How To Calibrate Your HDTV Using The Top Set-up Discs By Adrienne Maxwell May 2006 So you’ve waded through all of the confusion about HDTV vs. EDTV, DLP vs. plasma vs. LCD and digital vs. analog connections, and boldly dropped your hard-earned cash on a new digital television. You’ve ordered an HDTV package from your cable or satellite provider, you’ve hooked up your DVD player, and now all you want to do is sit back and enjoy the experience. But wait. You’ve come this far. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself and your new TV to finish the job by making sure the picture looks as good as possible? This may be hard to believe, but most manufacturers don’t set up TVs to look their best right out of the box. They set up TVs to catch your eye in a store. Seldom does a store’s viewing environment match the one ...

The Pros and Cons of Extended Warranties By Jerry Del Colliano April 2006 Anyone who has ever purchased an electronic device or component of any kind in the last 20 years has been offered the chance to buy an extended warranty. The question still remains as pertinent today as it was years ago: are extended warranties worth it? The simple answer is: it depends. In the old days of high-end audio and stereo you made investments in analog devices (speakers, amps, preamps, turntables, tube television sets), which were either awkward to move or were likely built with expensive analog parts. Today’s home theater systems are built more like computers and have lifespans that reflect more on the disposable nature of their processors than the analog nature of high-end audio components of years gone by.

AV Education on RHT Building The Basic, Badass Home Theater Part One: Getting Prepared Written by Jerry Del Colliano Welcome to Part One of a series of articles designed to teach you the inside tricks, tips and advice needed to help you build a top performing yet entry level home theater. As much as we all want a $1,500,000 media room in our homes, most of us aren’t capable of footing the bill. This series is designed to get you thinking about all of the elements you need to make your $5,000 (and up) home theater perform like a set-up costing many, many times more than your investment. Picking and Preparing Your Room For most AV enthusiasts, it seems pretty obvious which room your theater should go in, but before you get too far into the project, take a second to think about who uses your theater and where they use it the most. If you have ...

AVRev.com's Top 100 Awards are back for 2005 with the absolute best gear money can buy for home theater and beyond. While there are many big ticket products to represent the absolute cutting edge of AV technology - value plays a huge role in our editor's decision as to what products make the list and how they are ranked. Make no mistake - to get on the list at all is one heck of a feat considering how many products are released each year. Enjoy reading reviews of each component as well as seeing how much of your system is on the Top 100. Happy Holidays!

AV Education on RHT HDMI: One Cable to Replace Them All? Written by Bryan Dailey Staring at the back of a modern home theater receiver or AV preamp can be a scary thing for inexperienced AV enthusiasts. The number of connections on a higher-end piece can be overwhelming, with multiple video input and output types ranging from composite to component to S-Video and DVI/HDMI. The audio options can be just as daunting with toslink, AES-EBU, composite and digital RCA audio connections all filling up a great deal of real estate on the receiver or AV preamp. Assuming a user can figure out how to best configure the system and put the right cables in the right connections on the back of the gear, the process is only half over at this point.