Home Theater Geeks Podcast

In his second appearance on the podcast, our own Michael Fremer, audiophile extraordinaire and redoubtable raconteur, waxes rhapsodic about the dichotomy of the quality of physical media versus the convenience of streaming, then takes us on a tour of his listening room and his incredible collection of vinyl records. He also opines on the audible effect of different cables and demagnetizing black vinyl records (really!), objective versus subjective (what he calls "observational") listening, and comments and questions from the chat room.

Run Time: 51:14

One of Home Theater Geeks' most requested return guests, Gene Dolgoff, talks about his invention of digital projection and its benefits over CRT, including much greater brightness and efficiency. He also explains his more recent work on advanced 3D compression algorithms that can transmit full 1080p resolution for each eye using the standard broadcast bandwidth and discusses the problems inherent with current 3D technology, ending with a tantalizing glance at the possibility of using holography for next-gen 3D displays.

Run Time: 1:00:19

Legendary live-sound pioneer and microphone maker Bob Heil tells fascinating stories about his early days as a theater organist in St. Louis and his work as a live-sound engineer for groups such as the Grateful Dead, the Who, ZZ Top, Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, and many others in the 1960s and '70s. He also talks about his involvement in the early days of satellite TV and his home-theater business, which he shuttered with the advent of cheap home-theater-in-a-box systems.

Run Time: 58:36

Chris Connaker, founder of ComputerAudiophile.com, talks about the basics of high-resolution computer-audio files, including file formats and compression, adaptive and asynchronous USB DACs, ripping physical discs, online sources for high-res music files, the Simple Design Sonore Linux-based music-server appliance, cloud-based systems, using a preamp/processor with high-res music servers, local-area network streaming, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Run Time: 57:01

Jeff Murray, president of SpectraCal, discusses the importance of setting a TV's basic picture controls and grayscale calibration, the advantages and pitfalls of color-management systems, the company's VideoForge test-pattern generator and VideoEQ processor, automatic calibration using CalMan software with some of Panasonic's 2011 TVs, where to get educated about video calibration, calibrating 3D TVs, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Run Time: 58:43

Barb Gonzalez, aka The Simple Tech Guru, updates her impression of Roku as well as other media-streaming devices and services such as Vudu, Google TV, Apple TV, and the Sony SMP-N100, which has the best picture quality of all, though not the widest selection of content. She also talks about how content providers present different user interfaces and content to different devices, and she explains a new service called Zediva, which streams the playback of actual, physical DVDs to get a jump on the release of streaming movies. Plus answers to chat room questions and more.

Run Time: 56:07