|
- Bottom Five Selections -
Items to avoid at all costs.
#1
-
Expensive HDMI Cables -
●●●●
Rating
Analog cables have a few excuses to justify
outrageous pricing but with DVI and HDMI there is no logical
explanation. Both are digital and they either work or they don't. How
can you tell if they work? If you get an image and don't see any
sparkles it's as good as it can get. Regardless of how much you spend
your image isn't going to improve in any measurable way as digital is
math and it simply doesn't add up. If you see either of the previous
issues than go looking for an HDMI extender or perhaps a fiber optic
cable other wise save a lot of money!
#2
- Power Stabilizers -
●●●●
Rating
Yes we have tested power stabilizers in our
theater. Even did a few A/B tests and in every case we felt a little
foolish as the only difference we saw were the device's fancy lights
flashing on and off. Certainly your equipment would like 120 volts all
of the time but in our opinion in almost every case your equipment's
power supply will more than handle the normal fluctuations. If not you
should call your power company not purchase a power stabilizer.
#3
- Clean Power -
●●●●
Rating
If you read their literature you'll be
scared to plug your equipment in an AC outlet as if it isn't blown up by
not having a power stabilizer certainly the dirty power will seek and
destroy your equipment's performance. In our experience the more
features they offer the more outrageous the claims. If you have any
doubts we recommend doing a few A/B tests before sending it back.
#4
- MOV Based Surge Protectors -
●●●●
Rating
We are all for surge protectors and highly
recommend them. Although in most cases you are simply purchasing a power
strip. Typical surge protectors use MOVs to suppress surges and as a
result offer little or no actual protection to start with and over time
surges above a nominal level degrade the MOVs to the point that they
offer no protection at all. Since only a few of the more expensive surge
protectors alert to the fact that their protection has expired we do not
suggest relying on a MOV based surge protector to protect your
equipment. Rather we recommending using a Series Mode based surge
protector such as the
Brick Wall PW8R15AUD.
#5
- Low Prices and Incomplete Designs -
We love low prices as much as the next guy but
not the current trend where you get state-of-the-art features at unheard
of prices only to find out its performance suffers from basic design and
quality issues. Our latest example is the
Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 1080.
We jumped at the chance to experience 1080p for
about $2,500 (after street pricing and rebate) and were even initially
impressed with its performance. However before long we started to see
what we didn't paid for and wished it was priced a little higher. For
the complete story
see here.
We also love bleeding-edge products but nowadays
it appears they ship before the design specs are even completed. Case in
point every Blu-ray player produced to date doesn't meet the upcoming
Blu-ray specs. Of course products evolve over time and you can't expect
them to last forever. But how about lasting long enough to support the basic
Blu-ray features!
If you think it's just the real out there
products think again. HDMI is used in just about is every home theater
product and it's a total mess. There are so many different versions that
it breaks far more than it benefits. As an example simply try connecting
one HDMI source to a HDMI receiver and a HDMI display to the receiver.
If your luck is anything like ours you either won't get any picture,
audio, or certainly not the codec or frames per second you are looking
for!
Since the market isn't going to chance anytime
soon we'll hope a little common sense goes a little further in the
future. How about building a product where its biggest claim to fame isn't
they will ship you a free replacement during its warranty. Or perhaps
not introducing a new standard that pretty much guarantees your equipment
won't communicate correctly.
-
Return to the Top of the Page -
|
