Rob Sabin

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Editor's Eye
The Year of the Plasma
Rob Sabin  |  Jul 16, 2013
For the last several years, our annual January pilgrimage to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show has been all about someone else’s toys. Handheld smartphones and tablets, wearable technology (now, what is that about?), fashion earphones, smart appliances, electric car-charging stations, streaming pocket-sized speakers, you name it. It’s been awfully quiet on the A/V front…until now.
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Editor's Eye
Thx For The New Setup App, THX
Rob Sabin  |  Jan 29, 2013
At Home Theater, we’ve long been fans of set-up DVDs and Blu-ray discs that allow you to tune your television or projector for the optimum image. Now, just in time for the Super Bowl, THX has launched a mobile app designed to help sports fans and movie lovers do just that.

“THX tune-up” is an iOS app for iPad (2 and higher), iPad mini, iPhone (4 and higher), and iPod touch (Gen 4 and higher). To commemorate the Big Game and assist as many as possible of the 7.5 million people expected to purchase a new set just for the occasion, THX is offering the app as a free download from the iTunes store through Monday, February 4th. After that, it’ll cost $1.99. An Android version is expected to be released next spring.

Before your inner geek gets too worked up, neither the THX tune-up app nor any set-up disc...

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Tower Speaker ReviewsSpeaker Buying Tips
Top 10 Tower Speakers: $3,000 or Less
Rob Sabin  |  May 08, 2015
Ready for a nice, new set of gleaming tower speakers? Here’s our Top 10 list of models costing between $1,400 and $3,000 a pair, complete with rationales for why each model made the cut.
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Editor's Eye
Top Picks of the Top Picks...and a Few Runners-Up
Rob Sabin  |  Feb 01, 2017
A look back at our product of the year picks for the past three years, and a few 2016 runners-up that deserve special mention.
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Toshiba 47LZ196 Regza 47-inch LCD HDTV
Rob Sabin  |  Jan 05, 2007

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Custom Installation How-To
Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD Player
Rob Sabin  |  Jun 03, 2006
Here are the three most important things you should know about Toshiba's much anticipated HD-XA1, the world's very first high-definition optical disc player: 1. It's not just a DVD player - it's a computer.
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Custom Installation How-To
Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD Player: Hook Me Up
Rob Sabin  |  Jun 03, 2006
Setting up the Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD player for the best picture and sound quality is not for the uninitiated. Even home theater experts will face a learning curve to understand the different ways to extract video and audio from the player and the ramifications of each option and will have to read the manual to find what settings in the player's internal menu will yield the desired results.
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Custom Installation How-To
Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD Player: What's in the Box
Rob Sabin  |  Jun 03, 2006
As soon as you pull it from the carton, you know that the Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD player means business. Its 17-inch rack-size width and 20 pounds of heft beckon to a day when men were men and DVD players were both taller and heavier than a slice of white bread.
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Custom Installation How-To
Toshiba HD-XA2 HD DVD Player
Rob Sabin  |  May 01, 2007

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Editor's Eye
Touchy Feely
Rob Sabin  |  Sep 25, 2012
With great gear, it's all about the "something special."

Reviewers at Home Theater have a near-impossible task. Their job is to communicate, with words on a page accompanied by a few photographs, an experience with an audio or video component that can only be rightly conveyed viscerally. That is to say, in real life we don’t just listen to or view components, we react to them: physically, emotionally, intuitively.

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