Home Theater Tips- Creating a Home Theater
- How-to: Install a Front Projector & Screen
- How-to: Install a Front Projector & Screen (Part 2)
- Samsung LCD’s with HTPC’s
- Control Your PS3 with a Standard Infra-Red Remote
- Home Theater in the Garage?
- Blu-ray Player Recommendations (Part 2)
- Dedicated Theater Must-Haves: Game Ports
- Motorized Curtain Kits
- Separates versus Receivers
Blu-ray Review: Space Ace
March 22, 2008
Back in summer of 1983 I had a life changing event, well I had lots of life changing events in the eighties but this particular one was walking past a Dragon’s Lair machine in my local arcade, needless to say I did a double take. Dragon’s Lair looked like something from another world compared to all the other consoles surrounding it, at the time I didn’t realize the game ran on laser discs and didn’t care much either, all I knew was I was “playing” a cartoon, rather it was playing me. I must have dropped enough quarters into that machine to buy one outright.
Flash forward a year later the follow-up to Dragon’s Lair: ‘Space Ace’ was released and while it was certainly a success, In some ways the magic of seeing animation inside an arcade cabinet was strangely, already old-hat. It was almost as if Don Bluth and the rest of the team had done such a good job with Lair that its follow-up seemed somehow inferior. Sure Space Ace was impressive, and yes the “graphics” looked amazing but by now the limited left, left, wait, wait some more, up, left, wait some more routine was getting tiresome. That said, never under estimate the power of nostalgia.
Late last week the folks at Digital Leisure were kind enough to send over an early review copy of ‘Space Ace’ on Blu-ray and I have to say, sometimes it’s nice to reminisce and re-visit something that made a huge impact on you early in life. The Blu-ray versions of ‘Dragon’s Lair’ and ‘Space Ace’ are faithful adaptations of original arcade versions but with the added benefit of recent digital video remastering, the colors look noticeably improved over recent DVD versions.
Cutting to the chase, I popped the disc into the PS3 and gave it a go on the default settings, nope my reflexes haven’t improved one bit since I was 14 it would appear. I moved back to the root menu and selected difficulty cadet, unlimited lives, and the visual move guide to on. Even with all those “cheats” on I couldn’t manage to get past the first level, yeah pretty embarrassing. It didn’t take long to remember shoving quarter after quarter into those machines in hopes of seeing the next piece of the story. Luckily this time I won’t need a pocket full of quarters.
Posted by B.Greenway | Filed Under Blu-ray | Leave a Comment
CE Products and the Stimulus Package
March 13, 2008
Hear that off in the distance? It’s the sound of cash registers going *ka-ching*. According to research conducted by the CEA one in five tax-payers will cumulatively spend up to five billion dollars on consumer electronics; as a direct result of the economic stimulus package signed by President Bush last February.So what type of items does the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) expect to be most popular with consumers using their rebate checks? Computers, flat-panel televisions and mobile-phones (iPhone sales should see a sharp up-tick) lead the pack, with various other CE products bringing up the rear.
The “CEA found that consumers will spend their rebate check within the first two months of receiving it and 74 percent will spend the money within the first four months.” Individual tax-payers can expect “rebate” checks up to $600 while couples who filed jointly can look forward to $1200 rebates and up to $300 per child in the household at time of filing. The government should begin mailing out the checks in May, finishing up sometime in August.
Now here’s the part that might sound odd coming from a guy who makes his living in the home theater, while I might catch a few of those government pennies falling from the sky, I can’t exactly say as this news makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside either. Listen I know the stimulus package was meant to be a direct, shot-in-the-arm to the nation’s economy and rightfully so, we could all use a little help in righting the woes of the housing industry but mobile phones?
Posted by B.Greenway | Filed Under Commentary | Leave a Comment
Pioneer Outsourcing - Not Quitting Plasma Business Altogether
March 12, 2008
I read headlines all the time, I also read how others read headlines all the time. This whole Pioneer to exit the plasma business and no more Kuro plasmas business has really been a fascinating window into human psychology. This all peaked (for me at least) yesterday when a client said “Pioneer’s going to stop making the Kuro” to which I replied, well they’re going to stop manufacturing the panels in-house, I don’t see them scrapping the Kuro line altogether though.What ensued in the following minutes actually got heated if you can believe it with my client furiously defending his assertion (don’t worry, no love lost, we go way back). Eventually I showed him the trail of news snippets that started with the facts and eventually spiraled into a living illustration of psst! pass it on gone-bad. Simply put Pioneer will continue to design market and sell Kuro (and others) badged plasma televisions they just won’t produce them.
The following is from a Pioneer press release to be circulated later today:
“Pioneer remains passionate about delivering the ultimate home theater experience based on the brand strategy the company set nearly a year ago, to bring to market the best home theater technology, including high-definition plasma televisions like KURO.To do this, Pioneer will continue to focus on what it does best which includes engineering game-changing plasma technology and producing proprietary components that differentiate Pioneer plasma televisions from the rest of the market. The next generation KURO flat panel televisions will be coming this summer as planned with no disruption in Pioneer production.
As you are aware, outsourcing is common practice among successful consumer electronics companies all over the world. Many of the most notable and respected brands of televisions, cell phones and video game consoles do not manufacture their own products. Pioneer plans to outsource production of plasma panel modules in 2009 in an effort to right-size the business.
Pioneer is developing plans with a production partner that offers the best quality and reliability in line with its own strategy and high standards, but at this point no partnership arrangements or decisions have been made.”
Listen I know not everyone got the story wrong; I’m not even trying to pretend it was the majority but I’ve seen the misinterpreted headline more times in the last 48 hours than I can even remember. Pioneer may indeed drop the Kuro line altogether one day but until then its business as usual. Outsourcing production is an everyday occurrence, it might even shock you to know who’s actually making some of your “favorite brands”, for those companies however it’s (again) just business as usual.
Posted by Philip Stamps | Filed Under Display Technology | Leave a Comment
Summer Movies 08
March 8, 2008
The summer movie season is right around the corner and for most of us here that’s prime time to get our fill of super-heroes, science fiction, fantasy, and super-heroes I know I said super-heroes twice but this year there’s twice as many to go around. Out of this year’s crop of summer blockbusters, I already see two or three likely candidates for purchase on hi-def this fall.
You really couldn’t ask for a better film to kick it all off with than ‘Iron Man’ on May 2nd. Ever since seeing the Comic-Con trailer from last year; this has been my most anticipated summer movie, and given 2008’s contenders that’s saying a lot. Just one week later (May 9th) ‘Speed Racer’ hits the screen and while I was initially pessimistic on how this would play on the big-screen, one look at the trailer put all those fears to rest.
May 16th brings Disney’s ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ to the screen, which on its own would probably do just fine with a fall or winter release. But in a summer with a lineup like 2008’s the second Narnia film may experience stiff competition from the slew comic films aimed at tweens. (at least that’s what I think you call kids between 10-13 these days)
The weekend of May 22nd brings back one of films most beloved action heroes of all time, Harrison Ford reprises his role as Indiana Jones once again in ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’. The trailer pretty much had me from the get-go and held me until the end fade.
Two weeks later (June 13th) comes another one of my all time comic favorites, ‘The Incredible Hulk’. This time around Universal has opted for a do-over of sorts with Edward Norton taking over the lead from Eric Bana who starred in 2003’s ‘Hulk’, I liked Bana’s Hulk but I’m certainly looking forward to this one as well. Also that same week is M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘The Happening‘ which looks rather intriguing.
Posted by B.Greenway | Filed Under Commentary | Leave a Comment
Home Theater Revenue to Nearly Double by 2012
March 5, 2008
Around the office we’ll occasionally joke that there are more people doing home theater than buying home theater. And while it feels true (at least in our neck of the woods) it was encouraging to see some hard data that backs-up something I’ve suspected for quite some time, home theater is still a growth market.
According to Parks Associates the increased adoption of residential network products will drive down the associated costs of multi-room audio and home theaters systems, as a result we’ll continue to see increased growth in the home theater market to the tune of nearly doubling total revenues by 2012. Perhaps I’ll hold off on that application to Sbarro’s just a weeeee bit longer.
“The high-end A/V market is in a major stage of transition,” said Bill Ablondi, Director, Home Systems Research, Parks Associates. Digital content is approaching the performance and quality of analog media, with the added flexibility only digital content offers. Reduced costs coupled with advancements in wireless and powerline networking technologies are also growing the retrofit portion of the market, at a time when mid-market construction is slowing down.”
So, all kidding aside it’s clear that my market (the home theater market) will continue to see shifts away from legacy media systems/technologies and continue to move toward local digital distribution. These systems may come in form of control and automation systems with digital audio/video distribution capabilities and or IP based home network distribution systems. I’m so glad I paid attention in computer class.
Posted by B.Greenway | Filed Under Home Theater | Leave a Comment
Top Four Reasons Blu-ray Won’t Tank
February 29, 2008
In case you missed it, Computer Worlds Lucas Mearian rattled a few blue chains Wednesday with his opinion piece titled, “Top four reasons Blu-ray Disc will tank”. I’m sure with a provocative title like that Mr. Mearian won’t be the least bit surprised that a few lone voices out in the wilderness politely beg to differ.
(1) “Blu-ray players are more than four times the cost of standard DVD players” Lucas goes on to mention $400 Blu-ray players from Sony being launched over the summer and an estimated $199 price point by the holidays. I’m really not even sure how to address this one, we already know (acknowledged earlier by the same author) that Blu-ray players launched at $999 or higher and we’re currently hovering around the $399 mark. maybe I’m naive but I don’t necessarily think $299 or better is out of the question before year’s end. I mean does that really sound all that impossible to anyone else?
(2) “Upgraded (SD) DVD players offer near-HD quality for a fraction of the price.” No Lucas, they don’t. It’s really not even close with the right display. By this point I’m honestly starting to get the impression this is all a big put-on. The color reproduction alone should clue someone in to the fact that they’re watching standard definition. Yeah, hold up, are we being had here?
(3) “Why buy when you can rent?” Good question but I’m not sure what it has to do with Blu-ray. In a nutshell renters rent and buyers buy, neither of these little truths seemed to hinder DVD adoption however. While I don’t expect Blu-ray to be as successful as DVD, even 15-25% of DVD’s market share would probably feel like a huge win for the studios. Never underestimate the desire to own, collect and point to a shelf saying, yeah I’ve got that right there.
Posted by B.Greenway | Filed Under Blu-ray | 1 Comment
Wall-Mounted Flat Screens: Hiding the Cable Box
February 25, 2008
This is a follow-up to my ‘How to Wall-Mount a LCD or Plasma’ article from 2006, I never really expected that piece to generate the kind of response it did and I certainly never expected so many follow-up questions. What I want to tackle today was one of the most asked questions after the original article, simply put: Now that we’ve wall-mounted our flatscreen, where does the cable box go? Innocuous enough question but the answer could spiral into a lengthy conversation and I wanted to give the topic its own space, apart from the original post.
So in a nutshell (yes the photo above is a giveaway) nine times out of ten my answer to this question is in the closet. It could be any closet, one nearby or on the other side of the house, the only real determining factor here is how easy/hard hard is it to conceal the audio/video cabling between the display and cable box (this applies to any video source, not just cable boxes). Remember our best method of concealing cables is to go “down” into an unfinished crawlspace or basement and then “up” to the display (through the wall).
Alternatively if there’s no unfinished space below the desired location, “up”’ i.e. into the attic and back down is another alternative (obviously easier in a one floor dwelling). From there we get into hiding the cables under and behind baseboards but that’s quite a bit beyond the scope of what I wanted to cover here today, just keep in mind that closets, cubbies and other out of the way concealed locations are where we hide our cable boxes for flat-panel installations.
Now all this tucking the cable box out of site is fine and dandy, that is until you try to change the channel. The majority of cable boxes (and many satellite receivers) use infra-red as their transmission protocol and IR means line of sight to the box. Not to fear, there are several different ways around this problem as well.
Controlling the Cable Box: Ok so now we need a way to control this cable box, DVD player, HTPC or insert-device-here that we’ve tucked away in a nearby closet. The easiest way is to use a universal remote with a RF base-station, these remotes can be set to transmit IR locally as well as “talk” to the base station (in the closet). It’s all a lot simpler in practice than it sounds by description. Several different companies offer universal remotes with RF base stations but the one that comes to mind first would have to be Universal Remote Control. Another solution would be Terk’s “Leap Frog” line of IR repeater systems, this is more of an add-on solution but for our purposes it should suffice in most cases. In essence the Leap Frog system(s) consists of a base-unit that receives IR commands and a second unit that can “transmit the code to the desired device. This isn’t quite as refined as the IR/RF remote with a base-station solution but it should get the job done in most cases.
The last solution involves pulling another wire along with the audio/video cables you pulled to the nearby closet and in many cases offers the most reliable means of controlling a remote device, (cable box in a closet) especially if you don’t want to replace your existing universal remote. An infra-red (IR) repeater system consists of a wired receiver that transmits your IR code to a connected blaster or emitter, a connecting block and a power supply, this essentially turns your IR code into an electrical signal that travels between the receiver and emitter. These systems are fast reliable and fall mid-ways in expense (often in the $200 range for a complete kit) between an all new RF remote and the leap frog systems.
Summary: So there you have it, is this little project for everyone? probably not but if you managed to wall-mount your flat-screen without outside assistance this might be right up your alley. Should you need any tips I’ll try my best to answer any questions here in the post. Oh, about the new commenting system, I really didn’t want to go to a login only comment system but somewhere after the millionth Russian bride, spam comment and right before the ten millionth link-drop spam I gave in. I know there are some glitches with the current system, it’s only a temporary solution however.
Posted by B.Greenway | Filed Under Home Theater - How to | 1 Comment
Financing Home Theaters Part Deux
February 21, 2008
Way back in August of 2004 (that seems like an eternity ago) I wrote about financing home theaters, at the time the focus of the post was on rolling home theaters into the mortgage price which if I remember correctly was a pretty fair rate at the time. I’m not sure where they’ll go from here (up would be my first guess) but what I wanted to do today was shift from rolling home theaters into mortgages to some financing offers the rest of us (already in a home) can appreciate.
Listen it’s no secret luxury items are the first to take a hit when an economy softens. We’ve seen it and so has everyone else we’ve talked to, but as you might expect in any market downturn there are bargains to be had and those bargains extend not only the products themselves but financing options as well. Right now I’m seeing offers like no payments until July 2008 and no interest if paid by July 2008 and another program that offers no interest if paid by January 2009.
My reason for bringing this up is twofold, not only are there some great financing offers running right now (I’m seeing some really good offers from GE finance – also known as GECAF) but there are custom home theater specialists across the country just chomping at the bit to move some inventory and more importantly move past this temporary “correction”. There, now I too have done my bit for the economy and Uncle Sam. Wait, I’m not actually selling you anything, hey be sure and tell your home theater dealer where to send my commission check.
Posted by B.Greenway | Filed Under Home Theater Construction | Leave a Comment
Review: SyncTV (beta)
February 18, 2008
Never one to shy away from new sources of content, media, entertainment what have you, I was pleased to get an invite into SyncTV’s beta program. Haven’t heard of SyncTV? I wasn’t overly familiar with it myself but it didn’t take long to grab my interest. In the weeks since installing the software I believe I’ve caught a glimpse of the future and its one where physical and digitally distributed media can happily coexist.
I suppose a more formal introduction is in order as we’re discussing a yet to be launched product. SyncTV grew out of the advanced research labs of Pioneer Electronics but according to President John Gildred, it soon became apparent the service was larger than any one platform and or parent company for that matter, and to grow into its full potential SyncTV would need to be its own entity.
In my perusing of Sync’s documentation and corporate philosophy I noticed repeated mention of their open platform standard. They really seem to be pushing this aspect to other consumer electronics manufacturers in hopes of broadening SyncTV’s reach to other segments of the market. Another example of this open platform mindset is the fact that even in beta stage SyncTV is already available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, which to my knowledge marks the first time a premium video download service has been available on all three platforms (at least at launch).
SyncTV’s subscriptions are per channel, show or season and a new series subscription gives you retroactive access to older episodes (at least in beta), so as you can see flexibility is the name of the game here. This is great for someone like me who may really love a specific show on oh say, Showtime (Dexter) but doesn’t necessarily want to pay for the entire channel. The entire season of Dexter comes out to less than two months of a Showtime subscription, so with a season lasting 12′ish weeks it just might be a viable alternative to a full channel subscription.
Posted by Philip Stamps | Filed Under HTPC, Media Servers, Reviews | Leave a Comment
Drive-In Home Theater
February 16, 2008
I ran across this over at The Cool Hunter (yes I hunt for the cool too) and wanted to make sure you saw it. This 5800sf house nestled in the hills of Los Angeles has a rather unique home theater, forget those blow up outdoor home theater blimp-screens, this home has the real thing.
Head on over and check out The Cool Hunter’s original post but make sure to see the architects page as well with some larger shots of the outdoor home theater, er drive-in er coolest outdoor theater ever.
Posted by B.Greenway | Filed Under Home Theater Construction, Home Theater Design | Leave a Comment
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