(Credit: Pioneer)Just a few years ago, HDMI connectivity was a major step-up feature on AV receivers; now, it’s standard for all but the least expensive models. The Pioneer VSX-1018AH is a midrange AV receiver with three HDMI inputs, which may be enough to cover all your home theater …
Continue reading about Review: Pioneer VSX-1018AH light on HDMI inputs, big on the rest
Pioneer announced three new Blu-ray players back at CES 2009, but without pricing it was hard for us to gauge whether they were a good value. This morning we saw a story over at Big Picture Big Sound with pricing for the players, and after confirming with Pioneer, we were …
Continue reading about New Pioneer Blu-ray players get (approximate) pricing
I'm betting The Dark Knight was the most popular stolen disc.
It’s never good news that your products are being stolen, except maybe if you’re selling Blu-ray. Video Business has an excellent story on rising theft of Blu-ray discs, and how retailers are taking action to …
Continue reading about Good sign for Blu? Blu-ray theft on the rise
(Credit: Denon)We like to encourage buyers to opt for a dedicated AV receiver over a home-theater-in-a-box system, but there’s no doubt that buying separate components requires a little more AV know-how.
The benefit of separate components is that you’ll get better sound and more features, and it’…
Continue reading about Review: Denon AVR-1909 sounds great, looks great, but tough to set up
The Grace ITC-IR1000B Wi-Fi radio wound up being one of our favorite surprise products on the year. We weren’t familiar with Grace before testing this radio, but its solid mix of design, features, and sound quality made us fans, and it stacked up well in our Wi-Fi radio roundup.
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Continue reading about Five new Wi-Fi radios from Grace Digital Audio
While the rest of tech world was busy scouring news from CES 2009, Samsung’s duo of Netflix-enabled Blu-ray players–the BD-P2500 and BD-P2550–received a firmware update to enable onboard DTS-HD Master Audio decoding. The players were promised the update “by the end of the year”, but chalk it up …
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The Acoustic Research ARIR600i internet radio
While internet radios have been popular in Europe for a while, 2008 was the first year the products really gained some traction in the US market. Acoustic Research showed off two new internet radios, the ARIR200 and the ARIR600i, which offer some unique features …
Originally posted at CES 2009
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Blu-ray ran into plenty of consumer confusion regarding the differing Blu-ray profiles, but the good news is that almost all (excluding a few Philips players) of the new players we saw announced at CES 2009 are Profile 2.0 compatible. Memorex’s new MVBD-2520 doesn’t have any of the …
Originally posted at CES 2009
Continue reading about Memorex unveils a $200 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray player
As we mentioned it in our CES 2009 home audio preview, the trend in home audio over the last few years has been toward simplicity, and sound bars have promised to deliver the full surround experience from a single speaker. In reality, it never quite sounds that good, but the …
Originally posted at CES 2009
Continue reading about Polk’s new SurroundBar adds a wireless subwoofer
Samsung is clearly intending to make a big push with its LED-backlit LCDs, but the company did announce one new line of LCDs without LED. The Samsung LN-B750 series uses standard CFL backlighting, but includes other cutting-edge features such as 240Hz refresh rate, a slim inch-thick design, and access to …
Originally posted at CES 2009
Continue reading about Not all Samsung LCDs have LED backlighting