Q I have a home theater system driven by a Denon AVR-3802 and recently purchased a home with a Bose built-in audio system. This uses a wall mounted Bose amplifier (102-EA) to drive speakers and volume controls in three rooms but uses a smallish Bose CD-20 to drive them. Can I connect My Denon receiver so that it drives the Bose amplifier and get rid of the CD-20 unit?

A I would suggest just leaving the Bose system as is, and only using your Denon for the home theater system. You could short something out if you try to wire in your Denon to the Bose amplifier setup. The other alternative is to completely disconnect the Bose amplifiers and use the Denon to drive the speakers in the various rooms.

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Q We just got a 65" Mitsubishi widescreen HDTV and need an excellent progressive DVD player for it. Assume my collection consists of badly-encoded DVDs. The most important thing is picture quality (no chroma bug), deinterlacing performance, fast , and price less than $500.  I don't really care about any other features.

A Take a look at our recent list of players with and without the chroma bug. The Panasonic RP82, at just a few hundred dollars, is the best buy, but since we talked about how much a bargain this player is, they have become almost impossible to find.

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Q  I thoroughly enjoyed Steve Smallcombe's article on the Sanyo PLV-70 in the December 2002 issue. I had already decided that this was the next projector for me, and Steve has helped to confirm that decision. However, Steve has, at the same time, both tantalized and infuriated his readers. He admitted that he found his way into the service menu of the PLV-70 but neglected to tell us how he did it. While I am well aware that changing parameters in the service menu can seriously screw up the image, Steve's article makes it quite evident that this level of tweaking is necessary to obtain the best picture quality. Please, please won't you tell us how to access the PLV-70 service menu?

A We left that info out of the published review for a specific reason: going into the service menu invalidates the warranty. However, if you e-mail Steve at [email protected], he can give you a hand with it.

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Q A relative of mine purchased a Bose Lifestyle 12 Series II Home Theater System which he had a problem with. He then returned to the store with the bass module and the CD player. They in turn, came out to his house and gave him a whole new system. So, he gave me the cube speaker arrays (I am not sure whether there are 4 or 5). What I would like to do is set up a home theater / audio system using these cubes. I know that I need a powered subwoofer and a stereo receiver that has surround sound. I am on a very limited budget, and of course Bose says that I cannot buy the bass module by itself. What is the most economical way to utilize these speakers and still get good sound?

A Because the Bose cubes are so small, they won't reproduce sound below about 200 Hz. Typical subwoofers have variable low-pass controls that go to about 150 Hz. You will need a subwoofer that lets you remove the crossover from the circuit. It will probably be a toggle switch on the back that says "Crossover In/Out". Switching the crossover out of the circuit will let the subwoofer run full range, meaning up to 200 Hz and beyond. Get a small sub, say 8" or 10", because these will likely give you a better response at 200 Hz than a 15" or 18" sub. Set all the speakers to "Small" in the receiver speaker management menu. Use the "rec-out" jack (these are used for sending a signal to cassette tape recorders) on the receiver to feed the sub, rather than the sub-out jack, because the sub-out jack will be limited to about 90 Hz and below, while the rec-out jack will have a full range signal.

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Q My system consist of Yamaha 995 receiver, Paradigm Studio 60 (fronts), Paradigm Atom (rears), Paradigm Studio Center, and Velodyne CT120 (sub). I have a spare Carver Power Amp, about 10 years old from my old system, but still works well, rated 200 watt/channel. If I hook this to the pre-out of my receiver to power the fronts, how will this affect the sound of all the speakers. Will the fronts being powered by 200 watts each overwhelm the surrounds and center channel?

A This kind of setup works beautifully, because it frees up the power supply in your receiver to drive the other channels. The only adjustment you may have to make is the relative volume setting, since the Carver may be more or less sensitive to the input signal than the power amps in the receiver.

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Q I am building a home theatre around my Alon Circe speakers which are tri-wired via an external crossover. To maximize performance when listening to audio, I am thinking of tri-amping each speaker and wondered if this can be achieved by using a high quality multi-channel amp. If so, is the best approach to split the output from the processor into three inputs for the amp?

A Yes, take the output of the processor through a Y connector into the inputs of the three power amplifiers, and the outputs of the amplifiers into the crossovers, then into the speakers. If it were me, I would try using an active crossover between the processor and the power amplifiers, such as made by Marchand Electronics (http://www.marchandelec.com/), rather than passive crossovers between the power amps and the speaker drivers.

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Q I have a Hitachi UWX5310A HDTV, Onkyo TXSR800 receiver, Onkyo 5 disc CD player, and Polk Audio RM7600 speakers. I am using a Playstation for DVDs. What do you suggest be my next addition?

A Get a dedicated DVD player rather than using your Playstation. You will get better results that way. Check our list of players with and without the chroma bug to select the player.

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Q Please consider adding HDTV Set Top Boxes to your wonderful reviews. As time goes by, more and more people will be moving to HDTV (most through set top boxes). All of us would benefit from your expertise in reviewing and comparing various set top boxes. I would love to see it extended to Cinematrix type modified boxes as well. For that matter, I  would love to see you review a Cinematrix modified DVD player.

A The new Zenith HDTV set top box (HD-SAT520) is the best one out there right now. Stacey Spears bought one, and I (JJ) am trying to get one as well.

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