I’ve never been thrilled with upscaling DVD players. They’re usually mainstream DVD players that up-convert 480P video to 720P or 1080i for your HDTV. It’s my opinion they’re (mostly) just out there to sell a few more mediocre DVD players to people who just bought a brand new HDTV. At the same time, there are serious upconversion video boxes ...

  1/ Proprietary Formats: We all remember Beta and what a rousing success that was. Well you’d think Sony would learn about those closed proprietary formats. • Beta: True, it was the “better” format than its competitor VHS but only Sony devices could play back Beta at that time. Competing formats caused consumer panic in ...

I just did a review of a 5.1 speaker system by a company called Premier Acoustics. The review can be read here on HomeTheaterFocus.   They look like nice speakers, great build quality etc, and they’re still fairly inexpensive. and while the sound exceeds the price range in my opinion, I think PA went a little too far to make the ...

Toshiba has replaced its original HD DVD player, the troubled HD-A1. The HD-A1 has been hailed as having the best HD image of the two high profile competitors (including Samsung’s BD-P1000). But it had several bugs that made it a clunky affair that frustrated users and reviewers alike. If HD-A1 won the opening race for image quality the BD-P1000 ...

CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) put on its annual exhibition, that may arguably rival CES in significance to the Home Theater market. Each year many home audio and custom service providers vie for attention, putting up their wares for demonstration. For complete coverage of the CEDIA Expo check Audioholics CEDIA page ...

Are you thinking of buying a new LCD monitor or a used plasma TV? If so, there’s something you need to watch out for – and that something is HDCP. What is HDCP? HDCP stands for High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection. In short, it’s a method of Digital Rights Management (DRM) used to protect digital audio and video signals that are generally ...

Are you in the market for a Front Projector? Have you seen what these things can do? Front Projection can change your viewable picture size from 30 inches to 100 inches with a simple adjustment. To the budget conscious shopper this should open doors. A small compromise in aspect ratio can save you big money. Most HDTV front ...

Tuesday, September 12 was an exciting day for TiVo, as Series 3 (S3 for short) was officially released. S3 is the first TiVo device to support CableCards and paves new ground in consumer DVR. There’s a lot of confusion over TiVo S3, as demonstrated by the outpouring of negative feedback by TiVo fans. They'reconcerned over the high price and ...

Not so long ago, HomeTheaterFocus.com reported on a monster-sized Man Eating HDTV. Panasonic’s 103 inch plasma HDTV is the world’s largest of its kind. If you’re interested, it’ll be available to the public in November - just in time for Christmas if you have that kind of money to throw around. How much you ask? The cost is downright Satanic, ...

Korea's LG presents a trio of Asian babes in blue. Oh, yeah, and they also unveiled the fastest Blu-ray burner yet. It’s called LG GBW-H10N Super Multi Blue. It’s capable of Blu-ray write speeds of a blistering 18Mbps, which is 4X to you and me. The rest of the world is still only burning BD at a measly 2X - like I have ...