HDTV and Home Theater Podcast

Best Selling Projectors We’ll receive emails from time to time asking us for a little more coverage of projectors so for today’s show we decided to take a look at the top five selling home theater projectors on ProjectorPeople.com. Panasonic PT-AE8000U Projector (Buy Now $2450) - The number one projector isn’t cheap but you get a lot. We are always impressed when we look at this projector. For a while both of us were considering this line for our own homes. This is also an LCD based projector that does 3D. Its brighter than its predecessor which helps 3D viewing. A quiet fan will not disturb you while watching something that doesn’t have much going on in the surrounds. If you have a budget of $2500 this should be on your short list to consider. Panasonic PT-AR100U Projector (Buy Now $1299) - If you like what you read about the AE8000U but don’t quite have the budget for it you may want to take a look at this model. The 100U is a little brighter than the 8000U but its fan is a bit louder. If you don’t have a dedicated theater room with ambient light control this projector may work better for you. It also doesn’t support 3D which is something to consider. One thing we will point out is that 3D does work better on very large format displays so you may want to consider a model that does support it. The only real negative in the way of picture quality is the black level is a little washed out. It is a tradeoff for the price. Epson Home Cinema 5030UB Projector (Buy Now $2599 on ProjectorPeople.com) - This is not a cheap projector but you sure do get a lot for the money. The 5030 is uses 3 chip LCD technology and has a wide horizontal shift which allows for easier room placement. It is THX certified and will do a 2D to 3D conversion if you want and as an added bonus it comes with two pairs of 3D glasses. This is a highly rated projector from both consumers and professionals. Braden loves his Epson projector! Epson MegaPlex MG-850HD B Stock Projector (Buy Now $549 on ProjectorPeople.com) - This one is a great deal if you act quickly (normally priced $799). We love B-Stock, refurbished, or gently used. Its a great way to get great equipment and really low prices. This is a portable full sized projector that is great for travelers or for those who want to pull it out for special occasions. It has stereo speakers and connects up to your portable devices including laptops. it has a dock for your ipad and iPhone and will charge them while connected provided the connectors are pre-lighting port. The projector outputs 2800 lumens so it should work well in rooms with little light control. It screams backyard theater!! BenQ W1070 Projector (Buy Now $999 on ProjectorPeople.com) This is the only DLP projector of the group, using the DarkChip 3 DLP processor from Texas Instruments. Its not the brightest projector at 2,000 lumens so you’ll want to make sure you use it in a room with good light control. Its 1080p and 3D capable and is ISF certified meaning that it can be calibrated to optimize its performance. If you are looking to get into front projection without breaking the bank this is one to consider.

Is Virtual Reality the Next Big Thing in Home Theater? Many of us are constantly on the lookout for the next big thing in Home Theater. When the HDTV revolution hit, we couldn’t get enough. Then there was HD-DVD and Blu-ray, followed by a flop or two, like 3D. Right now it looks like it might be 4K HD. But what if 3D was just the precursor to the real next big thing, Virtual Reality. What is Virtual Reality? When you think Virtual Reality, you probably imagine yourself on the holodeck of the USS Enterprise, hanging out, perhaps, in the old west with Captain Picard. That’s the idea, but we probably won’t see that full implementation anytime soon. The wikipedia definition is: “a computer-simulated environment that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds.” It’s you, inside the movie or the game, playing or watching from within - and being an active participant. Current Technology A company called Oculus VR is building a VR mask you can wear, called the Oculus Rift. It resembles a black, blacked-out ViewMaster you strap to your head. Once you’ve strapped on your VR goggles, you’re instantly transported into whatever world, time or place you can image. It’s like 3D, if the 3D didn’t stop at the edge of the screen. We haven’t used the device ourselves, but have seen similar demonstrations at CES in the past, and it’s pretty cool. Oculus VR is very focused on the gaming market, and that makes sense. It’s really the only technology that could embrace Virtual Reality anytime soon. The vision is to let gamers feel like they’re really driving the car, throwing the ball or carrying the gun through the battlefield. Imagine taking the microsoft Kinect technology to the next level. Instead of just having your body control the action you see on screen, your body controls the action you see all around you, the action you’re right on the middle of. Another company, called Avegant, is building a wearable Virtual Reality headset that projects images directly onto your retina. At first this sounds painful, then scary, then super futuristic and cool. It’s like beaming images directly into your brain. A technology like this requires very precise alignment, which is why most companies aren’t pursuing it. But Avegant thinks they have it down. If they do, the visual experience will be unparalleled because the beamed image should cover your entire visual experience. Limitations Processing power is an issue for current Virtual Reality systems, and would prove to be very challenging if anyone tried to scale it to a large format like the holodeck. It takes a lot of CPU and graphics processing to produce what amounts to any potential view of any reality at any time. The computational decisions on what to render, and the graphics ability to render it in real-time are a big limiting factor in how pervasive VR can become, even for gaming. Like 3D for home theater, VR also suffers from physical side-effects like motion sickness and headaches. In the industry it is known as simulation sickness. Like motion sickness, it occurs when your brain and body don’t agree on what’s actually going on. You brain senses movement, but your body doesn’t. This can lead to some serious queesyness. And of course, there’s the issue of space. If you’ve played a Wii or used the XBox360 with Kinect, you know it’s easy to run out of space pretty quickly. This isn’t an issue if you happen to be driving a car or flying a plane, but if you’re running through a battlefield, or across a football field - how do you run without really running? How do you get from here to there, when ‘there’ is bigger than the room you’re in? Applications for Home Theater When you imagine watching a movie as if you were in the film itself, it sounds amazing, until you start to look at the limitations. But there may be ways to introduce Virtual Reality concepts into home theater and make it work. It could be like what 3D should be - the movie is actually occurring all around you. Movement might be tricky, and there may be some scenes where placing the viewer would be tricky or awkward, but that’s solvable. Imagine if, when a character walked onscreen, the actually walked right past you. Or if something was going on to the left, or to the right, or above, you could turn your head to get a better view. There may be some movies that VR wouldn’t be good for. It sounds cool for action films like Saving Private Ryan, but would you really want to be that close to the action? Sometimes viewing from a distance, as a removed observer, is the only way to reasonably experience something. Most of us wouldn’t really want to storm the beach at Normandy and see the devastation that close. But for nature documentaries, like we see on Discovery or NatGeo, sitting in the middle of a pack of lions or walking inside an ant colony, it could be amazing. Sports could be fun in Virtual Reality as well. The amount of cameras required to make it happen is probably unfeasible. But

4.7 Stars (out of 5) - Rated PG-13 Synopsis Tony Stark/Iron Man faces an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. With his back against the wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Paul Bettany, Jon Favreau Director: Shane Black Blu-ray Release Date: September 24, 2013 Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish Rating Overall rating weighted as follows: Audio 40%, Video 40%, Special Features 20%, Movie - its just our opinion so take it with a grain of salt Audio 5.0 Stars (out of 5) Dolby and DTS Demo Discs used as basis for comparison ● Subwoofer – 5.0 Stars ● Dialog – 5.0 Stars ● Surround Effects – 5.0 Stars ● Dynamic Range – 5.0 Stars English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, French: DTS-HD HR 7.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 The subwoofer never lets up and delivers hefty punches, concussive gunshots, and deep wide explosions that rumble the couch. The witty dialog never gets lost in the action, and can always be clearly heard. Rear speakers always have something interesting to hear whether it be breaking glass, whipping helicopter blades, a waves of water, or the jets from the Iron Man suits. Video 5.0 Stars (out of 5) Spears & Munsil Benchmark Blu-ray Edition used as basis for comparison ● Color Accuracy - 5.0 Stars ● Shadow detail – 5.0 Stars ● Clarity – 5.0 Stars ● Skin tones – 5.0 Stars ● Compression – 5.0 Stars Codec: MPEG-4 AVC, Resolution: 1080p, Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1, Original Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 Colors are natural and helped feature orange glowing skin, various colored Iron Man suits, fireworks, lights on Christmas trees, and tons of balls of fire. Some scenes are very dark, but this Blu-ray does a marvelous of keeping shadows inky dark without compromising on too much detail. Clarity was clean and made easy to see beard hairs, wrinkles on skin, blood on faces, and tiny scratches on metal. Bonus Features 3.5 Stars (out of 5) ● Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter (HD, 15 minutes): Girl power, circa WWII, comes courtesy of Marvel's latest entertaining "One-Shot" short film: Agent Carter, starring Hayley Atwell as Steve Rogers' wartime flame Peggy Carter. ● Audio Commentary: Director/co-writer Shane Black and co-writer Drew Pearce ● Iron Man 3 Unmasked (HD, 11 minutes): A behind-the-scenes featurette that offers a lot of great information before wrapping much too quickly. ● Deconstructing the Scene: Attack on Air Force One (HD, 9 minutes): A breakdown of the action sequence that took place on a mock up Air Force One. ● Deleted and Extended Scenes (HD, 16 minutes) ● Exclusive Look at Thor: The Dark World (HD, 2 minutes) ● Gag Reel (HD, 5 minutes) ● Restore the Database Second Screen Experience (HD) Movie – 4.5 Stars (out of 5) Review Iron Man 3 is one of Marvel’s best movies, it’s full of excitement, good acting, and has a decent plot. A large portion of the action happens when Tony Stark is out of the armor, and it’s just as entertaining as if he was. This movie fits tightly into the Marvel universe and it’s required that least you watch The Avengers before this movie. There were a few political messages in the film, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with them. It ended in a way I didn’t expect but I found it satisfying. I was afraid that since Jon Favreau (who directed the first 2 Iron Man films) didn’t direct this one, it would lose some of the Marvel magic. However, Shane Black did great job of balancing the Stark’s emotional issues, funny moments, and lots of action to make an awesome superhero movie.

Understanding Speaker Specs We threw out a speaker specification a couple episodes back while reviewing the Cerwin Vega VE Series Speakers and afterwards realized that we all may not share the same level of comfort and understanding with the various specs and measurements thrown around when shopping for or comparing speakers. Of course how they sound to you is really all that matters, but often a solid understanding of what all those numbers mean can help you make a more informed buying decision. Sensitivity This is the spec we mentioned with the Cerwin Vega speakers and one we use routinely to rank speakers when purley going by paper, not by sound. If you’re doing your homework on Amazon or another online retailer, keep an eye out for sensitivity. It gives you an idea of how efficient a speaker is; in other words, how hard it is going to make your receiver or amplifier work to play back those explosions you want to hear louder than you probably should. What it really measures is how loud the speaker will play when given a standard test input and measured at a specific distance, typically 1 meter. As you can imagine, when fed the same test signal, the louder a speaker will play, the more efficient it is. So sensitivity is a measure of the speaker’s volume, expressed (as volume often is) in decibels. The higher the number, the higher the efficiency and the better your speaker will perform. Your receiver or amplifier won’t have to work as hard to produce the same volume level. Typical numbers are in the mid to high 80s; anything over 90 is considered excellent. Sensitivity won’t tell you how good a speaker sounds, but it will tell you how easy it will be to crank it up. Frequency Response Measures the range of audible frequencies a speaker reproduces sound across the entire audio spectrum. This spec helps you assemble a set of speakers that allow you to hear everything you’re supposed to. The general rule of thumb is that we humans can hear really low sounds down to 20 Hz all the way up to really high-pitch, piercing sound at 20 kHz. Many argue that the highest and lowest frequencies are less important because the human ear doesn’t hear them as well. But for the lower range, it may not be as important to hear it as it is to feel it. Larger speakers tend to cover a wider range of frequencies, which is why you typically want larger speakers for your front and center channels. You can get away with smaller speakers in the surround channels because the sound there doesn't tend to be as dynamic as the front of the room. Although some very large speakers will cover the lowest end of the spectrum, down to 20 Hz, most home theater speakers don’t go that low, so you need a subwoofer to fill that gap. Without the really the low end frequencies, a home theater tends to lack punch and the audio doesn’t feel as full. Impedance This is another measurement, like sensitivity, that is of no value when it comes to the pure audio quality of the speaker, but it can help guide some buying decisions. Where sensitivity tells you how hard the amplifier needs to work to produce a particular volume level, impedance tells you how much strain the speaker itself puts on your amplifier. Most speakers are rated at 8 ohms, and most receiver specs are quoted assuming an 8 ohm speaker load. The lower the impedance number, the more strain, so if you come across a sweet pair of 4 or 6 ohm speakers, you’ll need to make sure your receiver can handle them. Also keep in mind that impedance is something you can influence if you decide to add more speakers to your home theater. You can’t simply add more speakers to the same channel. When you do, you change the overall load or impedance for that amplifier channel. Adding a second speaker to a channel, when connected in parallel, will actually cut the impedance in half, so instead of the amplifier working to run one 8 ohm speaker, it now has to work as if it is connected to one 4 ohm speaker. This could have a negative impact on your amp. Connecting speakers in series, however, actually has the opposite impact, but that may be too deepa discussion for this episode. Bottom line, make sure you know what you’re doing if you decide to add multiple speakers to the same surround sound channel. Power Handling This tells you the maximum amount of power you can run into a speaker without damaging it. To be honest, the spec is somewhat useless. A 200 watt per channel amplifier will rarely, if ever, run at the full 200 watts to each channel. If you tried it, you’d probably have blood coming from your ears before your speakers, that may be rated for 100 or 125 max watts per channel, would give out or blow. The 180 watt or 200 watt receiver is probably going to be a higher quality item than a 50 or 80 watt unit, so even though the smaller ones will never have the chance to ruin your speakers, they won’t sound as good either. Use common sense and you should be just fine.

On today's show we speake with Stuart Sweet of the Solid Signal Blog about what he saw at CEDIA

World War Z - Blu-ray Review 4.3 Stars (out of 5) - Rated PG-13 Synopsis A U.N. employee races against time and fate as he travels the world trying to stop the spread of a deadly zombie pandemic. As the undead hordes gain strength across the globe, governments topple and Earth stands on the brink of total social collapse. Starring: Brad Pitt, Matthew Fox, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, David Morse, David Andrews Director: Marc Forster Blu-ray Release Date: September 17, 2013 Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese Rating Overall rating weighted as follows: Audio 40%, Video 40%, Special Features 20%, Movie - its just our opinion so take it with a grain of salt Audio 4.5 Stars (out of 5) Dolby and DTS Demo Discs used as basis for comparison ● Subwoofer – 4.5 Stars ● Dialog – 4.5 Stars ● Surround Effects – 4.0 Stars ● Dynamic Range - 5.0 Stars English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, French: Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1, Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1 The subwoofer gets some action but it’s not as bombastic as I would like. However several scenes feature low frequencies such as explosions, car crashes, gunshots, hordes of tumbling zombies, and exploding grenades. In a few scenes it was difficult to make out some lines of dialog. It sounded a little muffled and was lost to the background. The rear channels are not used as often as they could have been, but they do a good job filling the room with the sounds of helicopters, broken glass, screaming crowds, airplane propellers, soft falling rain, and of course screaming congregation of unhappy zombies. Video 4.5 Stars (out of 5) Spears & Munsil Benchmark Blu-ray Edition used as basis for comparison ● Color Accuracy - 4.5 Stars ● Shadow detail – 4.5 Stars ● Clarity – 4.0 Stars ● Skin tones – 4.5 Stars ● Compression – 5.0 Stars Codec: MPEG-4 AVC, Resolution: 1080p, Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1, Original Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 Colors are cold in most scenes, in a few others colors are natural looking but overall the hue matches the tone … dreary. A few colors are more noticeable than others like yellow taxi cabs, glowing red road flares, and one short view of some green grass. There are numerous dark scenes and it does a decent job of handling it but a few details do get lost in the shadows. The clarity is mediocre for a Blu-ray. It won’t wow you but it’s good enough to see, loose hairs in the wind, individual grey hairs in Pitt’s beard, wrinkles on skin, and floating ash. Bonus Features 3.5 Stars (out of 5) ● Origins (HD, 8:21): A look at the film's production, from the book's release in 2006 and translating it into film. ● Looking to Science (HD, 7:28): An examination of how real-world scientific truths and analysis were used to enhance the film. ● WWZ: Production (HD): A four-part Documentary detailing the making of the film. It Outbreak (8:31), a detailed look at the making of the film's opening sequence. The Journey Begins (8:39) focuses on building several of the visual effects and shooting the scenes that end the first act and play through part of the second. Behind the Wall (9:41), a thorough examination of making the extended Israeli action sequence. Camouflage (9:25) guides viewers through the making of the film's extended airliner sequence and third act elements. Movie – 3.5 Stars (out of 5) Review World War Z is a high budget zombie movie with the tone of an action drama instead of a horror film. Don’t expect this PG-13 movie to be filled with gore and blood it spends more time solving the zombie problem than it does fighting them. Having an Oscar nominated actor like Brad Pitt in a zombie movie makes it more terrifying since he is able to emote terror and disgust in ways I haven’t seen in a horror film before. It’s a unique film that shows how different countries handle the “Z” problem, and it makes the scope of the movie seem very large. The plot is really four different stories that all star Pitt’s character. This method of storytelling will definitely stop you from getting bored, but it also makes it hard to connect with the characters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EC7P5WdUko |

Cerwin Vega VE Series Speakers Ara was looking for a use for his Harman-Kardon receiver that was put out to pasture by his Denon. He figured why not put a surround system in his master bedroom. All that was needed was five speakers since he also had a subwoofer that was put out to pasture by his Hsu VTF-3 MK4. A lot of devices get put out to pasture in the Derderian household. Since this was so far beyond what Ara’s wife wanted in the bedroom the cost had to be very affordable. Ara searched around online looking for good speakers that didn’t break the bank. Many 5.1 systems met the criteria but included a subwoofer. So rather than buy one of those and simply give the subwoofer away, he looked for speakers that were sold as separates or at least pairs. He stumbled across the Cerwin Vega VE series and it met all the criteria, size, price, and sound quality. Well if you believe user comments on Amazon for the sound quality part. Regardless, remembering the name Cerwin Vega from when Ara was a little kid he took a chance on it and bought four bookshelf (Buy Now $129 a Pair) and one center channel (Buy Now $99) speakers. For those who have never heard of Cerwin Vega it was started by Gene Czerwinski in 1954. Gene was an aerospace engineer who loved music. Today Cerwin Vega is owned by The Stanton Group. Specifications The speakers themselves have pretty decent specs: VE 5C (Center Channel) Frequency Response: 60 Hz - 20 kHz Power Capacity: 150 watts Sensitivity (1w/1m): 91 dB VE 5M (Bookshelf) Frequency Response: 60 Hz - 20 kHz Power Capacity: 125 watts Sensitivity (1w/1m): 89 dB These speakers are pretty efficient which makes it easier for your receiver to drive them. They are also fairly compact and can easily placed in smaller rooms. The bookshelves measure: Dimensions (DxWxH) - 6.1” x 7.2” x 10.3” 154.9 mm x 183 mm x 261.6 mm Weight - 7 lbs 3.2 kgs The center channel measures: Dimensions (DxWxH) - 7.2” x 15” x 6.1” 182.8 mm x 381 mm x 154.9 mm Weight - 11 lbs 5 kgs Performance We didn’t really have high expectations because of the price and use case. Really, how high fidelity do you need for a bedroom surround system? But we were pleasantly surprised! The first thing we did was listen to music without the subwoofer so we were worried that having the speakers only go down to 60 hz may eliminate some of the boom in modern music. They do a good job with the low end but if you have some modern music with a heavy bass track you will need a subwoofer. Beyond that, the bass sounds remarkably full for such a small cabinet. On the high frequencies everything sounded crisp and bright. Maybe even a bit too bright. Watching movies was a lot of fun because we typically don’t get to watch in surround in our bedrooms. You may think this is total overkill and we probably agree but what else are you going to do with spare equipment. Dialog was clear and easy to make out, surround effects added a new dimension to watching a movie or TV show before going to bed. But with as good as this all sounds, what really brought it home was the subwoofer. In most cases you can probably go with L,C,R and a subwoofer and be totally happy. Conclusion While we are extremely happy with these speakers we are not going to swap them out in our main rooms. But if you are just starting out or have a small room that needs a 5.1 system you will be much better served buying these plus a subwoofer over any home theater in a box system. Side note: Ara was going to go wireless for the surround system but he could not find one that performed without annoying pops and cracks. In the end he wired up the surrounds by stringing cable all the way around the room with channel tracks attached to the baseboards. More on that in a future show.

Stuart Sweet of the Solid Signal Blog checks in with Day One of the CEDIA Expo

To escape his desk job, Adm. James T. Kirk returns to the USS Enterprise, assisting Spock in a training mission for Starfleet cadets. But the inexperienced crew is put to the test when escaped villain Khan steals a powerful weapon and comes after the admiral seeking revenge. Now, Kirk must use all his wiles and whip the cadets into shape if they hope to defeat Khan's deadly traps.

Ara and Braden run down the new TV season.

IFA 2013 Each year in Germany consumer electronics manufacturers come together to display their wares at IFA. The IFA or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (International radio exhibition Berlin, aka 'Berlin Radio Show') is one of the oldest industrial exhibitions in Germany. Kind of like CES, manufacturers announce new products and services. This year was no exception. We’ll try to run down announcements as they pertain to Home Theater.

Synopsis When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Bruce Greenwood Director: J.J. Abrams

When it comes to movie sequels, 2.0 is rarely better than 1.0. In fact, we struggled to think of a single instance where a 2.0 movie was better than the 1.0. But in technology, we crave the latest and greatest, and the next version of anything gets our heart rates up. When the HDMI licensing group announced HDMI 2.0, we could hardly contain our enthusiasm.

Its hard to believe that only about 5 years ago most of us had to watch TV when the Networks wanted us to. Our first DVRs were so liberating because it allowed us to watch television on our own terms. No more missing programs because they conflicted with another show or were on late at night. The only real issue was that when DVRs first came out you had to watch in one room, typically the family room.

There was a lot of buzz a couple weeks back when Google announced the release of a new HDMI device called the Chromecast (buy now, $35). We weren’t immune to the curiosity, so we ordered one. The popularity made them tough to get, but when ours finally arrived, we couldn’t wait to see if it would live up to expectations. We’ll admit, we set our own expectations. Google didn’t do much to hype it up. They simply said, here it is, at a very reasonable price, have at it.

Just about everything we add to our home theaters need an Internet connection. Sure you can use WiFi but nothing beats a hardwired connection. If you have an older home it may be difficult to string wire yourself or costly to hire someone to do it for you. One option that is dead simple and as easy as plugging a device into a socket is Ethernet over Powerlines. We have reviewed many over the years but as technology improves we like to test newer products to see if data rates are getting faster. On this episode we take a look at the ZyXEL 500 Mb/s Fast Ethernet Powerline Wall-Plug Adapter (Buy Now $75)

Last week we gave you our opinion on which TV to buy for under $1000. This week we’ll do the same for AV Receivers, but for less than $600. As with TVs, there are many factors to consider when buying a receiver. And there’s also personal preference, past experience and brand loyalty. We’ve used all of those factors to compile the list, and we assume you'll apply your bias to it and find the one that fits your home theater just right.

A lone security repairman is stationed on a desolate, nearly-ruined future Earth. Who rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft, her arrival triggers a nonstop chain of events that forces him to question everything he knows, and leaves humanity’s fate in his hands.

HT Guys Top 5 HDTVs for less than $1,000 A week doesn’t go by without the HT Guys receiving an email asking us for our opinion on which TV to buy. When we answer those emails it usually requires a little back and forth to understand the use case for each TV. There are many factors but the biggest two are the size of the screen and the cost of the TV. For this week we thought we would pick five HDTVs that you would be proud to showcase in your home. The two hard requirements for the list were size, each TV had to be 50 inches or greater, and cost, each TV could not cost more than $1,000. The TVs can be found almost everywhere but some models may only be available online. Allaire™ ARIS® Wireless Speaker System If you wanted to setup a home with multiple zones in the fastest way possible its pretty clear there is only one way to go, wireless. There are plenty of solutions for Apple’s Airplay technology built in but what about if you use Windows Media Player? What would you say if we found a system that works with just about any protocol out there and sounds great too? That’s where the Allaire ARIS Wireless Speaker System ($297) by Aperion Audio comes in.

This action-packed sequel to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra finds the elite G.I. Joe assault team framed for treason by the global mercenary Zartan. Forced into hiding, the surviving warriors form a desperate plan to defeat Zartan's combined forces.

In our last episode we spelled out the reasons the Blu-ray disk, and the DVD for that matter, may not be around for much longer. That sparked some healthy debate at the watercooler and in our email. As you can imagine, pristine, high quality audio and video aren’t the only reasons to hang on to the disk format. In the interest of point-counterpoint, ‘we report, you decide,’ this week we’ll cover the reasons why Blu-ray could hang around for a while.

In this episode we cover the following topics: Manual audio calibration for older receivers Calibration for day and night Large or small speaker settings SpectraCal C6 or i1Pro 2 Enhanced Backlight levels?

Ask anyone who knows something about home theater what is the highest quality audio and video available to mere mortals today and they will tell you Blu-ray. Blu-ray video is stunning and the audio is simply amazing. But we don’t have to tell you that. So does Blu-ray have a future? The following are some reasons why Blu-ray may not be around for too much longer.

This biopic focuses on the relationship between baseball icon Jackie Robinson and Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, who signed Robinson and in 1947 made him the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era.

For many avid campers and outdoor enthusiasts, time spent away in the wilderness is a great opportunity to unplug and distance yourself from all of the technology that surrounds us everyday. For others of us, the idea of being away from HDTV for an extended amount of time puts us into a bit of a panic. But don’t fret, there are ways to experience the great outdoors and bring your HDTV along for the trip.

We have been talking about HDMI for pretty much as long as we have been doing this show, that’s more than six years. Every now and then we do a deep dive on the latest specification which currently sits at 1.4a. On today’s show we’ll look at what current specification supports and what’s on the horizon.

The Society for Information Display held their annual Display Week conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada last month from May 19 - 24. The show came and went without so much as a mention on the HDTV Podcast, but in our reading and research since the show, it turns out some very cool innovations were on display. Next year’s show will be in San Diego, we might have to make a day trip out of it.

We received an email from Mark in Watertown South Dakota asking us about our opinion of Netflix SuperHD and we thought it would make a great idea for a feature. If you haven’t heard of it before, Netflix SuperHD claims to provide superior 1080p video quality for the same price as regular streaming. But not everyone is eligible.

CE Pro, the magazine for professional consumer electronics installers, is back with another annual installment of the CE Pro Brand Analysis. They put out the survey every year to determine what brands dealers, integrators and resellers offer the most. While we were checking out this year’s update, we came across another White Paper about Home Theater Design Tips & Mistakes that covered some points we thought would be worth talking about.

If you have been listening to the show for the last few weeks you probably know that Ara added some new gear to his home. In the family room he added a Denon AVR-2313CI 7.2 AVR ($600 Buy Now) and in the media room he added a HSU Research VTF-3 MK4 Subwoofer ($649 Direct from HSU Research). This episode gets into Ara’s impression of both products.

There’s a lot of buzz in the home theater industry around the forthcoming Ultra High Definition, or UHD televisions, sometimes called 4K TVs. It turns out the UHDTV specification, often referred to simply as Rec. 2020, gives us quite a bit to be excited about, quite a bit more than just a bump in resolution. When we’ll ever get content for it, or whether or not televisions will really be able to take advantage of it anytime soon remains to be seen. But the spec looks good.

We have been talking about the demise of plasma for at least three years. But with each passing year manufacturers come out with plasma TVs that are simply the best TVs on the market. In a CNET article titled Best HDTVs Overall, the top 5 TVs were plasma, and that doesn’t even include the forthcoming Panasonic ZT60 which won best of show at CES. In this episode we’ll try to compare and contrast plasma and LED LCDs and see if there is a real reason why LEDs are putting plasma out of business.

We’re willing to admit, and we probably aren’t the only ones, that 3D simply is not the next big thing in home entertainment. Sure it sounded cool on paper, but in reality 3D at home just doesn’t provide the immersive 3D experience you get in a theater. Couple that with eye fatigue, headaches and seizures and 3D hasn’t delivered. Of the two options vying for the title of next big thing, OLED and 4K, which one has a better chance of claiming the throne?

Recently manufacturers announced their new AVR lines. Pioneer was no exception. We were able to obtain one of their entry Elite models the VSX-70. The VSX-70 has an MSRP of $750 and is available now.

We like to occasionally take a look at the top selling products at Amazon as a barometer of what is occurring in the larger Consumer Electronics market. Sometimes what we find shocks us, other times is confirms our suspicions, and sometimes it just flat out doesn’t make any sense at all. Yesterday we took a look at the top 10 selling HDTVs. What we found was in some ways surprising, but it certainly wasn’t shocking.

We here at the HDTV and Home Theater Podcast are always looking for new products that make your home theater better. So when we find products that claim to revolutionize something we can’t wait to try them out. We read about the Mohu Sky HDTV Antenna and how it used military technology and kind of chuckled to ourselves about how could that make a difference. Since we were within the specs of the claimed 60 mile radius we decided it was worth yet another antenna test. And yes it does make a difference!

A lot of emphasis is traditionally placed on buying the best equipment you can afford for your home theater. Ask just about anyone and they’ll tell you to stretch your budget as far as you can, dig deep to make sure you’re getting the right receiver or amplifier, buying those outrageously expensive speakers or paying too much for speaker wire or interconnects. If you do that, your home theater will sound amazing and you’ll be the envy of the neighborhood.

We recently received an email from a listener who was asking whether a 7.1 system was something that he should wire his home with. This got us thinking that there are probably a few listeners that may benefit from a discussion on whether a 7.1 system is worth it for them.

Despite Roku being the pioneer in modern streaming boxes, the Apple TV has become the device all others are measured by. But has that changed with the recent release of the Roku 3 just a few weeks ago? We aren’t sure about that, but we know Roku has certainly become even more compelling. At only $99, there’s really no downside to it (buy now).

We are on record of being huge fans of the Harmony remote control. Why not, before the Harmony our coffee tables had four remotes and practically required a user’s manual just to turn the home theater on. With a good universal remote, buttons labeled “Watch TV” or “Watch Blu-ray” make using the system as simple as pressing one button.

In an effort not to be outdone by their peers, many Consumer Electronics companies try to announce their new products at the same time everyone else does. This makes it very easy for us the consumer to know what we want to buy. We don’t have to wait for that last straggler to tell us what’s coming before we plunk down our hard-earned cash. Right now it’s AV receiver season. If you’re in the market for a new receiver for your home theater, have we got a show for you.

Media players have become the bridge to all our content. Whether that content is located in the cloud or on a server somewhere on your local network, these media players turn the digital bits into hours of multimedia enjoyment. We’ve looked a few devices over the years and they keep getting better and better. The WD TV Play is the latest one we look at and at $70 (Buy Now) its priced in about the middle of the pack.

When Netflix decided to get into the streaming business, the company needed a device in your home theater to stream movies to. Just weeks before the box, codenamed Griffin, was to hit store shelves, the project was canceled. But it didn’t die, it came to market under the Brand name Roku and started its own little revolution. Roku continues to innovate and recently announced the launch of the Roku 3.

We’ve watched streaming media go from incredibly choppy and blocky to smooth and nearly HD. As bandwidth increases so does the quality of streaming media. You can easily listen to CD quality audio but streaming Blu-ray quality video is a ways off... or is it? We have an interview with Mark Henninger, an AVS Forum “Newsbreaker”, and we discuss a series of articles he wrote where he compares movies on iTunes, Vudu, and Blu-ray.

Most of us have wireless networks in our homes these days, there’s nothing like the convenience of instant Internet without wires. But we’ve also come to the painful realization that our wireless networks just can’t live up the the rigors of HD streaming, especially if we want to stream multiple videos to different TVs. But as they say with technology, if you don’t like it, just wait a while and someone will fix it. Supposedly the new wireless spec, 802.11ac, can do just that.

A few weeks ago we received an email from a good friend of the show, Jack, telling us about an article he read about HDMI cables. He pointed us to a comment to the article where a reader said that with better HDMI cables changing channels resulted in the tuner locking onto it about a ½ second faster than with cheap cables. (Note: in the accompanying video we credit Michael with sending us the email and actually seeing a difference in lock speeds. Michael helped us with the setting up the test cases).

We have reviewed a handful of wireless HDMI systems in the past, and have been impressed each time at how much better they’re getting and how quickly the prices have fallen. An unfortunate incident in the Russell home recently required a replacement wireless HDMI setup, kicking off a new round of research into what is available on the market now.

There are a few reasons you would want to automate your home. Very close to the top of the list is saving money. And the one item that uses the most energy is your heating and air conditioning system. Today we’ll take a look at four thermostats that let you monitor and control your HVAC system from anywhere in the world. When you decide to build out a complete automation system these thermostats can be integrated right in.

To take full advantage of an automation system, you need a server running that can take action based on events that may occur, these are often called "triggers." You can run a software package on a computer you leave on 24/7 or you can buy a dedicated device for it. If you’re like us and have Insteon devices in your home, one option to look into is the Insteon Hub from SmartHome.

We have had slingboxes for the past 5 years and they have come in quite handy! There have been plenty of Sundays where the Slingbox has allowed us to keep up with our favorite football team. In general the Slingbox is life saving device for those of us who spend some time on the road. Today we take a look at the latest Slingbox, the Slingbox 500. It has a street price of $288 and is available now.