Q. I have a three-season home that's closed up and unheated during winter months. Early HDTVs (LCD/plasma) couldn't be guaranteed free of damage by their manufacturers if their screens were subjected to temperatures at or below freezing. A neighbor recently bought a plasma screen, believing it wouldn't be susceptible to such low temperatures.
How much is music worth? Nietzsche wrote, "Without music, life would be a mistake." That places a high value on sounds that entertain and sometimes inspire us. Then again, at 3 o'clock in the morning, you'd pay good money to have the music at the party next door shut off.
Like many other A/V stores, California Soundworks (californiasoundworks.com, 661-945-0971) started out as a home stereo store selling gear to audiophiles. That was back in 1979.
So just how big a Santa are you? A stocking-stuffer, who shills out a mere $21 for the latest two-disc Blade Runner DVD set? Or the kind that enlists all available elf-muscle to deliver an $870, 90-motion-picture gift-a-ganza: the United Artists Super Deluxe Gift Set?
Q. I have a question regarding the "Ask an Installer" column in the September issue. In his answer, the installer recommended putting in Cat-5e cable in a new home installation for sending video and audio to multiple rooms. Wouldn't it be better to install Cat-6 rather than Cat-5e, given its high-speed design for 1- and potentially 10-gigabit Ethernet?
Feature Highlights: 3rd gen HD DVD player with 1080p/24 output, DD+ and TrueHD decoding/transcoding (output as PCM over HDMI), upconverting HDMI and component outputs for standard-def DVDs
Deck the halls with boughs of Bowie…or Pearl Jam, or Coltrane, or even Haydn. And since we're talking boxed CD sets here (plus some music titles on DVD), there's plenty with which to deck.
