Podcast #796: Tips From THX: Getting the Most Out of Your Home Theater

Scott Wilkinson, a regular contributor at AVSForum.com, asked THX CTO Scott Francis "to outline some basic tips from THX to optimize the location and setup of the display, speakers, and seating in order to get the most out of the entire system, whether it’s just you, your immediate family, or a big party watching movies, TV shows, or sports."

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Podcast #735: THX tune-up to the Rescue

We had a friend recently who was complaining about their HDTV experience at home. They weren’t seeing the quality they were hoping to see after upgrading their TV, and were contemplating returning it. In talking through it with them, we were able to convince them that perhaps the TV settings just needed to be dialed in to look great in their viewing room. They didn’t want to spend money on a professional calibration, so we went to the trusty THX tune-up app to see what we could do.

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Podcast #644: Pioneer VSX-44 Elite 7.2 Home Theater Receiver

Back in May of 2013 we reviewed one of Pioneer’s entry Elite models the VSX-70. At that time we were impressed with the sound quality but the MSRP of $750 may have been a barrier for some. Now Pioneer has introduced two new entry Elites (VSX-80 MSRP $700 and VSX-44 MSRP $500) that have more capability and lower prices. We take a closer look at the VSX-44.

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Podcast #623: Home Theater Calibration Discs

If you don't think your home theater looks or sounds as good as it should, you probably want to calibrate it. Calibration is the process of dialing in all the settings on your TV and receiver to optimize the viewing and listening experience for your home. There are a ton of options for this, from buying a calibration disc for the do it yourselfers, buying a calibration system like SpyderTV for the almost do it yourselfers, to hiring a professional calibrator for those of the just do it for me persuasion.

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Podcast #579: Room Correction 101

A lot of emphasis is traditionally placed on buying the best equipment you can afford for your home theater. Ask just about anyone and they’ll tell you to stretch your budget as far as you can, dig deep to make sure you’re getting the right receiver or amplifier, buying those outrageously expensive speakers or paying too much for speaker wire or interconnects. If you do that, your home theater will sound amazing and you’ll be the envy of the neighborhood.

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Podcast #468: Easy Home Theater Audio Tweaks

It seems like there was a lot going on in the news this week, so we have a bunch of current events to cover - everything from iPad 2 to AllRovi.com.  Then we go over some tips from an article at Electronic House called Acoustics Matter: Easy Home Theater Audio Tweaks.  The article has some good ideas for how to get the most out of your home theater audio equipment and configuration.

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