BestAdvice AudioVideo

Maybe you're remodeling to optimize TV watching at home. Perhaps you're gearing up to secure virtual front-row seats to the “Big Game”. It's entirely possible that you're simply using the national conversion to 100-percent digital TV broadcasts at midnight on Feb. 17, 2009, as a good excuse to bring home a shiny, new high-definition TV.

Regardless of your motivation for the purchase, after eagerly unpacking your cherished widescreen DLP, LCD or plasma TV, you'll see there are many different options, tweaks and adjustments to make in pursuit of the best possible viewing experience. One oft-forgotten detail is how to use lighting in your media room or home theater. Read more

Buying a new piece of electronics can be exciting – it’s an opportunity to explore new features and update your home. But sometimes it's daunting, particularly when there is a wide range of options. And now for those who don’t already have TV sets that can show digital broadcasts, we have to convert or buy new ones. As of February 17, 2009, all analog signals will cease from television stations across the nation, so we all have to get on board with digital technology (either via a converter or a new TV) in order to keep watching our favorite network TV shows.

Buying a new TV should be easy, right?

Yes, buying a new TV is easy if you know what equipment you need. A typical electronics store will offer four types: flat panel, projection, tube and front projection/screen systems. Most people will want one of the first three. Projection TVs look like flat panel displays, but they are deeper in back, so for people who already have cases for their televisions or who are not mounting their sets to the wall, these are a better deal. If you need a set that's as thin as possible, flat panel is the only option. Read more

The next time you walk into the room where your new flat-screen TV is on display, take a good look around. Is it starting to look dirty? Between all the dust and lint that flies around the average room and the dirty fingers used to turn the TV on its mount, it doesn't take long before the set needs a good cleaning.

But don't be tempted to use the same methods you would to clean your tube TV. Flat-screen television sets require more specialized care. Here are a few "Dos" and "Don'ts" to keep in mind: Read more

You've got your new large-screen HDTV set up, and you have plenty of your favorite DVDs waiting to be viewed. Now all you need is the right sound. When you sit down to watch a movie -- or live music concert -- in your own home theater, you want to feel as though you're in a real movie theater. The audio is just as important as the picture quality, which means you should take great care in shopping for the right receiver and speaker pieces. As you shop for audio components for your home theater, first check out "HDTV – A beginner's guide." Then, consider the following points:

The AV receiver
Most average home theater users don’t need to buy separate tuners and amplifiers for the different channels. The easiest and perhaps most cost-effective way to get several pieces all in one package is to go with an audio/video receiver, which lets you plug in most, if not all, of the pieces in your system, including your television. Read more

You might answer that question a number of ways: “As big as it can be”, “As small as it can be”, or “Big enough to accommodate twelve seats”, or maybe “the exact size of the existing room I plan to convert”. However, many considerations are to be made before you answer too quickly. There is a lot of science involved in the design of a high performance theater, even in just determining its size. There are also budgetary constraints and physical limitations that come into play. Each theater has its own equation that must be understood and calculated based on these factors and the customer’s personal direction. It is the intent of this series of articles, titled “Home Theater Planning, Design, Calibration & Enjoyment,” to help you make educated decisions during the process. There are always pros and cons that must be weighed, and as a consultant, it is my job to make sure that my clients can make an intelligent decision. Customers may end up dissatisfied with the results if they didn’t know there was a choice to be made, or didn’t fully understand what the consequences were going to be. There are some things we cannot control, but we can influence almost every factor that determines our eventual success. It becomes a question of prioritizing. I cannot make these decisions for you because they are personal, but I’ll guide you through to a happy ending. Read more

Digital Video Recorders may very well be the future of television. They offer you unprecedented freedom: You can watch precisely what you'd like, whenever you desire. But options vary, and it's worthwhile to investigate what's available so you can be satisfied with your ultimate selection.

The accompanying chart lists six DVR options—TiVo, Comcast, Verizon FiOS, Dish Network, DirecTV and SnapStream Beyond TV4—and provides information about each company for each category to give you a starting point for comparing options. Read more

The intention of this article is to save you considerable money, while at the same time, afford you a better picture, all by selecting the right screen at the right location. Next to acoustics, screen selection is the most complicated element of the home theater design process, and least considered.

Screen Location
It all starts with location. Referring back to an earlier article in this series, we discussed how the number of seats dictates the room dimensions and that room dimensions dictate optimum speaker and listener locations. Once we determine these positions, we know that we want the sound to seem as if it is being created by the picture, rather than coming from in front of, below, above, behind or to the side of it. That said, we want the screen to be located about the same distance from us as the center channel speaker. Read more

It's a pretty safe bet that 2008 will be the year of the smartphone, with many new innovative smartphone options coming to the market this year. Buying a smartphone can be overwhelming - there are a lot of different options, and each phone combines a lot of different features. So before you head out to your local big box electronics store, here are a few things that might make it a little bit easier on you:

Taking It to the Next Level
Features like text messaging, photo capture and sharing have all been doable from simple cell phones for years. But smartphones take those functions up a notch by increasing the quality of the experience, and making these features easier to use. For example, typing out a text message on the full keyboard offered by many smartphones is significantly easier than tapping out a message on a 12-key phone. Read more

Part of the joys of having a high-speed Internet connection is the ability to buy and download music from any number of legitimate music sites, or to share music among friends. Once you've mastered locating and navigating through those sites, you'll want to know how you can use your music. Here are some answers to some frequently asked questions about digital music.

Q: I’ve heard the terms ‘ripping’ and ‘burning’ before. What do these mean and is there any difference?
Though they may be similar in their destructive tone, the two terms mean very different things. ‘Ripping’ generally means copying music from a CD or DVD onto your hard drive in a format that allows you to easily play it back. ‘Burning’ refers to transferring music onto a recordable CD or DVD. In general, ripping gets music off a CD, while burning puts it back on. Read more

With so many advertisements out there for HDTV sets and services, you're probably wondering where to start. You may be asking, "What's all the hoopla about?" or "Is it worthwhile to trade up?" And, of course, you want to know how much it's going to cost. Here are a few answers to those questions to get you started on the road to high-definition television.

Understand that, in general terms, high-definition television, also known as HDTV, is more than twice as detailed as conventional analog television, also known as standard definition TV or SDTV. HDTV not only offers larger, richer images as compared with SDTV, it also includes multi-channel movie-quality surround sound as well. So, in layman's terms, viewers often report seeing sharper, brighter images. Read more