Category: Home Theater

  • First HD DVD Players Don’t Wow the Reviewers

    Reading Time: 2 minutes My wife Kathleen spent yesterday afternoon at our friend Jen Colangelo’s house watching The Chronicles of Narnia on Jen’s big, new plasma television. When she got home, Kathleen said the movie (which was played on a progressive-scan DVD player) looked “amazing” compared to movies on our old, analog, 480i TV. All…

  • Some Excellent Tips on Setting Up Your First Home Theater System

    Reading Time: < 1 minute Alan Lofft of Axiom Home Theaters wrote a great piece for eCoustics.com that offers do’s and don’ts for setting up your first home theater surround system. The tips I particularly liked were: “Don’t turn the levels of your surround speakers up too high because you can’t “hear” them. You aren’t…

  • How To Receive HDTV Without Subscribing to Cable

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Kathleen and I had lunch with our friend Jennifer Colangelo over the weekend. She is is the proud owner of a huge, new plasma HDTV set that she mainly uses to watch DVDs and play games on her Xbox 360. As we discussed her new TV, I found out that she…

  • Are Digital TVs Being Returned Because Some People Don’t Understand High Definition?

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Martin O’Donnell recently visited Costco Warehouse #1 in Seattle, where he saw the following sign: All Digital TVs at Costco are displaying High Definition content. In order to view the same picture quality at home, you must upgrade to HD programming. Martin added, “It goes on to explain how a standard…

  • Sale on Mission M-Cube 5.1 Home Theater Speaker System at Amazon.com Brings Price Below $1,000

    Reading Time: < 1 minute Amazon.com just put the Mission M-Cube 5.1 Home Theater Speaker System on sale, bringing the price of the package below $1,000 for the first time. The M-Cube 5.1 is one of the few home theater systems that uses NXT speaker technology but doesn’t emphasize flat cabinetry. NXT technology was designed…

  • Viewsonic VX2025 Wins 20-inch Widescreen Monitor Shootout at Bit-Tech

    Reading Time: < 1 minute The ViewSonic VX2025 won a 20-inch Widescreen Monitor Group Test published yesterday at Bit-Tech.net. The VX2025 was judged the best value for the money against the following competitors: BenQ FP202W NEC MultiSync 20WGX, apparently not available in the U.S. but the closest model is the NEC MultiSync 20WMGX2-BK Acer AL2032WA…

  • Stop Wasting Outlets with a PowerSquid Outlet Multiplier

    Reading Time: < 1 minute The other day Cool Tools pointed out a product called the PowerSquid Outlet Multiplier and I’m planning to pick one up over the weekend for my server area in my basement. Down there I have a DSL router, a firewall appliance, a WiFi access point, and two VoIP ATAs plugged…

  • WSJ Says The Slingbox and Place-Shifting are the Latest Threats to the Television Industry

    Reading Time: 2 minutes A page one article in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses the technological threats that are developing to the television industry’s business model. One example given in the article is that Major League Baseball‘s MLB.tv video streaming service collected $265 million from 1.3 million subscribers last year, but still blocked subscribers from…

  • Old Music Formats Return to New York Thanks to HD Radio Technology

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Even though I live and work in Bucks County, PA, I still listen to New York City radio stations whenever I can. Most of them are flat out more entertaining than stations of the same format broadcasting from Philadelphia. One drawback of listening to New York radio stations as much as…