Why I Hate Home Theater Mag

Home theater mag is the biggest POS in the HT world, it went from Butterworth/Cherun/Wood to this garbage they call reviewers and editors now


I cancelled my 8 year sub last year because I am all stocked up on toilet paper already.


-Gary

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LOL!

The mag looks nice and shiny on my coffee table though.

I subscribed to a few A/V magazines last year just to give them a whirl. I don't think I'll be renewing any of them. The biggest problem is that the technology changes faster than they can publish.


HT Mag does look good on the end table I must admit. People come in and flip through it. They never even touch my NRA magazines.

I used to think Home Theater was the best one, with Sound And Vision a close second. Now its the other way around. H.T. was MUCH better back in the Butterworth days, hell they used to test equipment I was really interested in. Now, we get some esoteric BS that no one wants or can afford and its all about the decor. I blame Mareen Janson for that, having worked at Audio/Video Interiors before that. They really need to start testing SVS, new Denon, anything else or i'm gonna pull the plug on mine too.

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Now I KNOW I should renew.

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About a year ago Sound and Vision went downhill too....

Sound and Vision eats it now too, I cancelled my sub on that one also


while we are on it, anyone have a good recommendation for a great HT mag ?? or are there any ??


-Gary

Of the three, The Perfect Vision is by far the best. I paid $10 for last year with HT. But, it's not interesting, so no renewal. I still receive S&V and TPV.

The biggest problem that I find with most of these Home theater mags. Is that the print often lags by 2 months. So by the time the latest print reaches the shelves, a new tecnology or equipment would have already been available to the public. So when one is reading the print they may be talking about waht is to come, when in reality it may have already come to pass.

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Brent Butterworth is now the editor in cheif of Home Entertainment from Robb Report.

http://www.hemagazine.com/

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That's disgraceful - someone in her capacity, and supposedly an enthusiast...


Folks should send a few (respectul please) emails to the magazine (and cc'ing her) enquiring as to how this could be so...

Widescreen Review is my favorite. Greg Rogers really know his stuff.

This month's issue also has a review for the Sony DVD-NS9100ES player. They talk about Blu-ray as if it were the only HD format. I understand that it is a review for a Sony player, but I think it just goes to show that these reviews aren't always as forthcoming as they should be. It just feels like they've been bought off.

Actually a good read for me was DIGITAL TV and SOUND (spring edition). I do get all of the magazines listed above and I probably like W.S.R. the most. I am reconsidering after visiting their website and seeing they are selling HD DVDs for 34.98! DID THEY NOT LEARN A THING FROM SELLING D-THEATER TAPES? I hope nobody orders a disc at that price from them. I do like The Perfect Vision though (probably more now). Plus I was not thrilled reading about a 29,995 DLP 1080- pj (WSR this month). Give me something I can use. And as far as Home Theater is concerned, I to found it very odd that the editor has NOT seen HD DVD yet. I wonder how many sony adds are in this month's issue? It does seem like there aren't any UNBIASED magazines when it comes to electronics... Those Bastards!

The funniest thing I saw in the latest HT issue is "Best source component for under $500" which is the Sony DVP-NS975V upscaling DVD player. I own one mainly for the 480i output over HDMI which works well with my VP30 scaler. There are things I like about it, but it is a slow and glitchy player and had a notorious firmware bug that caused it to lock up and stop playing discs permanently. It happened to me. The only fix was was to ship it off to Sony for a firmware upgrade. Thankfully it was still under warranty, otherwise the only option was to exchange for a refurb costing almost $200. To top it off, it was discontinued back in the fall of 2005. So recommending it now doesn't do anyone much good since you can't buy one anymore, not even from sonystyle.com which they list. When I read it I started laughing and thought "This is the best component they could find for under $500?".

"To be fair I haven’t seen HD DVD yet."


A whole month into the launch and a mag that makes it's money on being on top of home theater hasn't bothered to look into the hottest item to come out for HT in years BS.

Question: Do these HT mags buy the hardware to review or is it given/loaned to them by the manufacturers?

I think Consumer Reports is the only mag that actually buys them off the store shelves and they do not accept advertising which is why the mag cover price is so much. At least that is the way they used to be.


I just wish they would hire more knowledgable people to investigate CE products then they could put the others out of business.