Introduction The mighty Monster Cable is diversifying. The company that successfully taught mainstream consumers the value of high-performance cables is now taking extraordinarily measures, like buying naming rights to sports stadiums, to teach consumers that they now sell home automation products, cables (of course) and, believe it or not, loudspeakers. Head Monster Noel Lee knows exactly how competitive the loudspeaker business is and, armed with 20 years of trendsetting industry experience, he is not holding back. Consumers should be excited. The Monster speaker line consists of a tower speaker, two monitors, a dipole surround and two different subwoofers. The system I reviewed was comprised of the Monster THX Select Tower 200s for the front left and right speakers, a Monster THX Select Monitor 200 in center position, Monster THX Select Dipole Surround Sound Speaker 100 in the rear and two Monster THX Select Subwoofer 200s on the LFE channel. The speakers are priced at $800 for ...

Introduction There is a war going on, and it’s waged every day in living rooms across this country, where the casualties can often be found sleeping on the couch. I’m talking about a war between good and evil. Right and wrong. You vs. her. I’m talking about the war over the WAF, or Wife Acceptance Factor. For years, you’ve wanted those towering, monolithic speakers of yore, capable of shaking your house off its very foundations and coming in every color so long as it’s black. And she wants, well, Bose. Let the games begin. Time and time again, manufacturers have attempted to bridge the gap between the sexes, creating pocket-sized speakers in every shape and color, only to produce pocket-sized sound, which is great for the bedroom or office but not for your living room. Still manufacturers persist, and some succeed: my former reference Definitive Technology ProCinema 80 system is one such success story. ...

Introduction There has never been a better time to take the plunge into a big-screen, front-projection home theater. Why, you ask? Two reasons: the products available have never been better in terms of picture quality and performance, and the prices have never been this affordable. A virtual plethora of front projectors are on the market in the $3,000 to $5,000 range, vying for your hard-earned dollars. The two technologies in front projection in this price range are LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and DLP (Digital Light Processing). I tend to prefer the latter over LCD, because DLP, when designed well, provides superior picture quality, due mainly to its better black-level performance, and its superior color saturation. Enter the Mitsubishi HC3000 1280 x 768 resolution one-chip DLP projector, which retails for $3,900. This projector utilizes the Dark Chip 2 DMD chip from Texas Instruments, a step down from the newer Dark Chip 3, which provides slightly better black-level performance. ...

Introduction Is the Marantz VP-12S4 the best single-chip DLP projector on the market? It is a question that has been asked many times before in many showrooms and many online home theater forums. The VP-12S4 at $14,499 is the latest and most expensive in Marantz’s line of VP-12 DLP projectors. The S4 builds upon the proven platform that has utilized the Texas Instruments HD2+ DLP chipset. The S4 uses the latest iteration, the DarkChip 3, which increases the fill factor by reducing the space between pixels. This chipset also features improved contrast and faster operating speed over the prior chipset (the DC2). Other major changes between the S3 and the S4 include the addition of a new lens option and a change from Faroudja to Gennum video processing. The VP-12S4 is a full-featured projector. In addition to the above described features, the S4 has three Konica-Minolta lens options to fit nearly every possible throw range, ...

Introduction As a hard-core gamer for over 30 years and a programmer to boot, both in the arcade and on PC and consoles over multiple platforms, I can say with authority that the true test of any new game system or technology is how much better it is then anything else that’s come before it. And, what does it cost for that performance improvement? Back in the 1970s, when there was almost nothing in video games to play, we were happy to upgrade from black and white to color or from Pong to Space Invaders. Even to go as programmers from Basic or Fortran to DOS offered significant improvements to gaming that a few years before were simply unimaginable. This is because computer power was at a premium, as it was throughout the U.S. Apollo missions to the moon, and arcade games circa 1980 like Donkey Kong, Tempest, Frogger, or Pole Position required the ...