Home Theater View

The New HT Sales Environment

HomeTheaterReview - not HomeTheaterVIEW, which is what you're reading right now - has an interesting take on how the home theater sales environment has changed since the recession, and how to cope. It's partly a pitch for online advertising, partly a manifesto. Oddly enough, I agree with the advertising part, but he's missing a few pieces in the manifesto:

• Are boutique bricks-and-mortar A/V stores relevant in an amazon.com age? (Short answer: only if they're truly boutiques.)
• Is seated home audio relevant in an iPod/dock age? (While there are exceptions -- witness the rebirth of vinyl -- generally speaking the answer here is, "not for anyone younger than 35.") 
• Are editorial-driven magazines (in print or online) relevant in an age of semi-pro blogs and forums? (If my friends writing for these publications are any indication, probably not.)

Mailbag: Is it Time to Upgrade to a "Blu-ray capable" Receiver?

Here's one from the mailbag:

I’m thinking about upgrading my receiver. Currently I have a Denon AVR-987. It’s 3- 4 years old and does not have the current technology for blu ray. I’m thinking of going with a Sony STR-DA2400ES receiver. I have a 52” Sony XBR and a Sony BDP S-300 blu ray player. My speakers are Soundworks MC300 front/Soundworks original surrounds and JBL Northridge for the center. Any advice would be appreciated.

It really depends on why you think you need the upgrade, but I wouldn’t do it.

You’d be surprised, but your current receiver can handle Blu-ray just fine – rather than upgrade your receiver to a model that can decode Dolby TrueHD, you just have the Blu-ray player do the decoding and send the bitstream (PCM) on over to your receiver – it will sound the same whether the player does the decoding or the receiver. In fact, depending on which Blu-ray player you have, it may work that way by default. For example, Sony’s Playstation 3 can’t send unencoded TrueHD to a receiver, you have to go the PCM route (the newer Playstation 3 Slim can pass an unencoded signal, but, again, there should be no difference in the sound). In your specific case, the BDP-S300 can decode Dolby TrueHD, but only if you download a firmware update. You should be regularly updating your firmware anyway to ensure that newer discs play on it without incident.

So, is it worth upgrading your receiver? Your Denon has more power than the newer Sony, it has basic room correction by Audyssey, and it has plenty of inputs/outputs as long as you don’t need a lot of HDMI switching or video upscaling. While the Sony has all the latest audio decoders, it doesn’t have the most HDMI inputs, the best video upscaling, or the best room correction, so I’m not sure it’s enough of an upgrade even if those were your priorities.

Your biggest bang-for-buck audio upgrade would be to keep the Denon and upgrade your speakers. At the very least I’d get matching front speakers (either get another MC300 for the center or get another pair of JBL’s for front left/right) and a sub.

Off to Apple's Special Event

I'm off to Apple's Special Event tomorrow. Journalists who want to contact me for comments afterwards can call me at 201 658 7729 or email me at agreengart @ currentanalysis com.

Once Apple madness is behind us, more HTV posts are coming, including a post-CES wrap-up, VUDU review, and an end to my quest for an A/V receiver with enough HDMI inputs to serve as a test center.

Strange New Home Theater System from Yamaha

Yamaha just announced the YHT-S400, a two piece home theater in a box. The soundbar is par for the course, giving people pseudo surround sound from just a single enclosure you can mount below your flat panel TV. Soundbars are incredibly popular right now, as they match the design of today's televisions (which also don't intrude on the living space) and don't require stringing wires all over the place. The YHT-S400's receiver is unique, in that it has a built-in subwoofer. Oddly enough, it reminds me of the mid-1980's PC, the Coleco Adam, which combined a daisy wheel printer with the PC's power supply - two things that definitely did not ordinarily go together. The reason my mind jumps way back (and yes, I know I'm dating myself) to the Adam is because strange combination designs not only limit upgrade flexibility, it means that if there is a problem with one component, your whole system is shot. Anyone buying the YHT-S400 needs to be aware that a problem with the sub means a problem with the whole system, and that they will not be able to upgrade any part of the system in the future.

Assuming that the sound quality is good - I have not heard a unit - the price seems reasonable ($599). Yamaha is probably thinking that this design will help space-challenged apartment dwellers, but there is another market segment worth exploring: parents of small children who don't want their kids stuffing Matchbox cars into a floor-level subwoofer port. I pulled 22 cars out of one of my subs in the playroom - the subs in my home theater all have floor-facing ports. On purpose.

Cheap Blu-ray Upgrades from Warner

Well, this is nice: some of us have felt like suckers, buying the same titles over and over as formats have shifted from VHS to letterbox VHS to laserdisc to DVD to special edition DVD to Blu-ray (and I probably missed a few format changes in there). If you've got a bunch of Warner DVDs and feel compelled to upgrade them to Blu-ray, check out this Warner Brothers site: http://www.dvd2blu.com/. You'll have to physically mail in your DVDs, and shipping charges apply if you have less than four to upgrade, but if you have four or more from the list of 55 titles, it should be about $8 per disc. Not free, but not bad, and a nice gesture to loyal customers.

Lessons From Panasonic's Plasma Day

On Tuesday, I, along with a handful of tech journalists, was invited to attend a briefing by Panasonic in New York to show off their latest line of plasma televisions. The emphasis was on the technical capabilities of Panasonic's plasma technology relative to the latest LCD with LED backlighting.  Some things I learned:

1. Never have a Japanese engineer who doesn't speak fluent English give a marketing presentation to journalists. Yes, there was a lot of technical detail included, but the fundamental reason Panasonic was doing the briefing was to spin the technical detail, otherwise they would have just provided a white paper. While the presentation itself was pretty good, it was agonizingly slow going in parts, and key points just weren't made well.
2. Plasma's burn-in issues are a thing of the past. Non-issue with current sets. Now, the legal guys haven't gotten the message, so you still see a warning in the manual not to allow static images to linger on the screen, but some of the sets are deliberately marketed as better for gaming (which they are). The manuals need to be updated and this issue needs to be taken off the table.
3. Plasma is actually brighter than LCD over smaller areas. This is irrelevant overall - the sample images on the LCD during most of the presentation jumped out at you in a way that plasma does not. Ergo, consumers prefer LCD at retail. (It's more balanced on calibrated sets in a home environment, but on bright images, LCD is superior, and on dark images, plasma rules.)
4. Plasma has markedly better color than LCD, especially off-angle. Sadly, this is basically impossible to see in retail environments with uncalibrated televisions.
5. Maximum energy usage on a plasma is still high if you display white fields all day long, but Plasma and LCD are pretty close in terms of energy consumption on real-world program material. LCD is still better (and has a much better number on the energy use sticker), but it's not a reason to disqualify plasma any more.
6. Plasma is much, much better for resolving high definition when there is motion in the image. This is a key fact that Panasonic should be marketing hard, especially since the LCD competition charges more for sets that try to compensate by speeding up refresh cycles, and they are still noticeably worse on test patterns and real world content.
7. How a TV is set up at retail is critical: the LCD set they had on hand for comparison showed more stars in a starfield, and none of us cared that the gamma of that set may have been off - there were far more stars visible on that TV than on the plasmas. And we actually know what gamma is - the average consumer never touches picture controls when they get their TV home.

All in all, I came away with a better understanding of why I still prefer plasma over LCD for most uses, and why most consumers are buying LCD anyway - and are unlikely to change any time soon.

Logitech Harmony 900 First Take: Not a Pretty Upgrade

I'm a bit backed up here at Home Theater View, both with posts (they're in my head but haven't quite made their way out of my head and onto the site) and with products to review. Logitech had sent over the Harmony 900 remote control just before it launched, but I first attempted to configure it last night.

 
The Harmony 900 is essentially an RF version of the IR-only Harmony One. In English, that means that the 900 is a universal remote control that looks nearly identical to another universal remote control in the Harmony line, but instead of just being able to control components line-of-site using infrared (IR), it can also control components that are hidden behind walls/doors/retractable screens using radio frequency (RF) commands that are relayed to the components with little IR blaster pods. The Harmony One lists for $249 (and sells for $182 on amazon) while the Harmony 900 lists for $399 (and sells for $315 on amazon). The added money also gets you a higher resolution touchscreen and a few extra buttons, but the two products look basically the same (a good thing, as I love the Harmony One's button layout), act basically the same (instead of controlling individual devices, the Harmony line is activity-based), and are set up using the same process (using an online database). The Harmony 900's value proposition is pretty simple: most infrared repeater systems cost a lot more than the $150 price delta, and some of them are fairly complicated, while the hallmark of Logitech's Harmony line is simplicity. 

As I noted in last year's Holiday Gift Guide, I liked the Harmony One so much that I refused to wait for a review unit and instead simply bought one. I later added the Harmony PlayStation 3 adapter, a $60 add-on that seamlessly integrates the game console into a Harmony system (the PS3 uses Bluetooth, which sounds like a good idea but is completely incompatible with any universal remote control). I also have an infrared repeater system, the Microsmith Hot Link Pro that I am eager to replace with a more elegant and responsive solution (I should note that I can heartily recommend the Hot Link Pro; when all the wires and the receiver eye are placed properly, it works perfectly, and at just $67 on amazon, it is a stone cold bargain). The Harmony 900 should have been perfect.

I have been reviewing remote controls for a long time and have been following the Harmony line since before Intrigue launched it (and well before Logitech bought the company). One of the best things about the product is that setup is done entirely online, the online database grows as users add new devices, and upgrading to a new remote control is a simple matter of telling the online software what you just bought.

Except when it isn't. The first problem I had was that Logitech's site claims that there is no software to download for the Harmony 900. A CD is included in the package, but you always need to download the latest updates anyway, and I had intended to use a netbook to do the setup down in my home theater rather than run back and forth between my office and my home theater. This problem was just an annoyance, but an odd one.

The next problem - and one that only affects people upgrading from earlier Harmony remotes - is that you cannot upgrade from earlier Harmony remotes. Despite the fact that the software is identical and the remotes look nearly identical and they function in nearly identical ways, a new Harmony account is required to use the 900, which meant I needed to go back and log every component in the home theater and re-figure out how they are all connected, which inputs are required, etc. The process is straightforward, but it is a chore I would have gladly done without.

The next problem - and the one that simply stopped me cold - was that much of the work that went into getting the Harmony remote controls working with my components over the years seems to have vanished from Logitech's database. Not only do I need a new account, but apparently I need to re-teach Logitech that the monoprice switcher has more than five inputs, that the TiVo doesn't have a power button, and that I am using Logitech's own accessory to control the PS3. I don't have time to troubleshoot all of this - again - so for now I will continue using the Harmony One/Microsmith combination.

If you are coming to the unit without an existing Harmony account, most of my setup problems won't affect you - you would need to set up your system from scratch anyway. Nonetheless, I'm holding off recommending this product until I have the time and energy to get it working properly.