can’t enjoy a high-quality audio experience for their music, videos, or movies for a number of reasons.

It’s not just that a surround sound setup is expensive and requires the necessary space to put all of the equipment in, but that most people can’t get this premium setup. People like me, who live in small apartments with wafer-thin walls and can’t crank up the sound because the police would be at my door in a hot minute if I did. 

Even people who have a big house — their viewing habits have changed. They’re watching movies on their phone, on their laptop, or on their tablet. The TV is just one of the many screens we all watch stuff on.

These new viewing habits and lifestyle choices are what pushed Dolby to make the Dimension. It’s about delivering the Dolby audio experience on whatever device you want.

But it’s not enough that Dolby just made wireless headphones. The magic is in the Dolby sauce — in this case the end-to-end experience.

To this end, the headphones have three source buttons on the right earcup just above the sleep/power button. Each of these source buttons can be preset to a specific device. Dolby recommends them for devices small (phone), medium (tablet or laptop), and large (TV). But you can set them to whatever you want in whatever order you want. 

Once each source button has been paired separately, you only need to press on it to connect to the device. Other headphones have had similar features, but most of them tend to drop connection or forget the devices they’ve been set to. I experienced no such connection problems with the Dimension. Pressing a source button instantly connected the headphones to its corresponding device.

You can pair the headphones to up to eight devices using the Dolby Dimension app and assign three to the source buttons at any time.

On the right earcup is a touchpad for playback controls. Tap the center to play and pause, swipe forwards and backwards to skip to the next and previous track, and swipe up and down to adjust the volume. You can also press and hold the center to activate Siri or the Google Assistant. These controls all work perfectly.

A double-tap on the center of the touchpad turns off the active noise-cancellation and turns on LifeMix.

LifeMix is basically an ambient listening mode. You still hear your source’s audio, but there’s a transparency to it because you can simultaneously hear what’s happening around you. It’s hard to describe, to be honest, and the only way to really get it is to try the Dimension for yourself.

Dolby says LifeMix blends audio from your entertainment with your reality so that you’re immersed in your content, but not completely isolated. 

And it works… but you’ll need to do some tweaking in the app like I did to get the perfect balance. By default, LifeMix’s transparency is set to level “10,” with “0” being the lowest (active noise cancellation on) and the highest setting being “11” (boost).

Level “10” provides an obvious mixture that sounds as if the audio’s been pushed to one side as the ambient sound around you filters in. But it sounds a little too hollow, even though the ambient sounds are directional and you can hear, say, someone talking to you from the left or a doorbell ringing in from behind you. Level “11” is even more tinny, for lack of a better word — like a hearing aid dialed up to enhance things.

The sweet spot of LifeMix was between level 6-8, and it took a little bit of trial and error to see which level worked best for my apartment.

LifeMix could be useful if you and a partner each watch your own content, but in the space space such as on a couch or in a bed. You’ll still be able to hear them without being completely removed. I found LifeMix good for making sure I didn’t miss any alarm reminders from Alexa and for hearing when a pet was scurrying to another room.

There’s also head-tracking, which Dolby says should ensure audio always sounds like it’s coming from the screen. I’m not sure if the head-tracking really worked or I was so engrossed in my content with the Dimension that I didn’t notice the sound remained balanced even when I was balled up in all kinds of weird positions on my sofa. Either way, you can turn off the head-tracking via the app. 

Head-tracking is a good transition to talk about battery life. In a word: It’s excellent. Dolby advertises up to 15 hours of battery life and up to 10 hours with LifeMix turned on. That’s really long for at-home use in front of a TV or an iPad. 

The longest I used the Dimension was for binging That 70’s Show for almost six hours straight and even then I had hours of battery life left. 

But it’s almost impossible to drain the battery unless you use them on the go or do watch 10+ hours of content, in which case you should reevaluate what you’re doing with your free time. The long battery life is mainly because of the neat dock the headphones come with.

The dock is meant to be placed on a coffee table, or on your desk, or on your bedside table. Pop the left earcup on the dock and the headphones automatically start charging. A full charge takes about two hours and a 15-20 minute quick charge gets you two hours of listening. 

Since you’re always returning the headphones to the dock whenever you’re done using them, they’re always charging up for the next binge. Plus, the headphones look rad propped up on the dock.

They sound really good

None of these headphones’ features matter if the core sound experience is poor. Thankfully, it’s not. While I’m no audiophile, I know my way around good sound and the Dimension sound really good.

Content that supports Dolby Atmos will automatically pipe the higher-quality sound through the cans. Otherwise, you still get a wide stereo speaker experience, but they’re not much different from a pair of Bose or Sony headphones with active noise cancellation.

I watched Death Note and Okja, two movies on Netflix that support Atmos, on an iPad Pro with the Dimension and compared them to listening with my regular Apple EarPods and I could definitely hear the three-dimensional sound as if it was moving more distinctly around me as opposed to simply separating between left and right channels.

Generally, even without Atmos content, the headphones sound pretty warm with a good balance between the highs, lows, and mids. I wouldn’t call the bass seat-thumping but it’s got a good kick for headphones in this class. 

There’s also little distortion at really high volumes; I streamed a couple of my favorite songs including Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Beyoncé’s “Halo” and Børns’ “Electric Love” and they sounded clear. Occasionally, the bass would overpower the vocals on some songs, but not to any detestable level.

The roomy earcups provide a good seal for the sound when you LifeMix isn’t turned on. 

The only thing is… there’s not a whole lot Atmos-ready movies on Netflix, or Vudu, or Maxdome (for Germans) or other streaming services. There are a boatload of Blu-ray movies that support Atmos, but that’s a shrinking market as people increasingly turn to streaming.

The selection of games with Dolby Atmos is even weaker. Dolby lists only nine games, all of which are kind of old titles like Battlefield 1, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Overwatch. Hardly a list of titles that’ll make you run out and buy Atmos speakers or the Dimension for.

Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, audio on YouTube sometimes lags — the sound would be a few seconds behind the video or so out of sync the content would be unwatchable. Dolby tells me they’ve tested the Dimension on different kinds of YouTube content and even implemented “Bluetoooth profiles” to reduce latency for various kinds of content. 

I can’t vouch for these profiles. The only thing I can tell you is the audio syncing appeared to happen randomly. It didn’t seem to be a straightforward frame rate issue. I watched YouTube videos at 30 and 60 fps and sometimes the audio synced up and sometimes it didn’t. Perhaps a software update could fix this, though.

The audio on all other streaming services from Netflix, to Viki, to iTunes, worked fine. It’s weird the audio lag only affected some YouTube videos.

Dolby is onto something with the Dimension. The product is purposefully-designed to deliver an audio experience in a pair of wireless headphones that would ordinarily require a room full of expensive equipment.

A/V nuts will appreciate this simple mission and they’ll likely be the ones who’ll enjoy the Dimension the most. But then again, they’d also pony up the cash for a nice room setup.

As much as Dolby has simplified its premium audio experience into a lovely product, the $600 price tag puts it far out of reach of most people’s budget. 

Any movie lover knows the audio experience is just as important the visuals. But unfortunately, sound always takes a backseat to video. Dolby wants to change that badly with the Dimension and they’re great if money isn’t a concern, but for the 99 percent it’s way too expensive. Here’s to hoping Dolby can get these headphones down to $300-400 without compromising on the sound or the features. Then, they’re a killer deal.