The Audiophiliac

Keeping up to date with home theater technology isn't easy, buyers need all the help they can get.

Mark Fleischmann covers LCD, OLED, plasma displays, LED backlighting, DLP projection, 3D TV, AV receivers, speakers, connectivity issues, and the never-ending blizzard of features in his recently revised book, "Practical Home Theater: A Guide to Audio and Video Systems" (268 pages, $19.95). It's chock full of useful information.

Do HDMI connections confound you? Fleischmann delves deep into the continuously evolving "standard," from the original 1.0 version all the way up to version 1.4. THX certification is another one of those barely understood terms used in reviews, the book gets you up to speed on what THX certification entails. All of the various Dolby and DTS surround schemes are explained. There's a wealth of information about VCRs; right, some people still watch video tapes! The chapters on home theater setup and troubleshooting are excellent.

For long-term satisfaction, speakers trump video every time.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

A good friend of mine is still fuming over picking HD-DVD over Blu-ray. He's held the grudge so long he just recently dumped the player and even some of the discs and bought a Blu-ray player.

I know another guy who's steamed that his $2,000 6-year-old receiver doesn't have HDMI switching, so to get Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio he plays his Blu-ray over the receiver's 5.1 channel analog inputs. Fine, but the receiver doesn't do any sort of bass management over its analog inputs. The sound isn't so hot.

Do you know anybody who bought a plasma TV in 1999 for around $10,000 who still uses it as their primary display? I don't, but I'd bet most of those buyers are on their second or third display by now.

Before analog tape was invented, recorders like this used wire.

(Credit: Video Interchange)

Legend has it that on December 4, 1877, Thomas Edison was the first person to record and play back the human voice. Maybe not.

The Video Interchange site notes that "a possibility exists that Edison himself, in fact, might not have been the very first person to have recorded and played back the human voice. This was most likely made by his two key assistants: Charles Batchelor, his chief assistant, and John Kruesi, his head machinist."

You can see Edison's machine on the Video Interchange Web site. And while you're there, check out a few of the fascinating but obscure audio formats on display.

Video Interchange offers transfer services for a vast range of ancient and recent audio formats. For example, Video Interchange can transfer 78 rpm records to CD.

This dictation machine recorded to vinyl records.

(Credit: Video Interchange)

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MTV, the channel that brings us great shows like Paris Hilton's My New BFF, MTV Cribs, True Life, and Sex, With Mom and Dad now has a place for all the music videos that made MTV, well, Music Television. The new MTV outlet is called, somewhat redundantly, MTVMusic.com. I remember when MTV played music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; there were "on-air personalities" known as VJs, or video jockeys. Martha Quinn was my favorite.

(Credit: MTVM)

Dig the White Stripes? MTVM has 36 Jack and Meg videos listed. Bright Eyes "This Is The First Day Of My Life" video was really sweet, little snippets of mostly couples with headphones sitting on a couch reminded me why I love Bright Eyes so much. The song and video are perfect together.

Sure, old timers can relive the '80s with Talking Heads, Devo, Tom Petty, Billy Joel, and Tina Turner videos.

This is the Kipnis Studio Standard.

(Credit: Robert Wright)

If your typical high-end home theater with rows of plush seats, velvet wallpaper, and popcorn machines offers Cadillac levels of performance and luxury, then Jeremy Kipnis' $6 million ultimate home theater is more like a fire-breathing Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, the fastest production Ferrari ever built.

This home theater is all about aggressively advancing the state of the art of picture and sound presentation. Yes, it's comfortable and beautiful, but its prime directive is a quest for the very best. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is overlooked. Kipnis won't settle for second best.

As an "investment" video sucks. Before you plunk down big bucks on today's cutting edge video just ponder for a second that what you buy today will be tomorrow's landfill.

Pick up a good set of speakers and they'll stick around for a long, long time. Anybody who dropped $15K on an early generation plasma display has surely replaced it years ago, and is probably on their second or third set by now. So their total investment may be approaching twenty Gs! Remember too that early plasmas were standard definition sets and their picture quality was pretty awful. Last year's shiny new HD-DVD, Blu-ray and high-end DVD players are likewise doomed to early retirement, but they'll make excellent doorstops. Computers are even worse, they get old really, really fast so unless you're rich or a pro that needs the most up to date technology, investing in cutting edge gear is a fool's game. Seven years ago Nikon introduced its first professional digital SLR, the $5,500 D1 (body only). It's a beautifully made camera, but it goes for around $300 on eBay today. The big and bulky 2.7 megapixel SLR is hopelessly out of date.

High-end audio is by contrast remarkably stable; a ten-year old, Martin-Logan or Verity Audio speaker system still sounds killer today.

The video market has a serious size obsession, demanding ever-bigger screens. If The Sopranos is your thing, the dramatic effect is pretty much the same over an iPod or 65-inch screen. So unless you're living on a steady diet of eye-candy/special effects flicks, super-sized screens don't buy you much. Great movies are still all about well-written stories with complex characters.

Audio is a more emotional trip. Play tunes or movies that get your mojo workin' over a great system and you'll be in heaven. Play 'em over a desktop iPod speaker with 1-inch "woofers" and Jimi Hendrix's glorious Strat will get emasculated to the point it's mere background noise. Music, when it sounds really good, works on a deeper more blood and guts level. And not just because the big systems can play nice and loud, no, that's not necessarily the point, but they always have more soul. It's like comparing frozen pizza to a slice fresh out of the oven in NYC's Little Italy. If you really love music, don't you want to hear every precious drop of it? Hold off on that video upgrade and put the money where you'll hear it.