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When you have a 16-year-old son, who’s life revolves around gaming, sometimes it’s just better to give in. This is definitely a case of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, and as I can attest to the fact that I won’t be playing Gears of War II any time soon, there is a certain comfort for a parent in knowing that your kids are home every night.
That being said, this new E-Gear online feature: “Home Theater Systems That Make Sense”, is designed to help you find components that work well together for your own home theater needs. This month, you guessed it, “Gaming” and the following components are perfect for gaming enthusiasts, and movie fans alike, plus, in these recessionary times, the overall system won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
The TV
We’ve had several Toshiba televisions over the years at our home. I would describe the brand as a “workhorse” that doesn’t quit. I have found Toshiba sets to provide a high level of quality over several years of practically non-stop use: Perfect for gamers.
Toshiba recently announced its full 2009 line-up of LCD televisions. From 19-inch sets to the new 55-inch Cinema Series models, Toshiba’s
line-up offers a TV to fit every room and lifestyle at every price. They all have new exterior designs, (i.e. they’ll look great in any room in the home), unique technologies, and more, but the one that caught my eye for gamers was the new Regza 46SV670 46-inch 1080p Full HD CineSpeed LCD Display. The set benefits from 4 HDMI digital inputs (1 Side) with InstaPort and REGZA-LINK and Next Gen Connectivity including a USB Port, SD Card Slot, IR Pass-Through Port and High-Res PC Input.
For gaming and of course watching movies, it’s best to go big if your room and seating will take it, and the new 46-inch (measured at 46-inches diagonally) from the REGZA SV670 Series fits the bill. This set features the company’s new FocaLight LED backlight with local dimming and stunning Infinity Flush Front design. FocaLight offers a full LED matrix for enhanced brightness uniformity. Thanks to FocaLight, the new REGZA LCD TV attains an all-new level of picture quality with an amazing 2,000,000:1 dynamic contrast. Even more important is the local dimming, which creates significantly higher dynamic contrast, as blacks are blacker without reducing the peak white brightness.
Benefiting from a streamlined cosmetic design, this series features Toshiba’s Deep Lagoon process behind the new Infinity Flush Front.
Inspired by an infinity pool, this design uses a solid sheet of anti-reflective glass across the entire front of the TV. Definitely a plus if your kids will be gaming in an open-planned family room such as ours. $2,299.99. www.toshiba.com
The Surround Sound
Paradigm Electronics has just launched four new audio systems for gamers that are all optimized for video game performance. These systems deliver the powerful, crisp, visceral sound performance gamers crave. I chose the new Paradigm Cinema Micro audio system with 5.1 surround sound. The system comes with two Paradigm Micro bookshelf speakers, two Cinema ADP surround speakers, one Cinema 110C Center speaker and one PDR 8 subwoofer. This is the ideal audio system for gaming applications: it’s affordable and is designed to deliver dynamic audio performance optimized for gaming, as well as suited to meet the demands of movie audio and music playback.
“Gamers are becoming more sophisticated about their A/V setups, with many utilizing their gaming consoles alongside other home theater gear,” said Mark Aling, Paradigm’s marketing manager. “We’ve created these new audio systems to sync up with a gamer’s needs, but also to be flexible enough to handle the performance demands of movies and music. These systems fit all aspects of the emerging home entertainment lifestyle.”
Paradigm’s WaveGuide technology utilized in this system is designed to ensure a smooth and wide panorama of audiophile-quality sound, thus creating a larger “sweet spot” where audio sounds the best; with systems like the Wii, where the user isn’t necessarily sitting still, this larger sweet spot is a welcome feature.
Internally, the speakers make use of PTD pure-titanium dome tweeters with powerful oversized magnets that are ferro-fluid cooled and damped for better power handling. This helps provide realistic dynamics in first-person shooters and other action games. Injection-molded co-polymer midrange cones, oversized magnets and the rigid chassis in the bass-midrange drivers create more natural sounding dialogue and dynamics for bone-jarring explosions (if mom and dad’s nerves can take it), while the timbre-matched surround speakers allow fluid and seamless transitions from front to rear speakers for an impressively immersive audio experience. Optional stands and on-wall brackets give the Micro systems several placement options. $944. www.paradigm.com Paradigm Cinema Gaming Systems are only available from certified Paradigm dealers, who can be located here.
The Receiver
The right electronics are imperative for any system and a gaming system is no exception. The latest recession-busting line from Yamaha includes a wide variety of receivers at very attractive price points.
Yamaha’s new systems enable music and movie enthusiasts to fully enjoy their Blu-ray players, broadcast HD services and gaming consoles with comprehensive feature sets through most of the line. Check out the Yamaha RX-V565 that delivers great HD video and audio performance along with tremendous versatility. The RX-V565 (90W x 7) provides a strong full-featured home theater centerpiece of power for the Paradigm 5.1 micro gaming system (or indeed any mid-level surround sound speaker system and if you wish to upgrade to more speakers later, you are covered). The receiver also has on-screen capabilities, and four 1080p compatible HDMI inputs.
It can also upscale analog video to 1080p full HD resolution for stunning, lifelike picture quality, even from non-HD video sources. On the audio side, it offers a full complement of surround sound audio decoders (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio; Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio). This receiver also gives users access to a broad range of content sources, including iPod compatibility through Yamaha’s optional YDS-11 Universal Dock, and Bluetooth (A2DP) compatibility with an optional Yamaha Bluetooth Wireless Audio Receiver (YBA-10).
Other features include Compressed Music Enhancer that restores dynamics to music files ripped from CDs or downloaded from the Internet and Adaptive Dynamic Range Control that automatically increases the volume of softer dialog passages when overall system volume is turned down. The Yamaha Parametric Room Acoustic Optimizer (YPAO) simplifies home theater setup by automatically analyzing room acoustics and setting parameters for optimum sound quality at the touch of a button. $479.95. www.yamaha.com
The Upshot
The set: $2,299.99
The surround sound: $944.
The electronics: $479.95
The total: $3,723.85
For under 4K you have an amazing completely immersive gaming system that will pay for itself within a few months. It is also so flexible and made of such superior build materials, that when the gaming is over, mom and dad have a great home theater system for many years to come.
For information on E-Gear’s home theater hot product, click here.
Check out a slideshow of recession-resistant home theater options.
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