One of the difficulties in writing a series about affordable front projectors is deciding what constitutes “affordable.” A few years ago, that would have meant anything under $5,000 for a 1080p projector. But advances in technology, manufacturing efficiency and market demand have caused the prices of entry-level front projectors to plummet. Soon a 1080p front projector could be had for $3,000; only a year later there were $2,000 (street price) projectors that put out a surprisingly good picture. Surely $2,000 was the floor for a 1080p projector?

Tags: 1080p | Projectors

In most A/V publications, they will tell you to stick with one brand and line of speakers so that the tonality will be the same across the entire soundstage. That's true. But, if you look for neutrality in sound, you can mix and match with no problem. I have used electrostatic speakers (ESLs) in our home theater lab as a reference for years. The problem has always been the center channel. The front left and right ESL are 6 feet tall, and the center channel ESL was only 4 feet, and even then, the motorized projection screen would come down in front of it about a foot. Secondly, ESLs cannot be driven to high SPLs like cone speakers.....So, I decided to use a conventional (cone) speaker for the center channel, the new Paradigm C5 center channel speaker.....Was I disappointed in the results? Read our review to see.

Over the past several years, I noticed that some A/V cable companies have expanded their lines to include interconnects and speaker cables that cost in the thousands, no make that tens of thousands, of dollars. You can actually spend about $25,000 on one pair of speaker cables about 5 meters in length. For that same amount of money, you can purchase a Blu-ray player, top notch receiver, full set of 7.1 speakers, good subwoofer, 1080p projector, a projection screen, and all the A/V cables you need to connect them - in other words, a complete home theater system. For myself, I find it insulting that a company would think we consider that the same amount of engineering research and development costs, along with the manufacturing costs, are comparable between such a set of speaker cables, and a full set of home theater components. So, we are going to start taking a look at the engineering and science behind cable design, and the costs. It will be an on-going article, like the Vinyl vs. CD series that we started publishing a while back. You will be free to express your opinions in the commenting section at the end of the article.

If you didn’t win the prizes for our first CAVE contest – and that means all of you except two – don’t despair. We are now announcing the next CAVE contest, and the prize is a Burson Audio PI-100 Integrated Stereo Amplifier.