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Scott, I live in Minneapolis and have TWC. I had DirecTv for all of a month and cancelled it. Please keep in mind that there are HUGE cancellation fees if you hate your DirecTV service -- $120 in my case....and that's if you cancel 10 minutes after signing up for service. There is NO grace...

I wait for a significant reason to upgrade. Would you believe I didn't even have Dolby Digital until this year? I did a forklift upgrade of my entire system, centered around an HDTV. I doubt I'll need to do that again for quite a while. HDTV/DD/DTS aren't going away for quite a long time.

The price difference is quite simple, really....Internet dealers cannot offer a warranty. That wasn't a concern for me...I got a pair of Stratus Silver's for $1250 delivered and the local dealer wanted $1900+tax. Crazy price difference at that level.

You won't find VGA at that price. Indeed, I haven't seen a 34" set at that price at all. If you had more like $3k to spend then you could look at the Princeton Graphics AR3.4FTW when it comes out. Princeton's AR3.0HD is considered one of the best sets for the money and they have VGA inputs.

The PQ and brightness will always be superior on direct-view. Most RPTV's just give you a lot of size for the money. Sometimes I get teased by my friends for spending $3k on such a "small" set but I don't regret it. I bought a 34" Panasonic and a high-end DVD player but if I had to do it all...

It depends. If you have a proper room and you are doing mostly HT then I'd go with dipoles. If you don't have walls in the right places then dipoles don't work. If you listen to multichannel music then dipoles don't work, imo.

Perhaps I'm the exception, but I don't like the 16-46 PCi for music. My mains are PSB Stratus Silveri's and they produce so much bass on their own that the sub always makes for too much. I suspect that this is a crossover issue in my receiver (Arcam AVR200) but I'm not interested in going to...

I keep mine at 8 ohm but I doubt there is much of a difference in sound. No speaker has a flat ohm response across the frequency band, anyway. Any setting will be a compromise.

If the guy actually did file bankrupcty then you don't have any legal recourse.

My father's 43" Sony went 7 years before the power regulators burnt out. It cost about $300 to fix it and it now looks fine. My 53" Sony had to have one board replaced under warranty when I first bought it, otherwise not a problem for 3 years. I don't think there's any more reliability issues...

I'd use Avia or VE on any set. It allows you to get the colors and brightness closer to accurate than you're likely to manage by eyeballing it. I've observed that most people's televisions are set too bright and the fleshtones are way off (generally too red). I can hardly look at it anymore...

You need quite a subwoofer to come close the impact that a decent car stereo is going to provide you. In home audio the size/placement/acoustics within the room are what will do you in. If you want the best sound then you need to carefully consider the placement of every object in your...

The 30k is the only model currently available. Two more are due to be released this fall at a reduced price. The 30k is available online for around $1200.

The problem with DVD was that software decoders were available (for PC's). I can guarantee that won't happen with any new HD standard. That is, perhaps, one advantage that D-Theater currently has: only JVC in Japan can master the tapes. The studios really don't have much risk of the tapes...

I think some people on here are missing the point. Nobody expects D-Theater to be mainstream. This is a niche product that is going to fill the gap until HD-DVD is readily available (3-5 years out). The new D-VHS decks coming out this fall should street for $750 or so. That's quite a bit less...

Doubtful. It shouldn't matter too much, though. Get the contact info for the guy that you buy them from. Unless they are jerks they'd help you out if you run into trouble down the road.

Chris, I've lived in a half-dozen apartments. In one of them my neighbors would be woken up (upstairs) when I opened the front door....as quietly as I could! The place was practically an echo-chamber. I lasted there 3 months before I moved out. Most modern buildings are pretty decent, though...

I've never heard of a DVD player that allows you to override the copy protection. That would defeat the point, you know. They do make boxes to remove macrovision but they only work with composite video, afaik. The cheapest CD player that is known good is the Panasonic RP62 and it's around...

It's probably the power supply in the set. Bright scenes require more power to the tube than darker scenes.

They don't review mid-fi equipment but entry-level hi-fi equipment costs about the same as the more expensive mid-fi brands. They recently recommended a $1500 5-channel amp. It depends on what you consider expensive, I guess.

Not really. Live instruments do not adjust their levels with human hearing in mind. Our equipment is designed to reproduce reality, not to improve upon it. The other factor is that such adjustments could be EQ'ed in by a sound engineer when it is recorded. If the speaker essentially made EQ...

If the ends are easily changed then that would be best. I had some soldered MIT wires so I got a set of banana plugs to spade converters. They are basically banana plugs with a screw at the end so that you can tighten a spade to it. They work fine but changing the ends on your cable would be...

Perfect Vision and Sound & Vision are both good, imo. Some say that S&V is too marketing oriented but I prefer the writing to PV. I'd also recommend Widescreen Review for their discussion of Audio/Video standards and DVD reviews...very worthwhile.

HTIB is the worst way to go but if I didn't have the money then it is better than nothing. I've actually been considering an HTIB for my bedroom...primarily due to the clutter that separate components would create.

I got a 35% discount from list on my PSB's by going with an online store. 45% does sound like a bit much but it's hard to say how much the manufacturer marks up their products.

You should definately examine the acoustics of your room prior to worrying too much about equalization. Adding some acoustic treatments can be more effective than higher quality components in many cases. Look through the following pages and do some searches on the `net...

You'll have to select progressive output on the DVD player. The TV will figure it out on its own.

Try a line conditioner or even a UPS designed for a computer. They sell small UPS's for $50-60 these days; it should be adequate to power a typical receiver.

I think Avia has some additional features that VE doesn't. ISF calibrators use VE, though, so it certainly isn't a poor choice. I bought VE because I found a used copy for less money than I could find Avia.

Some of the older "cat 5" cabling had too much crosstalk to support gigabit ethernet. Cat 5e was designed with gigabit ethernet in mind. It really isn't relevant to a home environment...most businesses aren't running gig ethernet over copper. I run it over fiber at my company. You'll...