For the home theater geeks, here is something you may want to consider especially if you are looking for an alternative home theater receiver. The Harman Kardon AVR-154 5×30W 5.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver features Logic 7 Cinema and Music surround sound processing in 5.1 channels with HDMI1.3a switching. It has Dolby Digital Surround decoding and has three HDMI 1.3a inputs and one HDMI output.

The AVR-154 reflects Harmon Kardon’s commitment to bringing you high-quality components that are packed with features, all at an affordable price.

Price: $399.00

(Source) Amazon

Here is something for the audiophiles who want to get more from standard audio and put some fun into it. The Gakken Analog Synthesizer SX-150 is a low cost that should improve and perhaps create some spunky audio just the way you want them to be. It is pretty much simple to use and portable as well since you can turn to 4 AA batteries if you want an alternative as far as power source is concerned. Check out the demo video below.

Price: $91.00

(Source) Japanese Trend Shop

When I saw this my jaw dropped in a kind of joyful alarm.  I had never thought of something like this myself, and yet, in retrospect, it’s the most perfect idea EVER.  Ken Allwine managed to stun me into incoherence by creating a drive in home theater…in his driveway.

It quite literally is the PERFECT idea.  You’re already in the car.  There’s enough room in the driveway for a car and then some, so why not put up a projector screen and make your own drive in theater!

Most of his equipment is housed inside the garage so it’s protected from the elements, but outside is a speaker array and the eight by twelve foot screen.  It’s a pretty big setup, with room for thirty or forty people (not thirty or forty CARS, though), and shields the viewers from the lights and sound of the street outside.  Viewers actually say it works like a small amphitheater.

But by way of specifics, it’s got a Crown amplifier, a Sony DVD player, an InFocus projector, Fisher speakers and some extra custom gear.

When a theater can present the kind of thing that anyone probably should have thought of before, but didn’t, well…it’s got to be a sweet home theater setup.

Mark Wiest is a guy who loves his home theater.  And so, one day, when he set out to convert his living room into a home theater, he got the surprise of a lifetime from his wife, who said, when he asked her about doing the conversion, said, and I quote here: “Sure”.

Fellas in the audience, especially MARRIED fellas in the audience, you know how unusual that reaction is from the ladies.

So Mark set out to make the theater, taking over bits of the living room and the dining room, sealing up windows with wood siding and performing a host of structural modifications to make his home theater dream a reality.  And he stocked it with a host of excellent components–a partial listing reads like a who’s who of home theater gear manufacturers: it includes three different kinds of amps including a Buttkicker, M&K speakers, a one hundred inch Stewart filmscreen and a Sony VPL-VW100 front projector.

The sheer amount of time, energy, money and prime components that went into this paid off, as Mark Wiest’s home theater setup is absolutely sweet.

Admittedly, we don’t hear a whole lot about amplifiers around here.  But when Altec Lansing puts one out, you’ve got to perk up your ears and pay attention.  Now, all your stuff can get that little extra cranking with the Altec Lansing Stage Gig amplifier.

The Altec Lansing Stage Gig is a forty watt pignose amp putting out a hundred decibels through a one inch neodymium tweeter and a patently massive six and a half inch woofer.  This monstrous poster child for early onset deafness also comes with standard RCA audio jacks and independent volume control.

But in case you were fantasizing about doing some real life shredding with this beastie, forget it, as there is no quarter inch jack on this thing.

But considering what all you do get with the Stage Gig, you’re not going to be terribly upset with Altec Lansing’s little offering.  Especially when you consider it costs a positively meager hundred bucks.

One of my favorite old Bloom County strips featured an evening of television around Bloom County, in which the TV invited viewers to purchase a collection of sixties classics.  Their pitch included the line “Who could ever forget such timeless classics as “Freaking In The Purple Haze With A Flying Hippo”?”

And today’s sweet home theater setup profile invites you to do exactly that, only without the hippo.

The biggest feature of this room is clearly the sheer amount of purple, which was one of the owner’s high school colors.  But it’s not just purple that packs ‘em in on this theater, no sir–it’s also the great hardware.  There are Klipsch speakers, Berkline seats, a Da-Lite screen of indeterminate size and a JVC projector.

By the time you connect all these critical points together, you reach one inexorable conclusion: if it looks like a sweet home theater setup and watches like one too, then you know full well it has to be one sweet home theater setup.

Well-known for manufacturing high-performance audio components, NAD Electronics recently introduced its powerful T 175 Preamplifier Tuner Processor. Designed for demanding audiophiles, the T 175 is a highly refined audio/video control center, packed with new features and technologies and installer-friendly advantages.

One significant feature of the T 175’s is NAD’s exclusive Modular Design Construction (MDC) architecture, ensuring years of state-of-the-art performance. The processor comes equipped with NAD’s new AM 200 and VM 200 Modules and features several enhancements by Audyssey. On the video side, the T 175 sports Sigma Designs’ VXP broadcast studio quality image processor that supports all standard formats up to 2048 x 2048 pixels.

The NAD T 175 AV Preamplifier Tuner Processor is now available at a suggested price of $2,999.

It’s possible you’ve already heard the name of Ruben Ortiz, the guy who build SmX Cinema Solutions, a company that deals primarily in home theater gear.  But what you may not know is that his company got his start as part of his very own sweet home theater setup.

He developed what’s called an “acoustically transparent screen surface”, which basically reduces the amount of sound distortion caused by the screen.  Naturally, one of his screens is in his own home theater (which may well be the strongest endorsement anyone can give a product) but it’s not just the choice screen that makes Ruben Ortiz’s home theater setup a sweet one.

You can tell from the picture that he’s got one of those awesome star fields in there, which alone makes most any home theater setup a sweet one, but he’s also got Crown amps, Klipsch speakers, an Xbox
360 and a PS3, which of course serve double-duty as DVD and Blu-ray players, and a SIM2 C3X Lumis 1080 projector.  Plus there’s his own SmX screen, which is a whopping one hundred and forty inches.

When you care enough to use your own custom-designed hardware, it can’t be any less than a sweet home theater setup.

I was reading this article on CNET and it actually made quite a bit of sense, but I’m not sure I completely agree with the author’s conclusions.  let’s go in and take a look.

Steve Guttenberg out on CNET believes that it’s a bad idea to buy speakers online for a whole bunch of reasons, among them including that you can’t listen to the product beforehand to help determine if it’s right for your needs, and that you can’t consult a salesperson to ensure that the product is right for your needs.  Actually, that’s pretty much ALL of his reasoning.

Leaving aside for the moment that his advice on such a frontier is unopposedly tainted by the fact that he himself WAS an audio products salesman (hey, if you used to make buggy whips, are you really going to recommend people buy a car?)  his advice is also pretty feeble.  Okay, sure, you can’t listen to the speakers online.  But even if you listened to them in a store before buying them there, would you really get any better effect?  You’d hear how the speakers sound in the store.  Unless your house looks an awful lot like that store, you’re not going to get the same effect.

Of course, one thing he didn’t mention, an important point especially THESE days, is that online, you really can’t haggle.  Perhaps the lone bright spot about this misery of an economy the whole planet’s in right now is that, suddenly, cash is KING.  Just ask for a discount and, chances are, you’ll get it as long as you’re reasonable about it.

SRS’ TruSurround process has just taken an award at the TV Innovation awards, held in coalition with the TV 3.0 Summit.  TruSurround is, essentially, a surround sound process that processes in 6.1 channels.  SRS went out on record to say this about the process:

“We have a great sense of pride in all of our audio solutions, and winning the TV Innovation Award for immersive TV category further validates the quality and effectiveness of SRS sound, and is a tremendous recognition for the work we so passionately do here at SRS Labs,” said Allen H. Gharapetian, Vice President of Marketing for SRS Labs. “SRS strives to create ground-breaking audio enhancement solutions that can provide any device with the best possible, and most natural audio experience.”

TruSurround is likely to influence the standards of home theater sound for some time to come, so it’s a big deal that SRS took home the award.  Congratulations to the crew at SRS!

We have seen thin HDTVs so why not pair them off with ultra-thin speakers? If that wasn’t possible before, now it is very possible. JVC unveils a couple ultra-thin speakers measuring 31mm, the SP-FT1 and SP-FT2. To complete your ultra-thin audio setup, pair them all of with an AX-FT amplifier which can boost audio up to 80W over 4 channels and supports DTS, Dolby Digital and AAC formats. The speakers will retail for about $223 while the amplifier costs around $267. They will come in two colors. The black version will come out in Japan this November while the willowy white will be available by December. It did not indicate when it would be available in other regions.

(Source) Engadget

Out at Skywalker Sound, there’s a home theater setup that may well set the standard for home theater: George Lucas’ own home theater, The Stag.

We’re not talking about that one today.

What we ARE talking about today is the home theater setup made in RESPONSE to The Stag, made by a home theater installation company, Charisma Productions.

This six figure replica contains a superabundance of awesome components to show those customers sitting on the fence the kind of power and majesty they can have sitting in their very own basement if they’re willing to drop a check equivalent, in some places, to the value of an entirely new house.  The Stag replica, for example, includes THX home components and speakers, along with a JVC digital projector, JBL subwoofers and Crown amplifiers.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but the Stag replica is the sincerest form of sweet home theater setup.

Admittedly, this by itself is a sweet home theater setup, but what switches this over into a full-on themed setup is just one thing, and you can see it in that picture.  Just in case you can’t, it’s the huge life-sized model of the Silver Surfer done in fiberglass and plastic up on the wall there.  It’s truly amazing what you can find on eBay, isn’t it?

The first interesting thing of note with this setup is that it’s green.  It’s VERY green.  Bamboo flooring in the main room, rubber floor in the control and equipment rooms, a control board table made out of recycled sunflower seeds–the works.

But this is just the beginning of the awesome–this home theater also includes a home recording studio space for the owner’s band to practice in.  Plus a wide array of home theater gear like a Pioneer PDP-507CMX plasma display, a Denon DVD player with Sony four hundred disc carousel, and enough speakers to choke a hog.

Considering the sheer variety of options available here–home theater, home recording studio, home everything–and the awesome little extra touch of the Silver Surfer watching over the proceedings, this is unquestionably a sweet home theater setup.

I talked about another Irish pub home theater not too long ago, but this one, oh this one is a whole different animal.  This one, you see, isn’t just a home theater with a little Irish pub wedged into a corner–this is an actual home theater setup INSIDE an Irish pub replica and all put in someone’s basement.

The authenticity on this thing will blow your mind outright.  Not only is there a full-on home theater down there, with tons of hardware like a Crestron ST-CP2EPAK-C17 control system, a series of JBL amplifiers, surround processors and subwoofers, a Da-Lite one hundred and nineteen inch screen and plenty more besides, there’s also three other big-screen TVs, a poker table, a pool table and a full-on WINE CELLAR.

Allegedly, there’s room in there for sixty people and it’s entirely possible that, given adequate food, you could go down there and not come up for an entire winter.  Frankly, with all that hardware, it’s definitely possible.

And any room that’s capable of sustaining sixty people for a night, or one man for the winter, must be considered one hellaciously sweet home theater setup.

Crestron has had a whole slew of product announcements to come out of the CEDIA show, but two of the unquestionably biggest revolved around the tandem release of the PSPHD surround processor and its companion ProAmp amplifier.

The PSPHD is a 7.3 channel home theater surround processor that’s slated to retail for a spectacular nine thousand dollars.  It’s meant to be sold with the ProAmp for an additional cost of eight grand.

Now, what do you get for seventeen thousand bucks besides a wicked case of buyer’s remorse and quite possibly divorce proceedings after you explain it to your wife?  You get the first ever Crestron system that offers decoders for all Blu-ray surround codecs, AND HDCP-supported HDMI. Plus, you get a whole slew of Audyssey technologies like, MultEQ room correction, Dynamic Volume to volume-level when source switching or commercials interrupt TV programs, and Dynamic EQ. It also features built-in DVD-Audio/SACD decoding, six HDMI inputs, and dual front-panel VFDs.

Truly, if money is no object and you desperately want the choicest of home theater input systems, then this should be exactly what you’re looking for.  Regular humans, however, will have little trouble making do with much, MUCH, lower end hardware.

How many speakers do you own that have crystals on top? I completely understand if you don’t own any but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t get some. Artcoustic has just unveiled the Crystal line of wall-mounted ultrathin speakers. And yes, these are Swarovski crystals you see in the picture here and if you’re already wondering about the price, then you should know you need $3,700 to get the iPod dock together with a Crystal speaker. Or you can simply decide to buy a new car instead and keep listening to your old Swarovski-less speaker set for a while!

via artcoustic

Here is the newest member of the KEF’s Wireless Family. The HTB2SE-W Wireless Subwoofer is in-fact old wine in new bottles! The HTB2SE Subwoofer had been a part of KEF Home Theater line of 5.1 audio systems. The Subwoofer now has a changed physical layout and also bears a Universal Wireless Kit. Thus came into being the HTB2SE-W, the Wireless Avatar.

The design reminds me of the alien saucer. Rest assured this won’t attack but play CD-quality audio for your entertainment! The HTB2SE-W integrates a 250mm driver and 250W class-D amplifier with an auxiliary bass radiator. Get one for your home theater for just $1200.

Give a cheer to the do it yourself home theatre spirit, folks, because when you’ve got three years and about twenty grand, a lot of sheer determination and grit, you too can make a sweet home theatre setup that celebrates golf.

It’s got a very eclectic mix of equipment, which in this case basically means he’s got a whole lot of stuff that really doesn’t fit in well with anything, but it all still works anyway.  For instance, he’s got an Adcom amplifier, a Harman-Kardon receiver, and a used NC CRT projector.  His speakers are all Polk audio and he’s got a ReplayTV DVR and three separate CD changers along with a Sony VCR.

He’s also got a small putting green in there with a regulation metal cup he got secondhand from a golf course, plus an equipment rack.  He’s been doing it in the modular style, which we recommend here for its efficiency and long-term value; in fact, about the only piece of original equipment he’s got in there is a Pioneer cassette tape changer.  Why a cassette tape changer?  As its owner puts it, “you never know”.

Indeed, you never do know, and that, along with a passion for golf, is what makes this a really sweet home theatre setup.

When you’ve got an unusually shaped basement, you can either live with it and just use it as a storage space, or you can do like Chris and Beth Martino did and turn it into a home theater.

Naturally, they’ve got some nice stuff in this.  They took six months and thirty five grand to build a whopper home theatre with a BASH Subwoofer amplifier, a Comcast HD DVR, a Monitor Audio speaker array, Denon receiver, Panasonic PT-AE3000 projector, a hundred and twenty nine inch screen from SmX Cinema Solutions, a Wii and Playstation 3, and more.

But this isn’t where the awesome ends, no, merely where it begins.  This home theatre also comes with an adjacent bathroom and kitchenette, so you can make your snacks and such right off the theatre.  Plus there are a few extras in there like a popcorn machine, a beer kegerator and a wine cellar of forty two bottles.

This pretty much ensures you only need one room for your entertaining, allowing you to close off the rest of the house from your company.  This is a terribly awesome development that’ll really qualify this for sweet home theatre setup status.

For some reason Emo Labs wants to offer us invisible speakers. We don’t exactly need our speakers to be invisible, do we? But I’d have to admit the idea is pretty cool so why not give it a try. So how does it all work? The invisible speaker is actually a clear membrane which will be mounted atop your display. Piezoelectric actuators will be used to make the membrane vibrate and give you stereo audio. Just check the video above to see exactly what Emo Labs wants to add to your home theater at some point in the near future.

We have no idea when the new technology will be available but we’re definitely keep an eye on Emo Labs and its future progress with invisible speakers.

via demo