Audio-Video Tips

Enjoy a movie experience in your own home that a theater cannot touch. Learn how to build your dream home theater system.

Hi-def isn't just about the quality of the picture you receive from your satellite or cable provider. Once you've subscribed you are so close to having your very own home cinema. And it doesn't have to be expensive. Everything broadcast in HD is accompanied with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound as the broadcasters have chosen this sound format for their hi-def broadcasts.

You might be wondering what precisely a Touch of Color LCD TV is. Probably, you might want to compare the same from a Plasma TV. Was it introduced for the purpose of a publicity stunt, a ground breaking, or to lay down a fad, or was it merely a witty marketing promotion. Keep reading to learn more.

If you've never watched programming on a full HD plasma TV (high definition), then you're in for a real treat. High definition TV is here to stay, and you'll know why the first time you view it. The super-sharp, crisp images are awesome and makes the viewing experience life-like. Watching a program on a full HD plasma TV gives you the best television watching experience possible.

One of the first pieces of tech specs you'll run into when building your own dream home theater is "5.1" , "7.1" and to a lesser extent "6.1" speaker systems. Typically a home theater system and most movie house systems consisted of a center channel, a pair of left and right speakers, side or surround speakers, and a subwoofer.

Want to screen a movie or photographs? Has your boss asked you to make a company presentation? Here's the ultimate solution, buy a LCD projector.

The new Laservue HDTV from Mitsubishi is perhaps the most tv that you could expect for your home entertainment center. Home owners who are looking around for a new tv for their home entertainment systems should take a look at this one. Measuring in at 65", this tv will make you feel like you are actually 'there". I think that Mitsubishi has really done a great job developing this new technology and bringing it to the rest of the world.

Blu-Ray has won the format wars, so go ahead and make the plunge. Find out why you should have a Blu-Ray player and how to choose the best one for your money.

Going out to the movies is becoming a very expensive activity.  Not only have ticket prices gone up in the last few years, it seems that drinks, popcorn and candy have all had price increases.  Couple this with the drop in prices on high end electronics and recent advances such as Blu-ray, and it is no wonder that ticket sales and continuously been dropping off as more and more people are opting to set up "Home Theaters".

If there are inventions that made humongous effects to human civilization, one if it would probably the Television or TV set or simply TV. Every household all over the world has at least one it. One of the signs that it is still a popular household item is the fact that manufacturers continue to improve and add more features.

Before you get a little excited let me first give you a little background on how home cinemas started. It is believed that home theaters become popular in the 1950s during a time when Kodak 8 mm film projector equipment became affordable.

Convenience, safety, and luxury all come standard with a home intercom. Answer the door without getting up, be alerted to strangers coming up your walk, and listen to the same song even when you move into a different room. All that and more is possible when you get a home intercom system.

Are you thinking about purchasing a new plasma flat screen television? If so, this article will give you 4 important questions you should ask yourself and your sales person before you plop down your hard-earned money on a new plasma tv.

What do you do when your rear-projection TV loses its picture? Time to get a new DLP Lamp.

It has already been discussed that in home cinema installations the measure of reverberation time is actually the time it takes the sound to fall by 60 dB. This is not particularly relevant psychoacoustically, and it is also very difficult to measure in situ. This is due to the presence of background noise in the home cinema room, either unwanted or the music being played, which often results in less than 60 dB of energy decay before the decay sound becomes less than the residual noise in the environment.

We often come across home cinema installations where all walls are covered in fabric. The fabrics used in these dedicated home cinema systems are classed as "acoustic." Acoustic fabrics are solely covering the acoustic treatments used in the cinema room, while providing a more pleasant visual appearance. They are used solely for aesthetics.

The reference level of a soundtrack is 105db and 115db for the LFE channel. Most people would find these levels quite high, but not difficult to listen to, in a correctly designed home cinema room. A problem occurs though, when we face the challenge of keeping the noise inside the cinema room.

Performance of home cinema installations is influenced by the presence of boundaries, and so it is important to understand how sound propagates in a home cinema room. Let's imagine a home cinema with a starting speaker and a listener located somewhere at the home cinema seating area. Let's now assume that at some time (t=0) a signal is played through the speaker.

Basically, there are two methods of sound field simulation in use nowadays, for home cinema designs; namely ray tracing and the method of image sources, and both are based on geometrical acoustics. The most tedious and time consuming part of the whole process is the collection and input of room data such as the positions and orientations of the home cinema's walls and their acoustic properties.

Every home studio that has any interest in recording vocals and/or acoustic instruments needs at least one really quality condenser microphone. I can attest from personal experience that the Shure KSM44 is the perfect condenser microphone for a home recording studio because of a couple of reasons which I will list below.