AV Enthusiast Centre

Blu-ray may have won the format war over HD-DVD, but how long will that victory last?

Sharp is presenting an environmentally friendly way to watch television at this year's IFA electronics show in Berlin.

Letterboxing (black or grey bars on the top and bottom of the TV screen) and pillarboxing (similar bars on the sides) serve an important function: They present the content in its correct aspect ratio -- the way its creators intended it to be seen.

More and more consumer electronics products come equipped with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certification -- at the IFA electronics show new TV's, home theater systems, and computers all come with the DLNA stamp.

Sharp is presenting an environmentally friendly way to watch television at this year's IFA electronics show in Berlin.

Toshiba is planning to bring the powerful Cell processor into consumer electronics and launch a TV based on the chip in the second half of 2009, it said Friday at the IFA electronics show in Berlin.

Philips launched the CinemaOne for people who want a compact home theater, at the IFA electronics show on Thursday.

Sharp has developed a new range of LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs that are thinner and have larger screens than its previous thinnest televisions.

A quiet revolution has begun in our living rooms. Microsoft and Sony plan to overthrow your A/V receiver, DVD player, and set-top box, and replace them with one of their game consoles. This past spring, both companies unveiled movie download and streaming services that give them new-found credibility in the living room.

An HDTV is just a TV with a pretty picture until you add a few important accoutrements. The dozen add-ons shown here will greatly enhance your HDTV watching experience.

Plasma is dead. Front and rear projection? Fuggeddaboutit. LCD has a few good years left, and then it's sayonara, baby. TV technology's future lies in tiny phosphorescent molecules.

This is the Kipnis Studio Standard. It was built with the intention of creating the best possible movie experience possible. Read on to find out where all that money went.

For consumers still living with a standard-definition television, DVD-quality video is generally accepted as good enough. For the latest whiz-bang high-definition plasma, Blu-ray or HD-DVD is optimal. But what does the future hold?

Letterboxing (black or grey bars on the top and bottom of the TV screen) and pillarboxing (similar bars on the sides) serve an important function: They present the content in its correct aspect ratio -- the way its creators intended it to be seen.

You spent a lot of money on your fancy new HDTV, but its picture probably isn't as good as it could be. If you want to see exciting sports events and movies that look the way the broadcasters and filmmakers intended, you need to calibrate your HDTV.

So you just bought a shiny new high definition TV set and you're loving the quality you get from digital cable and DVDs. If you also have HD video on your PC, whether downloaded from the Internet, recorded with a TV tuner, or imported from your HD camcorder, you're in luck: You can send it from your computer to the TV for the ultimate digital entertainment experience.

In the previous Audio Here's How coloumn, we looked at the requirements and fundamental methods of mixing audio in 5.1 space, using Sonic Foundry's fantastic Vegas 4+DVD software. Now we round things off by burning our 5.1 audio mix onto DVD - ideal for showing it to others or using it yourself. For this, we'll be using the Vegas 4+DVD package, DVD Architect 1.0.

In previous audio columns we have detailed how to use a variety of tools to help create music, and exclusively in the Digital Music section of our Web site are tutorials for making a video clip in Vegas 3 and remixing songs in ACID Pro 4. Continuing these themes, this time we'll be using the new version 4 of Vegas+DVD (which includes a Dolby Digital 5.1 AC-3 encoder and DVD architect) to expand on previous tutorials and investigate producing our own 5.1 surround sound mixes.

Sit back in your leather lounge and enjoy your new plasma TV.

Not only do Hi-Fi headphones provide an excellent sound experience, they also keep your neighbours and family members happy.

Home and business projectors are not the same. Find out how they differ from each other.

Move over VHS. The time has well and truly arrived for hard disk drive recorders.

Sit back in your leather lounge and enjoy your new LCD TV.