Podcast #874: Ultimate Home Theater in a Box for 2018

Each year we design a Home Theater setup that is considerably better than a typical home theater in a box. We have seen complete setups for less than $500 from manufacturers like Sony and Panasonic that quite frankly do not sound good. While our system costs more than a name brand HTIB your satisfaction will be dramatically more. Plus we include EVERYTHING you need to actually setup a home theater. Minimum components for our system are an HDTV, a receiver, a means to get content (streaming box, etc) and speakers.

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Podcast #872: Receiver Buying Guide 2018

This week starts our annual shopping spree where we get to spend your money on new products for your home theater. We’ll start the spree with receivers. As always, our goal is to maximize the value for your dollar, so we aren’t necessarily concerned about getting the latest product or the latest features. It's about getting a good product at a great price so you may even see some of last year’s gear on the list. All these receivers are readily available online or at a big box store. We each pick three receivers in increasing price categories, less than $500, less than $1000 and over $1000.

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Podcast #866: Receiver Recommendation, Under $500

We received an email from Santosh in the Bay Area of California asking if we could recommend a receiver for a modest home theater system to go in his medium sized family room. We thought, "no problem! We know the exact receiver to recommend." However, like everyone, he did have some requirements; the biggest one being that it could not exceed $500. On Santosh’s must have list: 4K, HDR, and ARC to support Digital Audio from his smart TV.

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Podcast #820: Receiver Buying Guide 2017

This week we get to spend your money on a new receiver for your home theater. Our goal with these guides is not necessarily about getting the latest product. It's about getting a good product at a great price so you may see some of last year’s gear on the list. All these receivers are readily available online or at a big box store. We each pick four receivers in increasing price culminating in one ‘money's no object’ / ‘dare to dream’ receiver for you to consider. Note - These receivers have a ton of features which we won’t be able to discuss in their entirety. So we have included links to the manufacturer's pages for your convenience. Prices stated are street prices from online retailers.

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Podcast #794: Best Home Theater Brands, as rated by CEPro

The 2017 CE Pro Brand Analysis shows that integrators are using a wide variety of products to satisfy increased consumer demand for streaming media systems, voice-controlled automation systems, and robust networks that are capable of supporting today’s bandwidth-reliant entertainment technology.

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Podcast #739: Yamaha RX-A850 Review

Last October Ara bought a Pioneer Elite VSX-90 7.2 Channel A/V Receiver for his family room. He was looking for something that would allow him to switch 4K content through to his Vizio P-Series 4K UHDTV. The receiver was able to do that and provide good quality sound but he was never happy with the reliability of the receiver. It wouldn’t turn on at times requiring a physical reset and it took as many as 8 seconds for it to switch inputs. One day a few weeks ago Ara had enough and decided to swap it out with a new receiver.

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