New ''holographic surround sound'' technology is used in the YSP-1000 to create a single box replacement for a five channel speaker system. One rectangular speaker positioned under your TV is supposed to beam sound around the room to create five channel sound comparable to five separate speakers. That's right, just one speaker in front to ...

Sure, I'm a hi-fi enthusiast and almost qualify as a hi-fi snob but I'll never tell you a quarter million bucks is required for perfect sound. Heck I'll take $5K worth of as-good-as-it-gets and die happy. But not so with you, yeah you John Q. Public. It seems you can't get enough of affordable HTIB (Home Theater In A Box) the most common ...

Xbox360 is rolling with hits this moth with Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and now Elder Scrolls Oblivion.  Make no mistake, this is the killer app for Xbox 360 and your home theater system.  It’s a new fantasy role playing game that was released last week for both PC and Xbox 360.  It’s a big budget release, the ...

The first Xbox 360 game to inspired me to write about here is GR – Advanced Warfighter.   So here I am anxiously waiting for Oblivion to rock my world.  Then I see a little blip on the www.metacritic.com radar … a new Ghost Recon game for 360.  Hmmm, it peaked my interest enough to check it out to make sure ...

When I saw this little number on Gizmodo I though; “cool!”.  The Batman LCD TV is from a company called Hanspree who makes LCD displays built with style.  After looking at the company’s website I was completely enamored.  If I were of a mind to get a TV for my son’s room (Bruce Wayne) this would be ...

Electronics company employs the clever word - joining technique to create new brand based words for ModerNeNglish. OpenPeak is a small company that makes remote control devices specifically designed (so they say) to accomplish complex tasks as simple as possible to the user.  Universal Remote controls for Home Theater systems have ...

For me, universal remote controls are like toilets.  Basically you deal with the hand you’re dealt, sure there are probably ways to improve them, cushions, maybe a built in monitor and keyboard with wi-fi access to the router so you can surf while your sitting on the can.  But basically, you use the same old standard that’s ...

I've always loved NAD's equipment and I'm a sucker for that gunmetal grey.  It looks like a military piece, something that might be rack mounted in back of a US Army cavalry vehicle. I spent some time at a NAD authorized dealer today and went straight for NAD’s bottom of the line multi-channel receiver.  You can really tell a ...

The future is now with hi-fi that communicates wirelessly with your network.  Home Theater media players are nothing new, we’ve seen some very exotic pieces that will play your ripped CDs and DVDs right from your network catalogue to your TV.  It’ll be some time before the complete wi-fi home theater is an affordable ...

In my last installment (part 1) I expressed some concern that the HD “upscaling” feature found on some DVD players today was more of a marketing feature than a technical feature that will give you better picture quality from a DVD player.  The reasons “DVD Upsampling” seemed like B.S. to me were ...