Tag: Home Theater

Think your man cave is cool? Check out Marc and Jennifer Bell’s Star Trek themed home theater and bar. It was a labor of love that took four years and $1.5-million to complete, and puts other home theaters to shame.

I recently got my hands on a selection of audio gear from Raumfeld, a German maker of high-end audio systems who recently made their entry into the U.S. market. I’m a big fan of their Stereo Cubes bookshelf speakers, and now I’m checking out their Sounddeck home theater speaker system to see if it lives up to the same quality.

During CES, we talked a bit about LG’s new Laser TV, a new short-throw projector combined with a 100-inch screen. Despite the fact that it’s a projection system, it was still incredibly cool that it can project such a large and bright image from only 22-inches away from the scren.

DirecTV and Viacom have been battling over contract negotiations for over a week now. Viacom had forced DirecTV to pull all of its networks including Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central from its satellite TV service.

If the Smart Qwerty remote wasn’t hardcore enough for you, Conspin’s got one more remote control that you should check out, the ANDI-ONE. Actually calling it a remote control is like calling any modern smartphone a “phone”.

This year a company called ShambroWest Corporation launched the “first-ever worldwide cable television network,” called GenosTV, which is a broadband-based service that will supposedly feature “cable, network and other media content from every geography and in every language across the world.”

While there are already several ways of streaming media throughout your home network, you might want to check out Netgear’s upcoming Wireless-N HD Home Theater Kit, which promises high quality streaming – even multiple Blu-ray streams – with plug and play ease.

Optoma is back with more budget-friendly projectors, and this time it’s focusing on gamers with its Game Time series. The GT720 is the most expensive model in the series, and its meant for PS3 and Xbox 360 owners.

Back in 2007 Optoma released the HD80 1080p projector. It’s initial price was a whopping $3,000 (USD), but actually it was one of the cheapest in its class. Think about that for a moment. Now think of the quality and size of a $1,000 HDTV nowadays.

Shortly after hearing about HP’s Photosmart Premium with Web Touch, the world’s first printer to have its own apps, we now have Vizio announcing that their high end XVT (Extreme Vizio Technology, if you were wondering) line of LCD HDTVs will have their own internet apps as well.

Feel the full force of Mastodon on your butt with the MUR-01 rocking chair from Irisohyama. The built-in 8.5-watt 2.1 speaker system will assault your body with sound. Or will it just massage your body? How loud is an 8.5-watt speaker system anyway?

CNET has just reviewed Samsung’s BD-P4600 Blu-ray player, and they say that although it’s not the most cost-effective Blu-ray player in the market, it does pack quality performance, improved read and loading times and a sleek and sexy exterior.

I can imagine how a streaming service can send movies, HDTV, and high-quality music to homes, but games as well? Hmmm. That’s what XStreamHD claim they will provide, apparently via Care Bear satellite beams. Seriously though, XStreamHD’s got a lot on their hands, and I’m not just talking about their patent-pending technologies.

Sounds like a mere glimpse of the future, but if today’s iPods can make playlists on the fly, then there’s no reason why TVs can’t suggest shows for viewers. Pocket-lint reports that Sony will incorporate a “service” – currently called Neon – on forthcoming Bravia TVs that will be able to recommend shows based on a certain number of inputs from a user.

Universal Electronics are promoting their Xsight Touch universal remote as an advanced, personal yet simple to use remote. Advanced yet simple huh? Let’s see. Here is the Xsight Touch: Now I’m sure you’ve all seen this remote control interface floating around the net, but let’s have a look at it once more to compare it with the Xsight Touch.

The Oculas Groups’ Ovei (Oh-vee) is a living room in a pod. A very stylish, air conditioned and ridiculously expensive pod. It’s elegantly designed by Lee McCormack and beautifully engineered by McLaren Applied Technologies. Which makes me wonder why there are no images of the ovei’s interior on the product website.