TV & Home Theatre

          Rocketfish makes accessories in a variety of areas, including home AV. Here are four particularly notable items from the line to enhance your AV setup, plus one product for helping to keep your mobile device screens squeaky clean.

  I have always been a big fan of Denon electronics, having several Denon components in my home today. I find Denon to be great value with high quality equipment that is at a reasonable price. They are now launching a new product line, HEOS, which is a wireless multi-room speaker system that is poised to compete with the likes of Sonos and Bose Soundtouch. It is great to see Denon enter this market as they are a formidable competitor that will force everyone to continue improving their products. Here is the lowdown on their new HEOS line.

      If you are in the market for a new TV, you can kill a lot of brain cells trying to figure out all the available models.  It is perfectly acceptable to kill a few more afterward with a few celebratory libations, basking in the glory of a new HDTV. You will especially want to celebrate if you selected one of Samsung’s UNH6350 LED sets, as this new line has some of the best mid-range TVs on the market. If you want a great performing HDTV with an excellent Smart platform you will not go wrong with the H6350’s from Samsung.

  There have been so many spectacular moments during the FIFA World Cup games. From van Persie’s amazing header, to Suarez’s two goals (and bite) to Howard’s stunning blocks and manoeuvres, the excitement has been non stop. If you were watching the games on a pint-sized TV you probably missed some of the stunning details and colour of these historical matches.   Maybe it’s time to upgrade to one of the 4K Ultra HD TVs with their gloriously big screens offering the ultimate immersive viewing experience. 

          As a person who regularly reviews products, you won’t be surprised to hear that I am a big fan of reviews. And I don’t mean my reviews, but from consumers that have bought the product, used it for a while and discovered the nuances about it, both good and bad. I would never buy a product unless I read quite a number of reviews about it as nothing can replace that user experience and associated perspective. So what I thought I would do is provide you a summary of what I found to the be top 5 best rated TVs, purely based on customer ratings and share some of their reviews.

  With so much content available from such a variety of sources, more and more Canadians are looking at cutting their cable bills. One option to consider is taking advantage of TV stations that broadcast free over-the-air (OTA). I was able to test out the Homeworx HD Digital Converter Box combined with the Clearstream 4 Outdoor antenna and a Philips PVR and was surprised how many channels I was able to pick up in my little corner of the world. With this equipment it is a very economical and simple way to get a bunch of free OTA TV channels.

Dolby Laboratories has been in the business of improving and perfecting the sound experience since 1965. They started with Dolby Noise Reduction, which got rid of the hiss on audiocassette tapes. In the early 90’s they introduced Dolby Digital, which gave rise to ever-improving surround sound, ultimately evolving to Dolby TrueHD, which further improved the purity of sound reproduction. Their latest sound technology is Dolby Atmos, which has taken the sound experience to yet a new level. Atmos is to sound what 4K is to TV resolution.

                                    Apple and Roku make the top media streaming devices in the market today. So if you want to convert your TV to a Smart TV, an Apple TV or Roku 3 are both excellent choices. Sure, there are quite a number of other choices, but Apple and Roku have a more established streaming platform since they have been at it much longer than most. You won’t go wrong with either one.   Although they both function largely the same, there are a number of differences between the Roku box and Apple TV. So how do you choose which one is best for you? I happen to have both units and can give you a side-by-side comparison to help you decide.

    Since announcing WebOS earlier this year at CES 2014 in January, LG just congratulated themselves on selling over 1 million WebOS enabled Smart TVs. But what is all the fuss about and why are they selling so many WebOS TVs? The answer is “simple,” no pun intended. The WebOS operating system for their Smart TVs is all about improving the user experience and making it easier to use. It is very easy and even entertaining to set up, and simpler to quickly access exactly what content you are looking for. It even allows you to flip back and forth between apps or different devices while returning exactly where you left off. Here’s how it works.

  You’ve likely heard about Sony’s X-Reality Pro Engine, and the latest version for 4K TVs. But what exactly does it do, and how does it work?