One issue with large, high ceiling rooms is the acoustics are not ideal for understanding the dialog in the movie or TV soundtrack.  It will usually take a very good center channel speaker to accomplish this.  The typical solution would have been to install a good center channel speaker under the TV and do left and rights on the bookcases.  However that would not work for good TV audio in the kitchen.

Sony TV and B&W Panorama Speaker

Enter the B&W Panorama and the skills of our Audio Advice install team, Karl and Tony.  The Panorama is an all in one home theater speaker using 9 drivers with individual amps for each one!  It has incredible bass performance for its compact size and does wonders with dialog.  As a matter of fact, I just replaced a very good all in one LCR speaker in my personal family room with one and am thrilled!  The Panorama also has several EQ settings which allow you to fine tune it to your room.  You learn more about the Panorama here in our Panorama blog done when it first hit the market.

Tony and Karl built a custom mount for the Panorama to attach it to a full articulating arm that allows both the beautiful new 55″ Sony TV and the Panorama speaker to swivel together towards the kitchen or family room.  As you can see from the details picture, their wiring job was top notch and super neat.  They were also able to get wiring from the base cabinet over to the TV without cutting any extra holes!  A Universal remote custom programmed is the icing on the cake making everything very simple to operate.

Great view of our custom mount and precision wiring job

It’s just another great example of how our team can make your home entertainment dreams come true.

Picture and Sound in the kitchen, no problem!

Imagine this on your deck or patio, totally weatherproof!

An example of a Seura Mirror TV in a bathroom

Seura is another company making TV’s for special applications.  They are well known for their mirror TV’s which sit behind a custom mirror and are totally invisible until you turn them on.  Seura engineers and hand crafts every product at their plant in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  They have a new line out called Hydra of totally waterproof TV’s for kitchens, showers, and baths.  These TV’s mount in the wall and come in a variety of finishes.  They introduced a new stainless steel finish this year that is just perfect for your gourmet kitchen!  Imagine a 19” TV (which is the perfect size for a kitchen) that mounts in the wall and totally complements your stainless steel appliances.  I showed a picture of this to my wife and she wanted one!  The frame can even be ordered in any of 800 custom colors to match your color scheme.

This new TV will make your stainless steel appliances jealous!

The new iPad2 LaunchPort

Our friends at Sonance have a sister company called iPort.  iPort, as the name implies is all about making neat little products to mount your Apple devices into the wall.  At this year’s CEDIA, they introduced a product that I would say had the most consistent large crowds around it of anything at the show.  The new product is called LaunchPort.  It is a three piece systems consisting of a sleeve for your iPad2, a wall mount base station and a table top base station.  The sleeve has a built in wave guide to direct the sound from the rear firing speaker to the front, a mini usb port for charging and syncing, plus a magnet on the back. The magnet allows you to have it stick to any metal surface, but that is not the best part.  The wall mount or table top base station connect to power, and have an inductive charging system- so yes, you just have to stick your iPad2 in its sleeve to one of them and you have instant charging!!!!  The fit and finish on this piece is incredible.  Sonance is estimating the price will be around $149 for a sleeve and the table top or wall mount will be $199 each.  We should have these in soon.

The great value Callaway chair

VIP seating is one of our favorite theater seating suppliers.  Every single thing they make is 100% American in their own plants.  They use the finest Leggett & Platt mechanisms, along with high quality foam and seating materials.  They have also always represented a great value.  Well, value just took another huge step forward with their new Callaway chair.  I had been a big fan of their $2500 Carmel seat, but this guy at right around $1000 a chair feels about the same!  Another neat feature never found until now on a chair in this price range is customization of the seat width.  You can get 21”, 24” or 27” width.  We’ll have these in shortly for you to test drive.

The new Golden Ear bookshelf speakers, coming soon!

If you have not heard about Golden Ear speakers, you have probably not picked up an audio magazine in the last year.  Sandy Gross, the co-founder of Polk, and founder of Definitive Technology speakers, came out of retirement last year with a new speaker line called Golden Ear.  They have won just about every value award you can think of.  At this year’s CEDIA, he introduced a new bookshelf speaker.  Sandy knows how to make good sound at a show, so I always take that into account, but these little guys just sounded incredible!  There are some $5000/pr bookshelf speakers they would give a run for the money on.  When I heard the price I was floored.  $1000/pr.  There is also a smaller model at $800/pr although for me the bigger ones are well worth the extra $200.  These will be called the Aon 2 and 3. We can’t wait to get these in but it may be early 2012, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

Now that's a WIDE screen!!!

Finally, this one goes into the “you just have to see it category”.   Vivitek, a company I have never heard of, was showing the widest screen I have ever seen.  It actually takes two projectors spaced pretty far apart to pull it off.  The screen ratio is 3.18:1!  Apparently only about 10 movies have ever been shot in this ratio so you are certainly not buying it for those, but I could see a place for this in a commercial application viewing multiple cameras or in some new kind of totally immersive video game!  I have no idea what this will sell for, but I thought it was just cool to show it to you.

At this year’s CEDIA, they were showing off some very cool things they will be adding in the future.  First of all, 2:35 movie theaters for the home are becoming very popular.  Up until now, Kaleidescape’s (like all DVD’s and Bluray discs) menu was designed for a 16:9 ratio screen.  Their new software is designed now to scale to either 2:35 or 16:9.  Since most movies are in 2:35 this will keep one from having to switch to a 16:9 ratio to fully see the menus.  Read my blog here to learn more about 2:35:  Leon’s CEDIA review part 2

The Kaleidescape Menu in 2:35- no more scrolling left to right!

Another very neat new feature they will be adding is favorite scenes.  Sometimes it is just fun to watch movie previews as they pick out the most intense or interesting scenes in a movie.  Well, Kaleidescape is taking it a step further.  They have gone into every movie they have cataloged (which is just about every on every put on DVD or Bluray) and bookmarked the best scenes.  Most of these are 1-2 minutes.  So now, you can find a movie in your collection and instantly go to some of its best scenes!  You can then string favorite scenes from various movies into what they call a script so you can have a demo to blow your friends away!

Favorite Scenes for every movie in your collection!

The covers menu is even cooler in 2:35

The last feature they will be adding is something we have been asking for a long time.  Soon Kaleidescape system owners will have the ability to purchase and download movies on line!  They promise a very complete selection.

Feel free to stop by our Raleigh or Pineville locations to see a Kaleidescape system in action.  It’s pretty darn cool!

How the RVU system will work

This puppy has 5, yes 5, built in tuners.  It allows for picture in picture to work on the TV connected up to the HR34 receiver.  It also can connect up to and pull pictures off your network much like the current Tivo box can do.  They were showing a tiny little new receiver called the HR30 which was only about ¾” tall by about 3” deep and 6” wide, so you could easily hide this behind a TV.  There will apparently be upcoming TV’s from Samsung that will have this little tuner built in.

The neat part is, where ever you install an HR30 mini receiver, you can access any of the content stored on the HR34!  They were showing a cabinet full of small little widgets that seemed to allow you to adopt current wiring to the architecture of this new RVU system, but again, no one could answer my questions.  At this point, I am not clear if you need both RG6 and ethernet connected to each of the HR30’s or just one or the other.

I could not even get close enough to take a picture and scouring the internet has turned up a blank there as well, but I can say its about twice the height of the current DirecTv units.

I suspect RVU works on a home network and you’ll just need ethernet at each location and that’s it, and also suspect the adaptors are some way to port the signal down existing RG6 cables in people’s homes.

No release date or pricing was given and there is no press from DirecTv on the unit for further clarity.  Once this hits, it will be a great way to do a simple video distribution system so you no longer have to worry about which box you recorded that show on you wanted to watch!

The first question we are usually asked is: just what size screen should I buy?  The answer can take you down many paths. Tons and tons of research has been done on viewing angles by SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers).  Of course the distance you sit from your screen and its size will translate into your viewing angle.

Viewing Angle

When HDTV was being developed as a format, the final research indicated a 30 degree viewing angle was optimum for the 1080i standard of HDTV.  The testing suggested viewers felt a pleasant level of presence and immersion when the viewing angle was 30 degrees or greater.  To put this into perspective, a 52” diagonal HDTV set should be viewed at a maximum distance of about 7 feet.

For viewing movies, THX (Tom Holman and George Lucas’s company for movie standards) recommends a viewing angle of 36 degrees.  SMPTE suggests the best viewing angles in a theater fall within the 35 to 55 degree range.  Again, for some perspective, this puts the ideal distance from a 52” set at 5.8’ or less for viewing movies.

What does this mean for the consumer?  On first take, it means most people are sitting way too far away from their sets for an immersive experience!  We think that is totally true.  If you really want the true home theater experience, you need a big front projection screen, period.  However, lets not forget that a 52” HDTV set is still a lot more fun to watch than an old 36” tube non-HD TV!!  We suggest you buy the biggest (and best television, because big and not good is unpleasant) picture you can get.  Don’t go over the recommended ratios, but try to stay as close as your room and budget allow.

The good news is, for the typical room used as a home theater, you can achieve real SMPTE standards and have that immersive effect!

Screen Height

And what about how high you put the screen?  THX states in their manual for designing movie theaters, the maximum vertical angle should be 35 degrees.  This means if you were looking straight ahead from your seat and looked up, you should not have to look up more than 35 degrees to see the top of your picture.  We feel this is actually pushing the limit as this spec pertains to the front row of seats in a theater.  For most people an angle of 15-25 degrees works out about perfectly.  In the world of home theater, this can get a bit tricky to achieve with multiple rows of seating and sight line issues. This is when hiring a home theater company skilled in theater design can make or break your home theater project.

Once again, this means many people with flat panel TV’s above their fireplace have them mounted up too high to meet the spec.  However, remember, if you slouch back or have a reclining chair, the angles all shift!

One great way to figure out both screen size and viewing angle is to simply get some painters tape and mask off the proposed image size on your wall, or for smaller screens, just cut out a piece of cardboard.  Sit back and see if it seems right from both a size and height perspective, then at least you will know you did a little analysis before you made your decision.  Of course, for a true home theater, our experts will lay out all of this for you to help design the optimum experience for your room!.  And, don’t forget to ask about the newest technology for film viewing in the home, the 2:35 anamorphic experience.  This really puts you in the cinema for the best immersive experience we have ever seen!

Also, if you want to learn more about the future of the viewing experience, check out this article on the SMPTE website: http://www.smpte.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/2008-04-uhdtv.pdf

Hmm..which one do I choose?

The flat panel TV business has become extremely competitive. For the most part, the quality of sets available now is fantastic. LCD sets are currently fading away except for bargain basement models and smaller sizes. Currently, the main two types are LED and plasma. Plasma was the first flat panel technology to offer a large size. In our opinion, current plasma sets have the best picture quality. They just seem to look more natural than LED. They have also gotten energy efficient to the point where most are energy star rated. However, there are situations where LED would be preferable. If you have a room that might have light reflecting off your set, LED would be the better choice. In a controlled light environment, though, we recommend plasma. At Audio Advice, we have both technologies on display so you can decide for yourself. The bottom line is, they have both gotten so darn good you will not go wrong with plasma or LED if you buy from a vendor with a reputation for making great product.

Another big question is: “What about 3D?”  For most mainstream vendors, the typical jump from the non-3D model to 3D in the same size is a $100-$300 price differential (which translates to about 10% in most cases). The jury is still out on the future success of 3D TV, but all better performing sets from the major brands include 3D already. Our advice is: if you are on a budget, forgo 3D. If you are out to buy a great TV set, it’s going to come with 3D by default.

As far as TV brands go, there are many mainstream brands offering a warranty and service should you have problems with your set. There are other brands that may sell for less, with zero service support after 30-90 days.  Audio Advice only supports brands that support us. For flat panel TVs, these are Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sharp.  All of these are brands with service back-up and support for the US market.

Now, what about the experience of enjoying your new TV?  First of all, most flat panel sales are made in big box retail chain stores.  In these stores the lighting typically uses bright fluorescents.  Most TV manufacturers have taken to sending sets out from the factory in what we in the industry call “torch mode.”  This means almost everything adjustable that affects the picture has been turned up to overcome the harsh lighting environment where the sets will probably be displayed. The first thing you need to do when you get your new set home is to adjust these settings. This makes a huge difference, actually greater than any difference you would find between good quality brands if all settings were equal. If you purchase your TV from an A/V specialty dealer, like Audio Advice, they will typically do this for you.

The next part of the experience (and probably most important) is audio. In racing to see who could make the thinnest TV, the TV speakers were sacrificed.  In the old days of TV sets that were 20-30″ deep, there was plenty of room for a decent sized speaker enclosure. Today there is not. You will not be able to understand dialog well from most current flat panels if you use only the internal speakers. There are several inexpensive “speaker bars” you can purchase that greatly enhance the audio.  A full surround system with dedicated speakers makes an even bigger difference in the overall experience. In fact, if you are upgrading your entire entertainment system, you would be far better off allocating a good percent of your TV budget to audio since the pictures on all sets have gotten to be so good.

Most TVs now come with all kinds of apps for accessing Internet content from providers like Netflix, Blockbuster and YouTube. To have the most content to talk about, most TV manufacturers have spent more time adding access to all kinds of content instead of designing great interfaces for these apps.  One company that has, and who is basing their entire business model on it, is Roku. Roku is sold direct for only $59-$99 (depending on the feature set), and is probably the best interface on the market for Internet video content. Our advice is to not get caught up in the content your future TV can access, but just add something like a Roku to it.

Finally, make sure you really want a flat panel.  The price and performance of front projection has dropped dramatically in the past few years.  For as little as around $3000 you can get a great projector and 100” diagonal screen that is far more like being at the movies than a much smaller flat panel!  If you have the room for it, there is nothing like it.

Would you expect a flat panel TV in a movie theater? So why do a home theater that way?

We’re here to help you through the entire TV selection process. And remember, don’t forget the audio! The best picture in the world is no good if you can’t understand what the people on the screen are saying!

Oppo is a company specializing in a limited product offering of high performance Blu-ray players.  They only have two models, the 93 and 95.  The 93 for $499 is an amazing player for the money so I was curious to see the improvements offered in the new 95.

The back panel of the Oppo $495 BDP93

The back panel of the Oppo BDP95

Well, to sum it up, there are a lot!  In physically checking out the two units you immediately notice Oppo did not go the route of just putting a few better parts for the 95 in the same chassis as the 93.  Externally, the 95 is physically taller than the 93 and has a touch sensitive button layout on the front.  The back panel reveals the addition of balanced audio outs for two-channel listening, and a different layout for the 7.1 audio outs (for those of you with an older processor that does not decode the current formats).

When you remove the top, the differences are huge!  The 95 has a power transformer made by Rotel (a much beefier and higher end power supply) along with a totally different audio board.   The build quality is completely different with the 95 in a very sturdy chassis, with several sections enclosed and isolated.  The 93 has a two conductor power cord, while the 95 has a full three conductor cord.  The transport does appear to be the same on both units. There is far, far more difference than I expected!

Interior view of the BPD95- there is a whole lot more under that big audio board as well!

Typically these kinds of improvements provide better audio performance, so I was off to the races to compare the two units. I connected them both to my Classé SSP-800 with identical Transparent HDMI cables.  The Classé feeds into a Rotel RB-1080 via Transparent cables. I currently use a pair of PSB Sync 1s as my main speakers.  After playing a couple of CDs, the difference was obvious.  Bass went deeper and was better defined on the 95.  The music felt like it was coming from a much more silent background, allowing me to hear many more subtle emotional qualities. The 95 also had a far more relaxed and effortless feel.

Sometimes audio differences like these can cost you thousands of dollars. Based on the difference in the internal parts, if the 95 were coming from just about any other AV vendor it would not be unreasonable for it to sell for $2000-$3000.  However, the 95 is only $995! That’s right, this player is under $1000! It seems hard to believe you can get all of this for only $995. Oppo’s razor focus allows them to provide such a great value.

I currently use an LED projector which provides a stunning and revealing picture, so I was curious if there would be any differences in video performance. I switched to video and tried out a couple of my favorite concert videos. I heard the same kind of audio improvements in these as well.  With video though, I could not see any difference in the 93 and 95. Each looks great, loads fast, and works perfectly.

I think the Oppo BDP-95, just like the BDP-93, is one HECK of a value. My only nitpick is that I prefer the hard buttons on the 93 to the 95. For almost everyone, though, the player’s remote or a smart remote will be used, so that’s no issue.

To sum it up, if you are looking for a real value Blu-ray player, the 93 is impossible to beat. If you can spend the extra $500 and have an interest in better performing audio, get the 95. You will love it!