Mar
30
Home Theater Budgets
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One of the most frustrating mistakes I see made in home theater is poor budgeting, specifically budgets widely skewed toward the display. Of course the screen is the most noticeable component of a home theater system and it’s literally where the action is while the movie’s playing, but displays that pass 70% or even 80% of the entire budget are counter-productive and rarely give the best bang for the buck.
The simple fact of the matter is audio (especially in the last few years or so) typically doesn’t see the rapid advancements that video does. In other words, it’s unlikely a display will remain “current” anywhere, near as long as a similarly priced audio system.
Yes, surround receivers have changed a bit in the last few years but once you have one capable of HDMI switching you’re pretty well assured not to see any significant advancements on the audio front (at least feature wise), for several years. Displays on the other hand see significant overhauls every 9-12 months. It’s this very reason I recommend not getting display-bitten and throwing an inordinate amount of your overall budget into the display, audio matters too, and probably more than you’ve considered.
Mar
11
White Van Speakers
Filed Under Shopping Tips | 2 Comments
Folks, the White-Van speakers are never a bargain. That goes for the brown, blue, green and any other color van speakers as well. Think about it, are there any other items “worth” several hundred dollars that you’d buy out of the back of a non-descript van? This is one of the oldest scams in the book and the buyer never, ever wins. Sadly these speakers aren’t worth the raw materials it took to produce them.
As a matter of fact those “awesome speakers worth over $5000 that my boss said I had to unload today or else” often times don’t even have an internal crossover. In some cases they aren’t even properly internally wired and in almost all cases the cabinets resonate as loud as the drivers themselves. The simple truth of the matter is, in most cases, these speakers are bought by the truck-load for $40 or less a pair and then marked up as much as thirty times that amount.
The purveyors of these speakers are vultures plain and simple. Some of the models even have familiar sounding names meant to confuse the unsuspecting buyer into mistaking them with the real thing. Simply put this is a confidence scam and a poor one at that.
A few of the bigger examples of these “white-van” speakers would be Acoustic Response not Acoustic Research, Dahlton not Dahlquist, Genesis/Genesis (yeah that one’s a straight knock-off) Paradyme/Paradigm Grafdale/Wharfedale, Kirsch/Klipsch, PSD/PSB, JBL/JBL (again total counterfeit) etc. etc. These guys are really shameless about it and since they never plan on seeing you again they’re not even the least bit worried about it.
Feb
14
Home Theater Shopping Tips
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In a nutshell try and limit yourself to major name brands but that of course comes with a few caveats. Keep in mind that what might be a “big name brand” in say televisions might not necessarily be so in front projection and vice versa. A few basic guide lines for this would be (1) have I heard of the brand before (2) is the brand sold through a reputable brick and mortar dealer network and (3) has the company been around longer than a few years, if the answer to one or more of those questions is no, at the very minimum step back and think about this potential purchase just a little longer.
That said there’s another potential pitfall to avoid when shopping for audio video equipment that’s just as important as the “major name brand “rule. Just because a company ruled the roost for 20 years with insert-product-type-here doesn’t mean they make a good insert-it-here now, they may not even make it at all anymore. Without naming names I recently had a conversation with a customer who said I’ll only buy acme widgets because their superior to omega widgets, I had to inform him that omega now manufacture all of acme’s widgets for them.
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