BUYER GUIDES
Placing Home Cinema Speakers
Put your new speakers in the wrong spot in your room and you can suffer from a harsh sound, overblown bass and a lack of detail. LEFT AND RIGHT FRONT CHANNEL SPEAKERS Put the left and right speakers either side of your TV. But if you have an older tube TV don’t put them to [...]
Types of Speakers
Your specialist dealer stocks a mountain load of different speakers. Here’s a guide to the most common types. Satellite Speakers Small speakers designed to be stand-mounted or placed in a bookshelf usually having two drivers, a tweeter for high frequencies and a woofer for midrange frequencies. But they need a sub-woofer to produce ample levels [...]
Understanding Stereo Hi-Fi systems
Hi-Fi systems come in a couple of different packages. Cheap and cheerful integrated Hi-Fis are usually three-piece systems comprising a central module that holds the CD/DVD player, stereo amplifier and FM/DAB+ radio, and two speakers. More upmarket Hi-Fi systems designed to sound so good you’ll think the performers are playing in your listening room consist [...]
Connecting a basic Home Theatre System
Nobody wants to put up wit the cold or heat, traffic or rip-off prices just to see a great movie when you can have the same experience in the comfort of your lounge room. Thanks to the huge range of Home Cinema systems available these days, getting the Hollywood experience is relatively affordable. Most people [...]
Home Theatre: What You Need To Know
Hollywood at home means watching movies and music videos on a huge flatscreen TV or through a video projector while the floor-shaking sound is provided by several speakers powered by a cracking surround-sound amplifier or receiver. Here’s how you can transform your living room into a cinema. 1 Speakers must fit the room Size up [...]
Receiver or Amplifier?
Stereo systems can be elaborate expensive components involving different details for producing quality sound. The CD player, mp3 connection, amplifier, receiver, speakers and even a turntable all combine to produce true stereo sound. With many systems, the amplifier and receiver are combined into one component called a tuner or tuner amp. Stereos Stereos are sound [...]
Buying an Integrated Amplifier
1 Hammer out a budget and be prepared to be flexible and spend up to $300-$500 more – or less. Entry level amplifiers that give you more than a taste of very expensive amplifiers will cost between $599-$1199. Spend $1200-$2500 and you’ll get twice the sound quality of the entry level amplifier as well as [...]
CD player : must have features
A CD player reads digital data off discs and converts it to an analogue language which can be understood by an amplifier and speakers. Theoretically CD players with 24-bit digital to analog converters (DACs) will read every bit of data encoded on standard CDs, which are recorded at 16-bit resolution. 24-bit CD players read data [...]
How to Choose a CD Player
CD players are not created equal. The best sounding models are single-disc machines built for performance. But they don’t suit all music lovers. So before you buy: Ask yourself how you prefer to enjoy music. Do you like long listening sessions? Do you want to download music and burn it to a blank CD? [...]
LCD & Plasma TV & Buying Guide
LCD and Plasma TVs: What You Need to Know Slim and thin in in. With their sleek shapes, all-round multi-media talents and gob-smacking picture quality, LCD and Plasma TVs are on everyone’s shopping lists. Whether they’re hung on a wall like a giant picture frame or used on a cabinet these stylish TVs in their [...]
3D TV broadcast formats – how does it work?
One of the biggest problems faced by broadcasters is how to fit a 3D datastream into the same bandwidth occupied by a single-image 2D stream. The answer is simple, if somewhat disquieting. According to Ultimate AV writer Scott, there are basically three ways to do this. http://www.hometheater.com/content/3d-broadcast-formats
LCD vs. plasma TV – here we go again
LCD vs. plasma TV – here we go again You thought all LCD TV’s were much the same until you saw Philip’s 56-inch masterpiece By all means ask my tech-savvy neighbour Wolf about new technology. Just don’t ask him about LCD TVs. Wolf will happily prattle on about any audio‐video topic. Hearing him talk about [...]
3D TV is here, but is it here to stay?
Peter Familari - Editor Of course technology experts like to make TV buying a lot more complicated than it really is. Making a simple buying decision a chore keeps these experts in a job and maintains their guru-like status. But ask an experienced retailer which TV you should put in your lounge-room and he’ll tell [...]
After that HDTV or Projector purchase, don’t forget to calibrate
How important is HDTV calibration? December 16, 2009 – by Krissy Rushing Source: Digital Trends According to experts, HDTV calibration is a must. Here’s why it’s important to setup and configure your new HDTV properly before viewing. If you’ve bought a new HDTV recently, then it’s a question you’re no doubt asking yourself: How important [...]
Flat panels specs myths and lies
Specs, myths and lies By Geoffrey Morrison Don’t believe the hype. No matter what type of display you’re looking for, you’re no doubt going to be comparing the specs and feature lists of each. Things like contrast ratio, lumens, 3:2 pull down, and others are a marketing departments favourite tools to make their product sound [...]
