Home Theatre Point | Your starting point on Home Theatre and Surround Sound Systems

A study commissioned by digital technology company DTS highlights the sound/value relationship in the home entertainment market.

The results of its 3rd annual, study conducted in conjunction with Nielsen Entertainment Research, revealed continuing growth in the home theatre and surround sound marketplaces. In an online survey of 2,000 adult ages 18 to 65 across the USA, Nielsen Entertainment determined that home theatre systems featuring surround sound will continue to experience solid growth and drive a majority of home audio industry sales. Supporting the conclusions of the Nielsen research study, separately published reports by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) estimate that by the end of 2006 approximately 38 per cent of households (42 million) will own a home theatre – up from 21 per cent (22 million) in January 2000.

A significant number of consumers are familiar with the surround sound concept when purchasing audio equipment. According to the CEA Audio Purchasing Study, 73 per cent of home audio owners considered the surround sound listening mode as the most important audio product specification when evaluating a product.

Notable news from the latest study includes remarkably strong awareness about the high definition next generation optical disc formats among DVD consumers. According to the latest study, close to three-fourths (73 per cent) of these DVD consumers are either aware of HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc respectively. Close to 30 million home theatre households now possess a system with five or more speakers for true surround sound, and among those that plan to upgrade their equipment to high definition, 74 per cent consider surround sound important when deciding what high definition equipment to purchase.

Another key indicator of home theatre growth is the growth of high definition displays. By the end of 2005 there were 21.6 million households with HDTV sets in the USA (19 per cent of total households) according to figures from the JupiterResearch. By the end of 2010, the number of HD-receiving households will reach close to 75 million, or 63 per cent of total households in the USA.

The Nielsen Entertainment study revealed that more than half (54 per cent) of DVD owners and 79 per cent of surround sound owners consider high quality sound as the most important special feature on a DVD. In fact, recent studies have indicated that consumers who own home theatre system believe that sound quality is as important as video quality.

Source: AV international newsletter

Technorati Tags: home entertainment, HD DVD, Blu-ray, home theatre

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Just stumbeled on a new European website that

“explains the features of a Smart-Home in plain English”

This is a great website because there aren’t enough online resources for the domotics or home-automation industry and especially aimed at consumers. (most resources are trade type ones like hiddenwires etc).

….except of course for this weblog

Feel free to check it out, it even has RSS and a forum.

Go to HighTechHome

More on DIY, FAQ, home-automation by Erno, (Visited 14841 times)

LCD televisions are incredible, space-saving appliances. LCDs possess extremely thin, flat screens that can be mounted on a stant or even hung on a wall in your family or entertainment room. In the case of the latter, hanging an LCD television on a wall provides consumers with additional space in the room in which the television is placed; allowing much more space for furniture and decorating. Furthermore, many LCD televisions include the option to tilt and pivot their direction, allowing the viewer to easily adjust the screen to their preferences.

LCD (liquid crystal display) projectors usually contain three separate LCD glass panels, one each for red, green, and blue components of the image signal being fed into the projector. As light passes through the LCD panels, individual pixels (”picture elements”) can be opened to allow light to pass or closed to block the light, as if each little pixel were fitted with a Venetian blind. This activity modulates the light and produces the image that is projected onto the screen.

• Read more: LCD the standard in Home Theater

Technorati Tags: LCD televisions, LCDs, projectors

More on FAQ, television by Erno, (Visited 4235 times)

HDMI Licensing, the agent responsible for licensing the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) specification, announced end December 2005 the availability of the latest revision of the HDMI specification, version 1.2a.

New capabilities under development for HDMI include:

• Read more: HDMI ready for the next step

Technorati Tags: High-Definition Multimedia Interface, HDMI

More on FAQ, installing by Erno, (Visited 4074 times)

Alfred Poor of the HDTV Almanac predicts on his weblog: 2006 will be the Year of HDTV.

Why, you might ask. Well he’s got some reasoning behind it which I feel is correct:

“Prices are falling below the pain point. Small LCD HDTVs were selling under $500 (Europe below EUR 500) this holiday season, and I expect that competition and possible over-supply will help keep prices moving downward. So more people will be able to afford the cool new screen that they want.”

• Read more: 2006 the year of HDTV?

More on FAQ, television by Erno, (Visited 4182 times)

Today I ran into the HDblog with some interesting articles. One of these articles was the prediction for 2006 on HDTV in the homes by 2006.

A new survey from Panasonic reveals that one in four (26 percent) of U.S. households either owns or plans to own a high-definition television by the end of 2006. This is up from 15% one year ago, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

And the debate doesn’t end with the decision to buy, according to Panasonic’s survey. Most men (70 percent) are interested in purchasing an HDTV with either large (51 inches and above) or medium (37 to 50 inches) screen sizes, while 76 percent of women lean more towards a smaller size screen.

• Read more: HDTV in 26% of Homes by End of 2006

More on FAQ by Erno, (Visited 5973 times)

B.Greenway from Home Theatre Blog summerizes the year of 2005 on the home theatre topic. Here are some points that I want to share with you from his list:

Plasma:
2005 again saw more refinement than revolution when it comes to plasma televisions, with the exception of a 65” monster from Panasonic. And once again I’m still unable to decide between Panasonic, Pioneer or Hitachi as my favorite plasma manufacturers.

• Read more: Recap of 2005 on Home Theatre

More on FAQ by Erno, (Visited 5835 times)

Thomson is getting out of the consumer electronics business and focus on services and products for the media industry.

French Thomson seeks partners to take for their business units in their Connectivity by Thomson unit, which includes audio and video products. What those partnerships will mean is unclear. Reason for this strategy change is the competition from Apple and Asian electronics companies.

• Read more: Thomson seeks partners for the Audio/Video and Accessories activities

More on FAQ by Erno, (Visited 5565 times)

Sorry for my slow posting the last couple of days. Last weekend I spent quite some time to switch my first blog over to WordPress.

MultiRoomPoint is now on WordPress and it works, after a lot of tweaking, just fine.

If you know how I did this and what plugins I am using please visit this post Switch from Pivot to WordPress on trendgevoelig

More on FAQ by Erno, (Visited 4380 times)

Just read an interesting article on "Computer Audio Takes Aim at CDs":

"Here’s a great article on why computer audio is potentially better than CDs. Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio, maker of the Off-Ramp and Freeway USB transports we covered earlier, explains why jitter (the little picture) makes CDs ultimately inferior. If you’ve ever wondered why a medium based on 1s and 0s has so many problems then this article is for you.

• Read more: Film from PC better than from CD?

More on DVD-players/recorders, FAQ by Erno, (Visited 3687 times)