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In: Home Theater
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THX just announced a new specification for home theater: THX Loudless Plus. My initial thought was, “I bet this means yet another new THX equipment specification.” Well, yes, it does. The benchmark specification for all future receivers will now be THX Ultra2 Plus and THX Select2 Plus. But this is not a bad thing; this specification addresses a real need in home theater: consistent surround sound levels regardless of the listening volume.     Currently, the best way to reproduce a movie sound track is to calibrate your speakers to a certain reference volume level and make sure the volume knob is always at thisRead More →

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In: Entertainment
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I’m not going to write a comprehensive review of the movie, I’m just going to sum it up like this: The Bourne Ultimatum is the best movie of the summer. The plot is smart, the action scenes are intimate and intense, and the time line is ingeniously tied to the previous movie. Casino Royale was the best James Bond movie ever and The Bourne Ultimatum is better. My entertainment advise for the weekend is to immediately pop The Bourne Supremacy into your DVD player for a 2-hour refresher because you don’t want to miss the ties between the two movies. Then head to movie theaterRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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I just posted a revised version of my home theater calculator.  The new revision adds the following enhancements: Added feature to allow calculation of Visual Acuity Viewing Distance based on eyesight of the viewer. (The default is 20/20 vision; changing the input to 20/10 vision with show that the viewer will be able to spot resolution deficiencies at much greater distances due to more acute eyesight.) Fixed bug in the aspect ratio input that caused international users to have problems (problem was related to using “,” as decimal delimiter instead of “.”) Added cells to the far right of the spreadsheet to allow changing andRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 6 Comments

I was ready to abandon the Philips Pronto platform, but the new Pronto Professional TSU9400 and Pronto Script save the day! Background: I’ve been a user of Philips Pronto remote controls since the original TSU-1000 was released in 1998. Since then, I’ve upgraded twice and I carefully consider each new product cycle. I’d become a bit disappointed because new product releases seemed to be “two steps forward and one step back.” (For example, the TSU7000/TSU7500 still does not have automatic backlights behind the hard buttons.) Also, Philips released a new product, the customer-installer-only TSU9600, a year ago but offered no third-party support for features orRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 5 Comments

Overview: A frequent question I receive is “which HDTV should I buy?” The answer is not simple and represents a significant monetary investment. Sure, a bunch of future displays were probably just announced and there is always something better on the horizon, but at some point it’s time to pick a technology and pull the trigger. Due to my price and space considerations, most people focused on HDTV displays ranging from 42″-50″ that are available at most local big box retailers. This write-up summarizes the general recommendation I give when someone asks me the question. Flat Panel or Rear Projection or Front Projection? This isRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 7 Comments

I receive a bunch of questions in reference to my 1080P Does Matter article. Some of the questions are along the lines of “Do I really lose the benefits of 1080p if I sit too far away from a small screen? How? The lines of resolution don’t go away.” While the lines are still there, you’re eye can’t detect them, but I haven’t found a simple way to explain this. Then I came across this article and picture (via digg) that demonstrate a great, simple-to-explain example. quoting http://bloggerwhale.blogspot.com/2007/03/dont-trust-your-eyes.html# In the pic below you can see two faces. A normal face on the right and aRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 2 Comments

I have a front projector in one room and a flat panel display in another. Instead of purchasing separate sets for components for each display, I’d rather just use a HDMI distribution box so any source could be routed to either display. Unfortunately, this is turning out to be an impossible dream. Most of the devices available are HDMI splitters, so they can display the same source on both displays. However, they can not display different sources on different displays and this is the functionality I really want. A HDMI matrix switch is required to do this. The Gefen 4×4 HDMI HDTV Matrix Switch willRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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I found an interesting article related to my 1080P Does Matter post (as well as my Home Theater Calculator.)  It gives some additional perspective on the resolving power of the human eye.  One key difference I noticed is that it states the resolving capability of our eyes to be 0.01 degrees, where as I’ve used a figure of 0.0167 degrees (0.6 arc-minute vs 1.0 arc minute.) This is not a huge difference; both are estimates based on the average eye.  I’m just glad that the values are so close. The figure I found most interesting was the total resolution capability when taking everything (eye, eyeRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 5 Comments

Easier than Building Yourself: Buy a Replacement battery from ProntoWizard.com You can order replacement higher capacity (900 mAh) battery packs from ProntoWizard.com. These battery packs have almost twice the life of the standard battery packs. They are fully assembled and ready to use. My NiMH Battery Pack Replacement Procedure I attempted to replace the NiMH AAA batteries within my ProntoPro battery pack. The procedure is the same for both the standard Proto with AA batteries and the ProntoPro with AAA batteries. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the battery pack to work with the ProntoPro, perhaps due to it producing lower voltage than the PhilipsRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 6 Comments

I’m a long-time Philips Pronto user and I’ve been somewhat frustrated by the unresponsiveness of the Pronto development team. I noticed that Logitech just released the Harmony 1000 remote. Since they are are much easier to program than the Philips Pronto remotes, I decided I may want to purchase one, and I started researching. Unfortunately, the Harmony 1000 remote has two substantial shortcomings that are causing me not to buy it: 1) You can’t configure “soft” buttons to be on a specific screen. So you may have to scroll between screens much more frequently because the two buttons you use the most are not displayedRead More →