It was the most ambitious do-it-yourself carpentry work I've done in five years, ever since I covered the windows in my home theater studio to shut out the light and minimize extraneous outside sounds. The latest project involved building a false wall directly in front of an existing wall, not only to conveniently hang an expected ongoing parade of flat panel displays coming in for review, but also to facilitate a planned series of on-wall speaker reviews. There's no question that on-wall speakers are a significant trend, and one that we can't continue to ignore here at <I>Ultimate AV</I>. As for in-walls, well, that's a project for the future.
I consider myself a fairly intelligent person. I would say I am fairly knowledgeable in the workings of consumer electronics gear and computers. I took several film and video classes in college, and even interned at a video production house. I would consider myself qualified to work a video camera, and a computer. Then why in all things holy CAN'T I GET THIS THING TO WORK?
Welcome to our third biannual RPTV Face Off. For those of you just joining us, we've brought together today six 1080p RPTVs at the roughly $4,000 price point. The excitement is palpable, the TVs warmed up, and the judges ready to stare.
As soon as I added a subwoofer to my stereo desktop system, the illicit charms of 2.1-channel audio began to woo me like the moon pulling on the tide. So, I was primed and ready when Denon's S-301 HTIB system arrived with its two speakers, sub, and controller.
A controlling interest in your home theater can turn into a wholehouse-friendly takeover.
Silly girl. My wife thinks our home theater system ought to sound great and be easy to operate. She also wants one remote control to work the gear, the lights, and whatever else she desires dominion over.
It's 26 percent more compact, packed with easy-to-use features, and more affordable than its predecessor. Oh, yeah, and it lets you record high-definition home videos.
Would I stoop to running a news item just because it comes with a cool pic? If you thought otherwise, how little you know me. Congratulations to the Blu-ray family on the birth of the quad-layer disc, first shown in prototype at the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show. Existing Blu-ray discs (inasmuch as they can be said to exist) use a single layer for capacity of 25 gigabytes or two layers for 50GB. Double the number of layers yet again and what do you get? A 100GB quad-layer disc that can store up to nine hours of high-definition video, at least in situations where digital rights management would so permit. As the picture shows, the disc actually has nine layers if you count the spacers, the second-from-top cover layer, and the Durabis layer—that's the name TDK has given the specially formulated top layer. Blu-ray players read data at a much shallower depth than regular DVD, so the top layer has to be both thin and hard. Otherwise it would need a protective caddy, like 2003-vintage Blu-ray in Japan. The quad-layer prototype is a write-once disc (not rewritable) and there's no word on when it will become available.
This past week two stories circulated around the Internet that dramatically illustrate the confusion surrounding the next-gen optical disc formats. The first rumor had both formats being delayed due to failure to agree to the finalized standard for the AACS copy protection that will be employed by both formats. The second was that Toshiba will kick off a 40-city promotional tour this coming week to hype HD DVD's March launch. Well, is it on again or off again?!
