There’s a great article on Audioholics today, the budget bookshelf speaker shootout.  I love to see real world affordable gear get highlighted and compared.  As an average consumer I could easily see myself adding one of these speakers to my kit as rear surrounds or to a second room as primary speakers.  The competitors in ...

Happy Holidays everyone!  I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!  This is the time of year when we think inward of character traits that make us better people, like sharing.  Here is a great example of how I'm willing to share with my wife.  She loves those geeky math games ...

  There is a natural tendency to hate big business in North America.  We have our corporate favourites but they can easily fall to overexposure and advertisers know this and are careful with the brands they try to sell us.  Both Microsoft and Sony are heavyweights in big business and the word Evil is admittedly loaded.  We ...

A shopper walked the aisles of Wal-Mart needing to buy a few things before Christmas.  He chose Wal-Mart for the best price on winter floor mats for his car but also needing to pick up inexpensive batteries for a toy he bought his niece.   Not far from the rechargeable batteries he spied an amazing deal.  It was a portable ...

Consumer electronics advisors are in full force this time of year offering up wisdom on how and what to buy this holiday season.  Usually these bits of wisdom involve specific models or technologies to avoid or what’s hot to buy.  Advice will always teach.  One can learn even from bad advice, you just have to be wary of the ...

Microsoft’s promise of iPod compatibility with the Xbox 360 is showing a little thin in practice.  As a media extender to a Windows XP Media Center the 360 is a step toward the digital entertainment hub of one’s household.  The setback to iPod compatibility is Apple’s proprietary DRM, FairPlay.  Xbox 360 isn't ...

Time for me to spend some time slamming audiophilism again, it’s been awhile.  To the left is a picture of a DVD with a Shakti stone on top of it.  The stone is bringing out unsurpassed clarity and imaging, a wider soundstage and more dynamic range than owner of this humble DVD player ever thought possible before using the ...

Every guy with a home audio/video system worth his salt has a couple of shelves packed to the brim with CDs.  Since our not-so-fictional media savvy dude had a DVD player since the DVD release of the first Matrix movie, by now he’s even filled up one of those really smart DVD shelves from Ikea.  Guests can peruse rows of DVD case ...

In doing a bit of research on Audiovox for a project unrelated to Home Theater Focus I came across some sad comedy that I believe speaks ill of certain segments of the consumer electronics industry.  Audiovox is an aftermarket car stereo company turned cell phone maker in recent years.  Both ventures have churned out, let's just say nothing ...

I’ve been doing a lot of research into DVD players recently.  It seems I get ideas for what I could say to the HT consumer world every time I glance at the latest marketing ploy to sell rather inexpensive HT gear.  I’m amazed at how “progressive scan” is pushed as a positive feature on DVD players.  Digital video has no ...