HI-FI VCRs? Yes, it's gradually fading into the sunset. The VCR has served us very well, and although the Hi-Fi VCR was a very good effort of bringing the cinema experience into our homes with analogue technology, the digital era is now in fruition. The technology has improved greatly and costs have dropped. Burner or write technology has has made digital recording possible and DVD recorders have just about fully replaced the faithful old VCR. In turn, Disc recorders are being replaced by recordable hard drives in DVD and STB recorders as the storage media gets cheaper. And indeed DVDs are a very worthy medium as they can hold multiple tracks of audio and video which provides the full spectrum of audio for all the surround channels and an excellent video channel. On top of that there are subtitles and multi angle video, all thrown in with no added degradation to the quality of the movie. In fact with evolution, we now have even more data (our digitised movies) being squeezed into newer disks like the Blu-Ray disc. As a result, we're now getting even clearer movies recorded in high definition.
One of the first attempts to bring the cinema home used a technology called Dolby Surround which was developed by Dolby Labs to encode extra information into a standard stereo track. This info was sound for the rear channel and the center front channel.
Today, there are even more audio technologies. There's DTS (Digital Theatre System), THX and AC-3 (Dolby Digital). The current technology is any one of these three, but it comes in a minimum of 5 individual channels (front right and left, rear right and left and centre). Other inclusions are a subwoofer for special effects, and there is 6 and 7 channel systems which have additional side surround channels. Here's where our modern DVDs and Blu-Ray discs come into the picture. A Blu Ray disc can hold 50 GB of data or 9 hours of high definition video or 23 hours of standard definition video.
Even home theatres are in the process of evolution. Currently, I have a simple set up of an all in one JVC receiver, a set of Yamaha front and centre speakers and a NHT set of dipole rear speakers. I also added my on home brewed subwoofer for the .1 channel. I ought to replace the NHT dipoles, but I just like the design which is a nice white colour and came complete with wall brackets. I love the Yamahas for the excellent clear dialogue. I used to use a NHT superzero for my centre speaker but the dialogue was not clear. The NHT superzeros sounded good with music, but not with movies. The receiver has Dolby 5.1 decoding and DTS. It is technically sound with a fair number of features and sounds fine, but it doesn't do much for the actual imaging. The more upmarket brands still have much better surround sound processors built in. For my bedroom, I use a 21 inch JVC TV, Pioneer DVD with SRS, a home mede amplifier and a set of Bose speakers. SRS from SRS Labs is supposed to simulate surround on a set of stereo speakers. The Bose speakers sound excellent and I can hear the dialogue clearly even when the volume is way down in the middle of the night. I've now had this set of speakers for many years now, but I just can't find any excuse to change them as they are so good!
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