Microsoft’s New Zune – Microsoft continues its tradition of swiping ideas from Apple in its new Zune 80 MP3 player for $249. It looks like Apple’s iPod Classic and has an 80GB hard drive; there’s also an 8GB flash-memory Zune 8 similar to the iPod Nano. MS has eliminated the requirement that you had to listen to any downloaded tunes within three days or they disappeared, but you still only get three plays on the DRM scheme. The original Zune was flawed but had better audio quality than the iPod; the new model has less.
Now’s the Time to For Shop Home Electronics – Experts agree that between right now and the end of the year is probably the best time to get deals on additions/replacements to your home electronics, due to the heavy competition going on. Price wars are occurring in some quarters between dealers on plasma and LCD video displays, and some excellent upconverting DVD players (such as the Oppo) are becoming available for under $200. Better quality home-theater-in-a-box systems are now on the market, and can save a great deal over purchase of all the individual items. Keep in mind you might lose some features you will want later though – such as being able to plug in a Blu-ray or HD DVD player or an SACD player. Don’t purchase technology that will soon be obsolete – namely analog TVs, VCRs, HDTVs with less than 1080 resolution, and components lacking HDMI connections. However, if you still have a bunch of VHS tapes around you can’t part with, those little DVD burners with a VHS slot have come down greatly in price. If running wiring to surround speakers has kept you from purchasing a proper HT surround speaker system, consider the inexpensive B Rocketfish wireless speaker kit, which will send your surround audio signals across your room to your speakers; but remember the receiver at the speakers will still need to be plugged into an AC connection.
Advice on Purchase of an AV Receiver – An AV receiver is the heart of the audio side of a quality home theater system. The pricing has come down at entry level and the power-per-channel gone up in the last year or so, along with the provision of facilities previously only available on the $3000 and up AV receivers and preamps – such as HDMI and upconversion of video. Although it’s not perfect, HDMI is what’s happening and is important in an AV receiver. It should be the latest v1.3 if possible, and have enough inputs that you don’t have to add an HDMI switcher to provide more. However, you may find you get better sound using a six-channel analog cable to carry your audio rather than running it with the video signal in HDMI. Never mind about 7.1 channels; it doesn’t add enough sonically to be worth the added investment in speakers, although most AV receivers will come with it. You don’t need decoding in the AV receiver for the new upgrades of DTS and Dolby multichannel audio, because most players now have that built in.
