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Two-Channel for Beginners
Complete System Reviews, How To Use
Chris LeGrange • Feb 15, 2006 • Published: Feb 07, 2006 • 0 comments
I love home theater, but can I find room in my heart for stereo?

I recently visited Berkeley, California, to take a tour of Sumiko, the U.S. distributor for many high-end European audio manufacturers, such as Sonus faber, REL, Primare, Pro-ject, SME, CineVERSUM, SEQUENCE, and Vienna Acoustics. They gave us several demonstrations, including a rather moving and educational listening session with their Cremona speaker line in a two-channel setup. They played several types of music for us, and, with every track, I felt myself getting more involved, more entranced, almost emotional. It wasn't unlike the first time I'd attended Carnegie Hall and listened to a symphony. I was enjoying music explicitly, not listening passively while I cooked, cleaned, exercised, and otherwise lived my life.

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Green Is Good
How To Use, Tech 101
Adrienne Maxwell • Feb 01, 2006 • Published: Jan 01, 2006 • 0 comments
Save money, or save the planet?

Believe it or not, you can do both.

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Dubbing Diva
How To Use, Other Disc Player Reviews
Rachel Weintraub • Dec 07, 2005 • 0 comments
Getting your videocassettes with the times.

I admit it: I'm a recording junkie. For years, I recorded my favorite TV shows on VHS videotape, only to watch them gather dust in the garage. Now that I have a DVR and a DVD recorder, what use have I for those clanky, cranky cassettes? Actually, more than you might think; some of those cassettes have irreplaceable moments from my TV-watching past, moments I'd rather not lose as the tape disintegrates with age.

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Getting It Right
Home Theater Talks To, How To Use
Bob Gatton • Oct 28, 2005 • 0 comments
ISF's Joel Silver tells our readers what they can do to optimize their displays' performance.

BG: What was your goal in founding the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF)?

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Bass Management and the LFE Channel
How To Use, Tech 101
A. Grimani • Aug 21, 2005 • 2 comments
Bass is like salt. Really, it is. Salt is a seasoning, a treat that we add to good food to make it taste even better. Bass is the same way. A sound system without it lacks the last little element that transforms an ordinary activity like listening to music or watching a movie into an extraordinary, emotionally charged experience.
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Screening the Screens
How To Use, Projection Screen Reviews, Tech 101
Thomas J. Norton • Jul 24, 2005 • 0 comments
You want the big-screen experience. You want to be immersed in the image. Ten feet wide at least, maybe 12. You've chosen the projector—a home model that's been getting great reviews. Obviously, you need a screen.
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There's HDTV In Them Thar Hills
How To Use, Tech 101
Peter Putman • Apr 17, 2005 • 0 comments
UAV editor Tom Norton Gets Hooked Up for Broadcast HDTV
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Outside the Box
Accessory Reviews, How To Use, Tech 101
Peter Putman • Apr 10, 2005 • 0 comments
Integrated digital cable-ready TV sets are here. How well do they work?
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Baby Steps to HDTV
How To Use
Rebecca Day • Jul 14, 2003 • Published: Jul 15, 2003 • 0 comments
The process may be painful, but the result is a bundle of joy.

Every year, I throw a Super Bowl party. This year I hosted an AFC Championship party instead because I wanted to show my friends championship football in HD. The only post-season game I knew I could receive in HD was CBS's broadcast of the AFC Championship, which I pulled in using an off-air antenna. My friends, predictably, were blown away by high-def football.

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In-Your-Face Football
How To Use
Peter Putman • May 12, 2003 • Published: May 13, 2003 • 0 comments
One man's quest for the ultimate Super Bowl party included HDTV in every room.

It started out innocently enough, back in January 2000. ABC had concluded a season of Monday Night Football broadcasts in their 720p HDTV format and was putting the icing on the cake with an HD telecast of Super Bowl XXXIV from Atlanta, Georgia. Since I had watched a few of the MNF games in HD, I decided to set up a front projector and an HD monitor and invite some friends and neighbors over to give 'em a taste of sports in high definition. The game turned out to be a big hit. Over 30 folks attended and marveled at the widescreen images from my Sony VPL-VW10HT projector and Princeton AF3.0HD monitor. Never mind that I had to jury-rig an antenna on my rear deck and run coaxial cable into my basement to feed a single Panasonic set-top tuner, then use a video-distribution amplifier to run two component video feeds into my living room and my basement theater. Everyone was amazed at the picture quality and gorged themselves on a feast of wings, subs, pizza, chips, dip, and assorted desserts.

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Got HDTV?
Accessory Reviews, How To Use, Tech 101
Peter Putman • Mar 05, 2003 • Published: Mar 06, 2003 • 0 comments
Home Theater's guide to using indoor and outdoor antennas to pick up digital TV broadcasts.

It's funny how everything old is new again. Forty years ago, you might have watched from the backyard as Dad carefully climbed up a ladder to the roof, strapped a bracket onto the chimney, and attached a large T-shaped television antenna so that you could watch those glorious black-and-white (and sometimes color) images from I Love Lucy, Bonanza, The Wonderful World of Disney, Gunsmoke, and other TV programs of that era.

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Expand Your Memory
How To Use
Chris Chiarella • Sep 02, 2002 • Published: Sep 03, 2002 • 0 comments
A bigger hard drive, a little time, and you're halfway there. I'm a lucky guy. My wife and I have had only one major squabble since the beginning of the year, and it was about sharing the space on our personal video recorder's rapidly filling hard drive. My problem: I've fallen behind in archiving and deleting my keeper episodes. Hers: She waits too long to watch her recorded Ally McBeal, Buffy, and Friends, and the PVR automatically purges them. Although many possible solutions exist (Ally was cancelled, thankfully), the simplest would be to add a larger hard drive. Compared with the purchase of a newer, higher-capacity PVR, this approach is quite economical, and it's a project that a home theater buff with some electronics/computer expertise can tackle.
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Get Plugged In
How To Use, Tech 101
Mike McGann • Mar 06, 2002 • Published: Mar 07, 2002 • 0 comments
The ins and outs of A/V connections.

Anyone who's looked at the back of a new, high-end TV or receiver and gazed upon row after row of ports knows that there just might be too many ways to connect other devices. Believe it or not, more inputs are going to become commonplace in the next few years (a number of high-end TVs already have seven video inputs in four different formats). Whether you fall into the category of those who are just discovering the merits of S-video or those who like to argue the merits of their projector's five-wire RGB inputs, the number and type of connections, ports, and inputs has exploded in the last decade, and it isn't going to get any simpler in the next few years.

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Home Theater Boot Camp: Bass Management
How To Use, Tech 101
Chris Lewis • Jan 03, 2002 • Published: Jan 04, 2002 • 0 comments
The basics of bass management.

Bass: It is undoubtedly the most misunderstood aspect of a home theater system's performance and, in some ways, the least appreciated—especially among the higher-end ranks. Bass' bad rap (no pun intended) derives from a number of sources, but its fundamental undoing is its poor implementation in the vast majority of audio systems—from the genius who cruises around with 10 $50 monotone subwoofers in the trunk of his car to the home theater owner who hasn't put forth the considerable time and effort it takes to properly calibrate low-frequency output. Poor-quality subs, of which there is no shortage, are as much to blame in this situation as user error. The bottom line is that quality bass performance is critical to any audio, music, or home theater system, and its journey begins long before the signals ever reach our speakers.

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Home Theater Boot Camp: Switching Hits
How To Use
Kevin Miller • Sep 30, 2001 • Published: Oct 01, 2001 • 0 comments
Switching scenarios for component video sources.

Switching component video sources is a double-edged sword. For a number of reasons, there's plenty of need for it; however, until recently, it was fairly expensive to do it well (read: without adversely affecting the video signal). Still, there are a number of scenarios in which video switching, transcoding, or distributing high-resolution video (particularly HDTV signals) is important.

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