Custom Installation How-To

Marantz DV8300 Universal DVD/SACD Player

Ken C. Pohlmann | Dec 18, 2002 | 0 comments

Photos by Tony Cordoza

Back in the Stone Age of Digital Audio (circa 1990), discerning audiophiles paid big bucks for elegant-looking CD players. Today the emphasis is on performance rather than looks. Most DVD players are visually boring, and their lack of heft hardly inspires confidence. Sometimes I yearn for the days when a player's quality could literally be weighed.

Custom Installation How-To

A DVD Christmas

David Ranada | Nov 10, 2002 | 0 comments

Photos by Tony Cordoza

Like Santa descending a chimney every year

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with an ever-larger bag of goodies, DVD players have been coming down in price while their bundles of features have expanded.

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Custom Installation How-To

Design the Ultimate Home Theater– On a Budget Mike Wood | Nov 04, 2002 | First Published: Nov 05, 2002 | 0 comments

Part two: Construction and acoustic treatment.

Last month, I introduced some basic concepts to help you design the ultimate home theater. For those of you who missed it, we invited three home theater design gurus to help us build a new listening room: Anthony Grimani, Russ Herschelmann, and Norm Varney. I tried to cover everything you'd need to build a great home theater, regardless of your budget. This month, I continue that approach as I discuss the construction and acoustic treatment of our room.

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Custom Installation How-To

Pansonic DMR-HS2 DVD-RAM Recorder David Ranada | Oct 21, 2002 | 0 comments

Photos by Tony Cordoza

At a glance, you'd probably think that Panasonic's $1,000 DMR-HS2 looks pretty much like every other DVD recorder out there-including the Panasonic DMR-E30 that I reviewed just last month. But the DMR-HS2's chassis carries clues that something more is going on here.

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Custom Installation How-To

Design the Ultimate Home Theater- On a Budget Mike Wood | Oct 05, 2002 | First Published: Oct 06, 2002 | 0 comments

We did it...with a little help.

How many people have purchased high-performance sports cars only to drive them in bumper-to-bumper traffic? Sure, they might attract attention, but they certainly aren't taking advantage of the car's performance benefits. The world of home theater isn't all that different. Your listening environment can noticeably affect your system's performance, for better or for worse. Changing that environment may cost nothing, or it may cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Then again, we review plenty of subwoofers and amplifiers that cost thousands of dollars. Perhaps spending a little on room acoustics may not be such a bad idea.

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Custom Installation How-To

The DVD Variety Show Ken C. Pohlmann | Sep 09, 2002 | 0 comments

Photos by Tony Cordoza

Jump ahead: Features Checklist In the Lab

Custom Installation How-To

DVD Deals

Ken C. Pohlmann | Jul 21, 2002 | 0 comments

Photos by Tony Cordoza

Feel like some shopping? How about a brand-new Porsche 911 for $10,000? Or an Armani suit for $200? Or maybe a vacation in the Swiss Alps for $1,000? I'm sorry, but those items are not available.

Custom Installation How-To

Speaking of Wire . . .

Mark Elson | Jul 11, 2002 | First Published: Jul 12, 2002 | 0 comments

Inside tips from the pros can save you hundreds of dollars in speaker-wire installation costs.

When you build a home theater, one of the biggest expenses is the labor for installing the speaker wire. The greater the obstacles, the more time and expense involved. However, you can conquer the majority of wiring situations with a little know-how and ingenuity. Here's how:

Custom Installation How-To

Pioneer Elite DV-47A DVD/SACD Combi Player

David Ranada | Apr 18, 2002 | 0 comments

Wouldn't it be great if you could just go out and buy the surround sound music titles you're interested in without having to worry about whether they're on DVD-Audio or Super Audio CD (SACD)?

Custom Installation How-To

Opening Moves

David Ranada | Jan 21, 2002 | 0 comments

The players are in position, and the pieces are now on the board. But this is not a chess game, and the stakes are even higher than in the richest of Grand Master tournaments. This is the beginning of another video-recorder format war, but unlike the VHS vs. Beta conflict of the late 1970s and early '80s, there are three competing formats.

Custom Installation How-To

Denon DVM-4800 DVD-Audio/Video Changer

Ken C. Pohlmann | Jan 05, 2002 | 0 comments

At least some things in life are predictable. And one of them is the progression of value-added features in consumer electronics.

Custom Installation How-To

Doing The DVD Combo

Michael Antonoff | Dec 21, 2001 | 0 comments

A DVD player is already a terrific bargain - an inexpensive black box that can play discs full of razor-sharp images, immersive surround sound, and fascinating extras. But what if you could wed a DVD player with another popular entertainment device like, say, a TV, VCR, or game console? Well, it's already being done.

Custom Installation How-To

DVD Combo - In The Lab

Michael Antonoff | Dec 21, 2001 | 0 comments

Go-Video DVR4000

DIMENSIONS 17 inches wide, 4 inches high, 14 inches deep WEIGHT 11 5/8 pounds PRICE $349 MANUFACTURER Sensory Science, Dept. S&V, 7835 E.

Custom Installation How-To

Progressive Views: 4 Progressive-Scan DVD Players

Al Griffin | Oct 16, 2001 | 0 comments

When progressive-scan DVD players first emerged almost two years ago, the already excellent picture quality we'd come to expect from standard players suddenly got a whole lot better. That's because the new models could convert video signals to a progressive-scan format for display on a TV or monitor with progressive-scan capabilities.

Custom Installation How-To

Panasonic DMR-E20 DVD-R/RAM Deck

David Ranada | Oct 03, 2001 | 0 comments

Less than a year after I reviewed Panasonic's DMR-E10 DVD-RAM recorder in the December 2000 issue, here I am reviewing a follow-up model that, as we've become accustomed in things electronic, has more useful features, equivalent or better performance, and a much smaller price tag - $1,500 instead of $4,000! The drop to a far more realistic price is tre mendous prog ress all by itself.

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Custom Installation How-To

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