Alas, it’s true. I am a little flaky, but I am working on the review, even though it will be late. I had a very good friend in the hospital 3 days this week and spent my evenings there. Oh, and I added a 5th box and I am going to test a regular cheapo antenna vs. a so-called smart antenna, too. All this on a glorious 20″ tube TV. Yeah! Well, it’s coming soon, so hold on to those $40 coupons for just a few more days!

Ha ha! Don’t worry about me, Tom. The novelty of being mentioned hasn’t worn off yet 😀 I like to think of people such as: Jeremy, Raul, Ted and myself as AVRant’s supporting cast! I don’t think I could rightfully accept Dina’s salary, but maybe I should get J’s; I’m on the podcast more than he is! ZING!

I’d love to know what you thought of my most recent e-mail though, Tom. I asked about soundproofing and more specifically, whether it may be possible to bring an expert onto the podcast to answer listener questions about soundproofing and provide more in-depth information than is typically offered on podcasts. The basic ideas are fairly well covered, but the nitty gritty details are not widely available. It’s a facinating subject and as I always say: the room affects your home theatre’s performance more than any of the gear. So I would love to really delve into the “how to” of room construction, renovation and soundproofing so that everyone can learn how to create a great room with which to begin!

This week cracked me up – I particularly liked Dina’s Hasbro game suggestion for the 8 DVD Netflix family.

I’d like to second Rob’s suggestion. I am trying to design an addition with a basement home theater at the moment and a soundproofing discussion would be awesome.

Finally, as someone who subscribed to Netflix as a way to watch all the Blu-Ray Discs I want without having to buy them, I totally understand their price increase (even if I’m not thrilled about it). The discs are still too darn expensive. I don’t want to buy them and own only a handful – I let Netflix shell out for them and watch whatever I want. Of course, the more new customers they have who think this way, the less profitable they become since they have to buy relatively more Blu-Ray discs to keep pace. They can either freak investors by showing declining margins or pass the costs of expensive discs on to those of us who joined because the discs are too expensive. It seems like a pretty savvy move to me – they increased the price right up to the point where I thought about reducing my subscription but decided not to.

What happened to your segments with the HT Guys? I’d like to hear you all talk about display technologies like Dolby Vision.

I have two comments:

1) Great to hear that you’re open to the idea of discussing soundproofing, Tom! Also great to see that at least one other person is also interested 🙂 I’m just curious how knowledgeable Clint, J and Gene are about soundproofing and construction. I just figured it may be a lot easier to have someone from the Audioholics staff join AVRant to talk about the subject. Of course, my first choice of guest would be someone who deals with soundproofing construction constantly – a true industry expert – but it occurred to me that someone from Audioholics may already be an expert!

2) I really think you should add a second donation link. Specifically, it should be a

“Help Tom buy a PS3!”

donation link.

I would donate to that! Honestly, it just will not do to have the co-host of AVRant unable to watch Blu-ray movies any longer! I was very hopeful that Sony would announce a PS3 price drop at GDC last week, but sadly, the only price drop announced was for the ancient PS2!

Tom needs a PS3 – or at least a stand-alone Blu-ray player. He already said he would not use any of the funds from the existing donation link for anything other than directly funding AVRant, so I say that a second link is necessary! If we all chip in just a few bucks, we can raise the $400 – I’m sure of it!

So what’d’ya say, Tom? Help us, help you! Put up a “Help Tom buy a PS3!” donation link and let’s put an end to this Blu-ray-lacking nonsense!

Rob: for the Novelty of being mention don’t forget Kurt, he was the first to use the AVRant phone line lol. Extra Kudos for Jeremy for always having us looking forward for his great creations.

The netflix rising blu-ray access price has me all bend out of shape. I don’t use netflix for Hollywood movies just for Anime. Some big Anime title come on Blu, that’s why I have the access. But for the small amount of Blu I actually need from netflix. I might Cancel the Blu access. I don’t want to pay en extra $4 (3 movies at time plan $16.99) a month and not even see the blu’s I’ve been having on my queue. They have all been on “Very long Wait” of course I’m only talking about Anime Titles, for what I use netflix for. I don’t think this may be the case for regular Hollywood movies. As for Hollywood Movies the Big titles I buy from either Best Buy/walmart/Amazon. and the Middle and small titles my wife’s gets them from RedBox (the $1 Kiosk). I I’ll give it another month see if my Very long Wait titles are available.

Oh Great Tom you just had to talk about the Grant/AV123 thing. So I went over there. MAN THAT WAS A LONG Thread!!! It took me more than an hour to read ALL the post. In a Summary Grant was very angry like you said then on page 5 of the thread Quote:

“Well I have been contacted and this is hopefully getting resolved so I guess we will wait and see.

At the end of the day the sad thing is that aside from Suzanne I have never had a bad experience with anyone at AV123 just from a people standpoint.

They have always been nice, courteous, and friendly and all.

But at the end of the day being nice doesn’t help situations like this get any better.”

End Quote

All the posters are like oh well we hope everything works out. The Hate minimizes But then you keep reading and reading and more and more people are joining and finding this thread posting about there problems/getting screwed by AV123/Mark. The heat starts to build up again and once again everyone is angry, and hate Mark. But of course though out the entire thread there always a couple of poster who are in love with mark. at one point the “the in love with mark” post got out of hand that one dude was like “isn’t wired the amount of AV123 employees …… oops *cough* I mean New members this thread attracts.”

So the heat is going on and Everyone is ready to storm the AV123 headquarters and burn it to the ground when out of nowhere on page 19 Quote:

“I have been contacted by Mark and the issue is being resolved.

Please delete the thread.

Thanks,

Grantc79”

!!!!!!!!???????? oh what the crap!? of course this got everyone by surprise and everyone was in agreement, do not delete this thread. When everyone asked him what had happened he kept replaying the same answer his taking care of me. I guess the amount of Victims had gone up dramatically that exactly one week later on page 27 some one alerted everyone else that Mark had posted something on AV123. Here is the link to that.

http://av123forum.com/showthread.php?t=40939

After everyone read this, its like they all drank the Kool Aid, or maybe they where all to happy to hear from there beloved Mark, in hopes that he would make things right.

So once I had join the party looks like the party had already been over. I posted my first two posts on Audioholics on this thread asking Grant for answers In behalf of Tom I asked what was Said I have to know. I’m still waiting a response from Grant. Its funny cuz on my first two post (on the last page of the thread) the Moderator called me a Troll with a Video LOL!!! funny.

So there you go guys that’s the summary of whats going on there. I’ll update once Grant or someone answers in WHAT WAS SAID.

You know, Raul, I was trying to remember Kurt’s name! I couldn’t remember on the spot when I was typing and he hasn’t been mentioned in a while on the podcast. If the call-in line ever goes away (as Tom mentioned), there will have to be a special tribute to Kurt for his pioneering ways! :p

The Netflix Blu-ray price increase has certainly been big news in all of the various gadget and tech corners of the web. I can understand both sides. Blu-ray movies do cost more. Despite what some people have said, Netflix cannot always wait in order to get Blu-ray titles on sale or those odd times when they cost about the same as the DVD version. Netflix has to pony up and stock Blu-ray titles as soon as they are released and the simple fact is that, on average, they do cost more than the DVD version.

Netflix has slim margins. It simply is not reasonable to expect them to take a loss or make zero profit. Somewhere around 10% of their customers chose Blu-ray as their preferred format. That is no longer a negligible chunk. At first, the number of people renting Blu-ray discs was so small that Netflix was able to eat the cost. But now, with around 10% choosing Blu, it makes perfect sense to me that Netflix needs to increase their prices in order to maintain their already slim margins.

By the same token, there are people who prefer Blu, but, like Raul, really do not receive all that many Blu-ray discs per month. Those customers have selected Blu-ray for their accounts, but they are not necessarily actually receiving Blu-ray discs. For those customers, this price increase is a raw deal because they are paying more, but not actually receiving more Blu-ray discs for their increased payment.

It’s a tricky situation and my personal opinion is that Netflix is partially in the right because I can understand the need to increase prices and maintain margin, but I think the way in which they’ve implemented the price increase can be unfair to many customers. If you’re a customer receiving many Blu-ray discs per month, I think the price increase, as it is, is totally fair. But if you only get one or two (or none – because they aren’t available), then it’s a raw deal.

Here in Canada, we have a similar service called Zip.ca. A couple of years back, they had an open discussion on their website. At the time, they offered nothing but unlimited rental plans, with the only differences being the number of discs out at a time with higher prices for more discs. They came right out and said, “look, we respect our customers, we want to continue providing this service, but we are going to start losing money with our current plans.”

The discussion brought up many concerns: would Zip start to “throttle” their system – waiting to mail out discs in order to limit the number sent in any given month and effectively putting a “cap” on the “unlimited” rentals promised? Would Zip simply raise their prices? Or would they start charging per disc instead of having subscriptions?

In the end, I think they came up with a very fair compromise:

They kept 1, 2 and 3 disc at a time “unlimited” rental plans with slightly altered prices. With those plans, Zip has to physically receive the disc back before they will ship out a new one. This causes a bit of a delay, but keeps things manageable for Zip.

Then, they introduced 1, 4, 6 and 8 disc at a time plans that had 2, 11, 16 and 22 disc per month caps, respectively. And the prices for these “capped” plans effectively make the cost of each individual rental about $2.30. The thing is, Zip will ship over your cap for the month at a per disc charge of $2.49. And with the “capped” plans, if you log into your account and tell Zip that you’ve put a disc in the mail, they will send out your next one right away without waiting to physically receive it. So basically, you can rent as much as you want and you’ll simply pay extra per disc for each rental over your “cap” each month.

To me, it’s a very fair system. I think the prices are very reasonable, it allows Zip to stay in business and it’s really totally up to me how many discs I rent each month and how much I spend. $2.49 is a pretty good deal for a rental IMO and it’s a bit less than that per disc if I stay under the “cap”.

So far, Zip has not mentioned raising prices for Blu-ray. But with their model, they actually have more flexibility as to how they could raise the prices if it ever becomes necessary to do so. My guess is that they would simply put a small surcharge for each individual Blu-ray rental – similar to the surcharge for going over a plan’s “cap”. Hopefully, Zip will continue to rent Blu-ray and HD-DVD for the same price as DVD, but I’ve been happy with Zip because they’ve been very up front, willing to discuss issues of price with their customers and have been totally reasonable in my opinion.

Personally, I go with the 4 at a time, 11 per month capped plan for $24.95 a month. I frequently go over my “cap”, but it’s still a lot cheaper than buying or renting from a local rental shop. Basically, for the price of buying one Blu-ray movie, I can rent 11 from Zip! And shipping has been super fast – I’ll often put a disc in the mail, update my account to tell Zip that it’s on its way back and the very next day, I’ll have my next disc in my mailbox! Certainly no “throttling” going on, but that’s because of the plan structure.

One final tidbit – I’ll often choose the HD-DVD version if it’s available. Zip still rents HD-DVD and they are almost always in stock with zero wait time 😀

Tom,

I’ll add in that I would love to hear some in-depth discussion about room treatments. Deeper than first reflection points and bass traps. I’d also like Dina’s opinion, as CSIS, on what would be acceptable in a living room/family room environment.

And you really do need to get a PS3.

Tom wants a PS3. We all want him to get a PS3. I, for one, want to help Tom get a PS3. I’m pretty sure I’m not completely alone in wanting to help Tom get a PS3. So let’s find a way to help Tom get a PS3, yes?

I’m for the dedicated, “Help Tom get a PS3” donation link idea, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s the only way.

I’d suggest we wait a bit to see if Tom is open to the idea of the donation link. But if he doesn’t want to do the link, maybe someone who lives closer to Tom could set up a donation fund and eventually get a PS3 for him.

Jon – I’m with you on wanting to hear Dina’s opinions about what would be acceptable room treatments in a living room setting. My guess is that something like the Auralex SonicPrint products would likely go over quite well with just about anyone. They are essentially limitless in appearance because you can have any picture you like printed. So as long as everyone is ok with hanging a picture or work of art on the wall, then the SonicPrint products ought to be acceptable.

To me, there are really two levels of acoustic room treatments. You can either follow the “rules of thumb”, or you can rely upon professional measurements to really address the specifics of your particular room.

Measurements really do need to be handled by a professional. To my mind, the closest DIY-type of alternative is the Room Analysis Plus service offered by Auralex. Tom has talked about this service on the podcast and I’m very much looking forward to his review of the results!

The “rules of thumb” though will improve just about any room. They may still leave you with a few issues – it won’t be “perfect”, but you can improve the acoustics of just about any room pretty reliably with just the “rules of thumb”.

The most important knowledge is understanding that in a home theatre, the idea is to have the sound coming from the front of the room be very clear and undistorted and to have those sounds “wash over” you and then “disappear” behind you. Meanwhile, the surround channels are meant to be rather indistinct and enveloping and thus, having them “bounce around” the back of the room is quite acceptable.

If you’re ok with that fundamental goal, then you can achieve improved acoustics in just about any room with the following suggestions:

– Put absorptive materials at all of the first reflection points for the three front speakers. This includes the side walls, the floor and the ceiling. This is the greatest help because it instantly improves the sound coming from in front of you.

– Put absorptive materials directly behind your head on the wall behind you. Remember that one goal is to have the sound “wash over” you and then “disappear” behind you. Most people have way more sound than they’d imagine bouncing off of the wall behind them and muddying the front sound field.

– Put diffusive materials on the side walls and ceiling behind and directly to the sides of your seating position. This will help to “scatter” the sound from your surround channels and make them sound less distinct and more enveloping.

– Finally, if you have bass traps, place them in the corners or the edges of your room. The idea is simply to reduce bass waves bouncing around the room. Bass is only a problem when it bounces off of the walls, floor or ceiling and essentially “doubles back” on itself, leading to “peaks and valleys” in the bass response as the “bounce-back” either reinforces or cancels out the original wave. By putting some bass traps more or less anywhere in the room, you simply reduce some of this “bounce-back” and that improves the sound quality pretty much no matter what.

There isn’t a whole lot more that you can do without specifically targeted placement based upon professional measurements. In a way, it’s nice that acoustic treatments can be considered somewhat “simple” because just following the “rules of thumb” above really will improve just about any room. You can get closer to “perfect” with professional measurements, but you can achieve quite an improvement with just the “basics”.

Soundproofing, on the other hand, is a whole other can of worms! Many people mistakenly think that acoustic treatment and soundproofing are one and the same, but they most definitely are not. Building a soundproof room will not address internal resonance and reflections, and treating a room for resonance and reflections will not make it soundproof!

Both are critical for getting maximum performance from your home theatre, and both are woefully overlooked by the majority of people who really only think about the TV and the speakers when they think “home theatre” 😉

I second the “Lets Get TOM a PS3”, if you put that link Tom, Im one already. I have learned so much on this podcast, let me return the favor by helping my podcaster get a PS3/BLU-RAY!!!!!

Come on Listeners “As ONNEEEE!!!” Quote from The Gladiator. lol