Featured Reviews & Articles

An IR repeater system takes Infrared (IR) light coming from your remote controller and converts it to an electrical signal that can be easily distributed over electrical wiring to one or more IR remote controllable components. How this can help improve your system and allow you more flexibility in multi-room applications is something we'll attempt to answer and explain.

Thousands of words have been written about, and thousands of hours of labor devoted to, marrying our computers with our home theater and audio installations. On the Audioholics site alone there are 78 results from a search for "HTPC" (home theater personal computer). The problem with the concept of the HTPC is that, at its core, it’s a dedicated computer for multimedia applications. What happens if your computer is in your home office and your theater is elsewhere? What if you don’t want an HTPC? How do you combine your home office with your audio/video installation? It’s a question that’s seldom discussed in this industry.

Many people bring home a new HDTV and look forward to the excitement of viewing a true high definition picture. But is it really that simple? Well it can be - if you follow a few guidelines and understand the nature of real HD content and where it comes from. An HDTV doesn't give you high definition content - it simply means that you have the pixels to display high definition sources in all their glory. We'll take a look at four types of high definition sources most commonly received by HDTVs...

Over-the-air (OTA) broadcast television may be making a comeback with major networks now sending HDTV signals capable of being picked up by the humble rooftop antenna. But subscriber TV services from cable and satellite providers are here to stay.

You load up the latest and greatest action DVD into your home theater. You sit down with remote in hand and turn the volume up a bit so you can hear the wonderful special effects the movie sound track has to offer. All of a sudden you hear the familiar rapping on the wall of the elderly person that lives next door. This is your cue to turn the system down, being the polite individual that you are. You comply.

You've just connected your system and there's a buzz or hum that won't go away. You're beating your head against the wall trying to figure out what's up. Congratulations - you've just entered The Ground Loop Zone...

We have other articles which will help you actually connect your home theater system. This article assumes that you are indeed getting sound and video through the components and that you are ready to move on the the next phase of configuring and tweaking the many settings and physical options associated with all of that AV gear.

The back a of a Home Theater receiver can be confusing for a beginner, but as you learn what all the connections are taking a look at the back becomes the fastest way to assess the options and whether or not the unit will fill your needs. We'll break it down section by section.

Let's dispel the mystery about the back of your DVD player by using the most complex type of DVD player available as our example, the Universal DVD player. Universal DVD players like Onkyo's DV-SP1000 has more connection options than most DVD players; if you can hook up a Universal DVD player to an A/V receiver you'll have the fundamentals to make any DVD player connection.