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Upgrading home theater on a budget

I read a lot of home theater magazines, and online ‘zines. They’re great, but they tend to focus on the cool new products, which are priced a lot higher than most people can afford. When I visit online forums, or when I visit with my friends, they tend to be in the budget category, paying hundreds on their entire surround sound setup, not the thousands you would spend if you used the recommended products in most of these magazines.

While they might say a $1,000 pair of speakers is “affordable,” people in my tax bracket find that to be clear out of the budget. Of course some serious video- and audiophiles say if you’re serious about home theater/audio as a hobby, you can make it work. This is true, if you dropped your nights out with friends, if you didn’t go to Disneyland on your three day weekend, or travel as much, you might be able to do it.

I want to help those of us who work paycheck to paycheck up their quality on a budget. In the future I’ll be reviewing budget products you can purchase one at a time that will give you real-world value. But first, I want to start with a few tips to use when shopping to get the most for your money. Five quick tips to consider as this years holiday season begins:

1. Don’t buy the latest and greatest home theater

My clients are the wealthiest people in the country, they buy the highest quality products on the market, or coming to the market. They also spend tens of thousands of dollars in each room for audio and video equipment. For the other 97% of us, we don’t need the latest and greatest equipment out there. It’s cool stuff, but if you wait a year or two, that quality will make it to the commodity-priced products.

You don’t even have to wait years to get this high quality gear, you can wait until new product is announced and then buy last year’s product. For example, I was at Best Buy last night and a sales associate told me all Klipsch speakers were 50% off because they were making room for next year’s models. This wasn’t even an advertised sale, so you might have to visit these stores every once in a while. Klipsch speakers are high-quality product with many years of accolades, and just because a speaker was made a year ago doesn’t mean it won’t perform nearly as well as this year’s model. If you have small satellite speakers, a pair of these floor standing speakers and a center channel will get you a vastly superior front sound stage for only a few hundred dollars.

2. Buy used home theater equipment

This is a great way to save money. eBay, Amazon and Craig’s List are great places to find good equipment on the cheap. You can also pick up floor models at your local big-box store. Just make sure they come with all the required parts – the remote, power cable, etc. If possible, give the product a test drive prior to purchase, or make sure you can return it.

One thing to watch out for with used equipment is the speakers. Sometimes the floor models at the store might have the speakers collapsed by children pushing on the drivers. Speakers used at home may have been overdriven, blowing the speakers. Always double check speakers.

3. Predict future home theater purchases

Make a game plan. Before you go out and buy anything you should research what would work best in your room for your tastes and make a goal for the future. Every tax return (Christmas, or whenever you can spend the money) add to your collection. It might take a few years to get where you want, but it will be worth it. This will help guide your budget, as well as make sure you make wise purchases early on so you don’t have to make repurchases in the event you have incompatible products.

A lot of the home-theater-in-a-box (HTIB) products aren’t compatible with regular subwoofers. If you begin by purchasing a HTIB, you will more than likely have to purchase an A/V receiver later on when you add that sub. The receiver should be the first purchase you make, and then get an inexpensive speaker package to hold you over, upgrading one piece at a time. With the right receiver you should be ready for any subwoofer, speaker or component you’ll look for in the future.

4. Sell your used home theater equipment

As I hinted at above, you might be making smaller purchases on your way to the bigger ones. A lot of people load their old equipment in the garage, or hook it up in the bedroom. Sell it.

Your goal is to have a high-quality home theater, make that your priority. Selling old equipment will help you make your future purchases. When you get to a satisfactory place in your theater system, then look to your other entertainment locations in the house.

5. Stick with your home theater budget

A home theater is a place to relax, and spend time with family and friends. Don’t let your theater add to your debt. Debt leads to stress, and stress is not the goal here. If you follow tip three you should have established a rough budget for the theater. You may consider making a theater fund to place money aside, and when properly funded you can go get your next piece of quality gear.

While it is tempting to go all in and buy a whole system right now, not only will you beat the stress, you’ll also have a lot of fun piecing the system together over time. You’ll soon create a system you can be proud of.

Sony Blu-ray megachanger

I didn’t manage to get any pictures of the new Sony Blu-ray Disc mega-changer at CEDIA Expo, but Engadget has a series of photographs.

The changer holds and catalogs up to 400 movies, which makes this a much more economical way to store Blu-ray movies than using a hard drive based server. Escient and Control4 are already working with Sony to control this changer with their systems. Both of these companies have used the previous Sony 400-disc DVD changer (now discontinued). Escient’s Vision system will manage up to four of these changers in one on-screen interface, along side iPod music, internet radio, Rhapsody and music loaded on your PC.

Aside from holding a butt-load of movies, it features RS-232 control, BD-Live capabilities, and can even be used to prop a door open in a jam. It looks like it will also be in the ES line, giving it a high-quality build and a 5-year warranty. It should be available in spring 2009.

To store 400 dual-layer Blu-ray movies on hard drives, you would need approximately 16,000GB of storage. It might actually make more sense to use a changer than a server. However, you won’t have the elegance or ease of distribution as you would have with a Kaleidescape-type system.

Sony Blu-ray price drop

An “unconfirmed report” surfaced last month about Sony dropping the price of their Blu-ray Disc players. Today I have confirmed through a Sony rep that the price drops will go into effect later this week.

The BDP-S350 will now retail at $299, and the BDP-S550 will sell at $399. What’s not clear is if Sony will be giving refunds to people who pre-ordered the BDP-S550 on their website prior to this news.



As I previously mentioned, we can expect price drops across the board from all manufacturers beginning next month. I also expect they will bring new models in at the old price point to maintain sales margins.

Ritek launches Qflix recordable DVD media

Advanced Media/Ritek USA sent us a press release this morning to announce the launch of Qflix recordable DVD media in North America. Here is an excerpt from the release.

“Advanced Media Inc. is pleased to announce it is an official distributor of RITEK manufactured Qflix DVDs. Home entertainment is a heavily targeted market for DVD and Blu-ray media. Now Sonic has taken DVD technology to the next level with Qflix,” said Harvey Liu, president of Advanced Media Inc. “RITEK’s strong global reputation for producing DVDs of uncompromising quality and compatibility ensures a great consumer entertainment experience regardless of whether content is manufactured on-demand to fulfill an online order, purchased through a retail kiosk, or produced in the home.”


Why Qflix? Qflix DVDs are specialized discs that allow the on-demand recording of digitally distributed entertainment with CSS encryption (Content Scramble System). This is the same protection found on commercially mass-produced movie titles. Qflix DVDs can also be used by duplication system operators providing custom DVD publishing services to Internet retailers and in movie kiosks that will offer retail customers touch-screen access to vast libraries of rich content. Qflix media is also available for consumer use in the home to legally record premium entertainment downloaded from the Internet. To learn more about Qflix visit: www.qflix.com.

The full press release can be found here.

CEDIA: Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player closeup

It’s not the priciest, but it sure is the most impressive. The Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD is the current pinnacle of Blu-ray Disc engineering.

It only costs $2,200, but for some people it’s worth it – especially those who value audio performance over anything else. And if I know my audiophile, they’ll pay anything for the best of the best.

Here are a couple pictures from CEDIA Expo 2008:

Memorex brings budget Blu-ray player to market

We’re hopeful for this holiday season. There should be plenty of Blu-ray Disc players close to $200, or below. Along with older Blu-ray player models being discounted, new lower priced models are also being introduced into the market.

The latest entry into the budget arena is the Memorex MVBD-2510. At $269 list, it is now the low-price-leader (as far as MSRP is concerned). But it doesn’t look like a slouch either. It decodes Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD High Resolution and streams DTS-HD Master Audio to compatible receivers.

Something you wouldn’t expect at this price point, it also includes 5.1 analog outputs!

It is BonusView ready, making it BD1.1 profile. It lacks BD-Live support. While many decry manufacturers leaving this support out, there simply isn’t a lot of title available with online features. But if you want to be future-proof just in case, try the new Panasonic players.

We could see $150 Blu-ray players popping up on Black Friday – without a format war.

TDK launches 6x BD-R media

An Imation/TDK representative sent us a press release today about the launch of TDK Life on Record 6x Blu-ray Discs in North America. The following text was taken from this press release.

Blu-ray media has the high capacity needed to handle content like high-definition movies and television – 25GB on a single layer and 50GB on double layer discs, about 5-to-10 times the capacity of standard DVD media. TDK Life on Record Blu-ray 6x discs have the fastest recording speeds currently available in the U.S. market with data transfer rates of up to 216 Mbps – equivalent to approximately 20x recordable DVD media. Using TDK Life on Record 6x Blu-ray discs, consumers can record 25GB of data in as little as 17 minutes – approximately six minutes faster than a 4x BD-R.

TDK Blu-ray discs are ideal for consumers who expect their archived digital memories to be there in years to come. They feature revolutionary Durabis 2 hard-coating technology, which delivers a high degree of protection against scratches, fingerprints and dust. Additionally, TDK Blu-ray discs incorporate a unique inorganic double-layer metal recording structure that resists against breakdown from exposure to light for superior durability and longevity.

TDK Blu-ray discs also address compatibility concerns with newer technology. They offer one of the industry’s highest compatibility with the wide range of Blu-ray recordable hardware and are compliant with Blu-ray disc recordable format VER. 1.3.

TDK Life on Record Blu-ray 6x media is available in 25GB single layer and 50GB double layer capacities starting in October at select retailers for suggested retail price of $13.99 for a BD –R 1 pack; $32.99 for a BD-R DL 1 pack.