LATEST ADDITIONS

When I moved into my new house earlier this year, I had hopes of setting up some of my more antiquated gear. One of the pieces is a Technics turntable - state of the art, circa 1985. When people (er, guys) see it, they start waxing poetic about their vinyl LP collections and how, "one day," they're going to get another turntable.

<I>A reader finds home theater inspiration in his first theater, giving him the craving to upgrade.</I>

Hot on the heels of the first, and almost universally lame, generation of Blu-ray players, here's generation II. In the case of two of these players, the big news is a substantial reduction in price. Both are less than half of their predecessors. In the case of the other, the news is its fancy HQV processing, the same that's found in the excellent Toshiba HD-XA2. I have to admit, I get a certain amount of perverse amusement mentioning HD DVD in a Blu-ray review (and vice-versa).

Evolution is the continual process of change. For electronics manufacturers, evolution is often defined as updating equipment just enough from year to year to make consumers willing to upgrade to the latest and greatest. One could argue that until the advent of HDMI a couple years ago, the evolution of the AVR (Audio/Video Receiver) hadn't featured a compelling reason to upgrade in a while.