Home Theater Gear

Ah, it's that season again. You know, the one where you camp out in the cold so you can get in on those tremendous "Black Friday" deals on TVs and home theater gear. Thankfully technology has come to the rescue. Some companies, including Amazon (does Amazon have any other choice?) are releasing their Black Friday specials early and letting you shop for them online, so there'll be no cold nights camping out for you. Some of their deals include Harmony Remotes for 40% off and 4.3" Garmin Nuvi widescreen Nav units for 48%off

Check out Amazon's Black Friday Specials Below:

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If you want some great savings on iPOD speakers this holiday season, check out these from OneCall.com in little ole' Spokane, WA. KEF is well known for great sound quality, and these Pico Forte iPOD speakers use their renowned Uni-Q drivers. They are not the typical iPOD speakers, and for a very limited time they are available at only $99.88. That is 75% off their MSRP of $399! You iPOD has never sounded better.

KEF Pico Forte iPOD Dock and Speakers

Some customer comments include:

"The sound of this unit is great! I thought it was room acoustics that made my Bose sound muddy, but the Pico Forte is sharp! As other reviewers have said, the unit would benefit from the addition of a sub-woofer."

"I bought one of these for my desk at home and it sounded so good I bought three more. At the price, you can't go wrong. A small subwoofer to complement these makes them just about perfect. I have some old KEF speakers that I bought decades ago, and they still sound better than most other speakers I have heard. KEF continues to build the best speakers."

"Yes, I would recommend this to a friend.After a few days of break in, this system produces amazingly high quality sound. I have heard many full size systems that cost many hundreds of dollars that did not sound as good as this system."

Click Here Now to take Advantage of this Amazing, Limited Time Special.

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Recognize any of these venerable audio video company names: Tweeter, Sound Advice, HiFi Buys, Dow Stereo, Showcase Entertainment, United Audio, Douglas TV, Big Screen City, Bryn Mawr, Home Entertainment Audio Video Systems, Now Audio Video,and Hillcrest Audio Video?

The companies and associated brands were all purchased by now defunct Tweeter as part of its acquisition spree. The good news is that if you have the capital or financiers, they can all be yours. Tweeter declared bankruptcy and closed the doors on the last of its stores almost a year ago.

The firm Apto Solutions will be running the auction, scheduled for some time in mid-December.  

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JVC anounced today that their new home theater projector, the DLA-HD990 has garnered a International CES Innovations 2010 Design and Engineering Award. The judges use the following criteria to determine the winners:

• Engineering qualities, based on technical specs and materials used
• Aesthetic and design qualities, using photos provided
• The product’s intended use/function and user value
• Unique/novel features that consumers would find attractive
• How the design and innovation of the product compares to other products in the marketplace

This new JVC DLA-HD990 is targeted at the high end home theater market, and has an MSRP of $10,000. It is the top end of JVC's consumer projector line. Their other projectors range down to $5,000. As with all JVC projectors, it uses a 3-chip version of their H-DILA version of LCOS imaging technology. JVC has a proprietary grid polarizing system to deliver outstanding black levels. JVC eschews the iris systems used by many other projector manufacturers to get high contrast numbers and deep blacks.

Speaking of high contrast numbers, JVC claims the new projector, and it's JVC Pro Series counterpart, the DLA-RS35, achieve 70,000:1 contrast ratios, despite their lack of an iris. JVC has indicated the iris systems can harm the image when there are very light and very dark portions within the same image. They have demonstrated this phenomenon numerous times at trade shows, dealer shows, and press events.

Other notable features included in the JVC projector line this year are Silicon Optix REON HQV video processing, available on all 6 JVC home theater projector models (It's really closer to three. The pro side and the consumer side have nearly identical units. There are three different projectors in each of the two product lines)

I have installed several JVC RS series projectors over the last few years and can attest to their excellent image quality and almost utter lack of noise. I'm definitely a fan of these things. They bring the aforementioned excellent contrast, good color rendition, and a film-like image, courtesy of the high fill factor DILA imaging devices are known for.

The other big plus with these projectors for me is that I've always been a 3 chip guy. The price of entry for 3-chip when you're playing in the DLP space is rather lofty. With JVC's projectors, on the other hand, all are 3-chip devices, which makes me feel kind of warm and fuzzy.

I have seen other projectors that I like as much or better than the JVC units, such as the excellent Samsung / Joe Kane units, and the Planar 3-chip DLP projectors, but these cost a bit more than the JVC. If you're projector shopping, the Marantz VP-11S2 is definitely worth a long look too. It has excellent video processing and shows what great optics can do for picture quality.

Congrats to JVC on picking up the 2010 CES Award for the DLA-HD990.

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Apparently Microsoft has a way to determine if people have hacked their X-box 360 consoles to play pirated games and they've had just about enough. In a move reminiscent of cable and satellite providers turning off pirated boxes an hour before the Superbowl, Microsoft has rendered about 600,000 X-box 360 consoles impossible to connect to X-box live. In addition to the inability to X-Box Live, the zapped game consoles will no longer receive software updates or content downloads.

Live is the software giant's online gaming service, which is the preferred way to play games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The new game is expected to be one of the most popular in history. It's been long awaited by gamers and heavily promoted by the gaming industry. The game's release, timed for the eve of the holiday shopping season has been anxiously awaited by the gaming community.

If you hacked your console, and were expecting to play COD:MW2 in your home theater this Christmas Morning, you should be thankful that new X-Box 360s are now under $200. You'll need a new one to hack now, or you could just play the old fashioned way.

Microsoft's position on the situation was articulated in a statement released earlier today:

"All consumers should know that piracy is illegal, and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs, violates the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live,"

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If you're looking to upgrade your home theater for the holidays, check out this deal from OneCall.com

It's the well regarded Diamond Series from Mitsubishi. This is the last gasp for rear projection TVs, but it has a fantastic picture, and how else can you get a top quality, 65in TV for less than $1,500?? It looks like quite a deal, and that's before the FREE BLU-RAY PLAYER and free shipping!! It's probably the best home theater bundle ever. The Mitsubishi WD-65835, 1080p DLP rear projection Diamond Series TV for only $1,499.77 and they throw in a free Panasonic blu-ray player.

If you qualify, Mitsubishi is also offering 12 month, Zero Interest financing.

Hurry, though because this special is gone for good  on November 16th!

Check it out here If nothing else, at least read the reviews.

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Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen are the first of many movies out on Kingston USB thumb drives. Kingston just released these two blockbusters on the memory format, which you just plg into the USB 2.0 drive on the side of your PC and play.

You can't just off load the movie to your hard drive however, and use the USB drive for other things. No, Kingston says that you can save a copy of the movie to your hard drive as a backup, it's keyed to the USB drive on which it was purchased, and that same drive must stay inserted for the movie to play.

In the not too distant future, Kingston has promised movies will also be available on SD cards.

Speaking of SD card movies, digital on demand solution provider MOD Systems, in a partnership with Toshiba, is ready to roll out digital delivery, touch-screen kiosks in a couple of weeks that will let you just insert your SD card and fill it with the movies and music of your choice; for a fee, of course. Originally they'll be in a few Pacific Northwest locations. If the concept proves viable they will expand to additional locations.

MOD Systems has approximately 4,000 movie titles available, and almost 5-1/2 million music tracks.  They got this content through relationships with several major studios such as Warner and Paramount, although no title listing appears on their website at this time. MOD Mentions GreenPlay compatibility on their website, but information on GreenPlay is scarce. It seems MOD is using CPRM copy protection, as used on SDHC cards.

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