Devices View – Page 17 – a Techsponential Company

LIVEDigitally Reviews Gefen Switcher

August 8, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I always wondered how well Gefen’s line of switchers would work in the real world. Gefen used to make switch boxes for the broadcast world which began finding their way into HDTV households as connectivity formats increased without a commesurate number of inputs on TVs or receivers. Lately, some of Gefen’s products have been picked up by home theater distributors, and Jeremey Toeman over at LIVEDigitally gives a 4 x 1 unit (4 HDMI inputs, 1 DVI output) a strong review. One side note: simple boxes that switch analog formats can be had for $29.99 at Radio Shack, so there’s …

Sonos Tries to Market “The Experience”

July 11, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Sonos has built a flash version of its music controller for online demos. It’s neat, and was probably worth the investment it took to build because the UI (depicted below) is a key part of the Sonos value proposition. However, one of the more interesting pieces of feedback I received from my Sonos review was from people who wanted to know why Sonos was worth a price premium over simply sticking an iPod and a speaker dock in each room. There are good answers to that question, but the experience is different, and that doesn’t come across in an answer …

Audio / Computing / DVD / Industry

What it takes to launch a new media format

July 6, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

JupiterKagan’s Michael Gartenberg has a great post about the three elements needed to successfully launch a new consumer media format. He concludes that neither HD-DVD or Blu-Ray measures up. -avi Full disclosure: I created the diagram that Michael uses to illustrate his point back when I was an analyst at what was then called JupiterResearch and he was my Research Director; it was for a report on next generation audio formats.

DVD / HDTV

Samsung Blu-Ray Launch Did Not Impress

June 16, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

I attended Samsung’s Blu-ray Disc player launch this evening at the Samsung Experience in New York and came away disappointed. There were several things wrong with the launch, starting with the fact that it was off by ten days (the players won’t actually be available for sale until the 25th): Samsung’s prepared remarks were overwraught, telling us over and over again how much we would be blown away by Blu-ray, and to prove this they showed a cheesy video and a few movie previews that, quite frankly, weren’t all that impressive on the pair of Samsung DLP TVs at the …

Computing / DVD

Sony Kills Blu-Ray Advantage with PS3 Pricing

May 9, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

When assessing the relative strength of HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray for high definition disc format war handicapping, I have always been quick to point out that DVD is the likely successor to DVD, as it is "good enough" for most consumers and addresses a larger installed base of non-HDTVs in addition to HDTV sets with decent anamorphic ("enhanced for widescreen TV") performance. But the other thing I have noted time and time again is that Sony’s Playstation 3 (PS3) was a potential trojan horse, bringing Blu-Ray playback to the masses. At E3 today, Sony announced the pricing and availability for the …

Audio / Computing

Sonos System Review

May 1, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - 20 Comments.

I’ll admit it up front – one of the key reasons I run Home Theater View is to get early looks at products like the Sonos system. I have been following Sonos since well before it launched. The concept is simple: Sonos takes the music you’re already storing and managing on your PC and streams it to multiple locations around your house. The controller looks like an iPod, and, like an iPod, nearly anyone can use it. Each Sonos unit becomes part of a separate wireless mesh network – no WiFi needed, and setup consists of pushing a couple of …

DVD

Half a Format War Arrives: HD-DVD is Here

April 22, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

HD-DVD was formally launched last week with a single, $499 Toshiba deck. HomeTheaterView has not had a chance to get in a review unit yet, but Evan Powell over at Projector Central bought a unit and gushes buckets about it. Part of his review is a primer on the difference between 1080i and 1080p at the source vs. how its delivered to the display; this type of arcane differentiation is what pushes normal people to choose formats based on even dubious specs. For now, there’s nothing concrete to compare HD-DVD to in the market. But there’s so little content for …

Audio

Does High End Audio Matter?

April 17, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Design Technica just published Mark Fleischmann’s passionate take on Why High-End Audio Matters. I’m not quite as dogmatic as he is — I’m listening to "background music" off of a Portable Media Center as I write this, and I’m much more likely to be immersed in home theater than two channel audio — but his basic points are well taken: Component audio sales are down while iPod sales are way up. Most consumers today don’t know what high quality audio sounds like. The audio industry is isolationist, hastening its own demise. High end audio is not necessarily high priced (Mark …

Audio / Computing

Just How Good Are Multimedia Speakers?

March 31, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - 1 Comment

I had to temporarily disassemble my primary multimedia PC system last week (it sits in front of a window that was being replaced) and decided it was finally time to provide some thoughts on multimedia surround sound systems. This is long overdue. How long overdue? One of the systems I intended to review, Klipsch’s ProMedia 5.1, was discontinued a few years ago and replaced with the ProMedia Ultra 5.1. The other, a Logitech Z-5500 system the company was kind enough to send over last year, is no longer a new model either. Logitech added the Z-5450 to the line, which …

Audio

(Overly) Complex Solution to a Complex Problem

March 29, 2006 - by Avi Greengart - Leave a Comment

Yesterday’s column on Atlantic Technology’s corner sub got me thinking about a beautiful glossy press package I got recently from Sound Advance, makers of completely invisible planar speakers. The idea is that the speaker is mounted in the wall, but the wall surface becomes the speaker – no unsightly grills (see picture). There are definite performance disadvantages to using the transmission line effect (i.e., your entire wall becomes a speaker), along with a more complicated and expensive installation process. But the end result is sound without an obvious source. Is this really necessary? Nearly every in-wall speaker I’ve ever come …