Blue Jeans vs. the Monster

Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back - Response to Monster Cable

Not long ago we reported that Monster Cable had issued a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cable about their Tartan cables. Little did the lawyer drones over at Monster know that Kurt Denke, the president of Blue Jeans was, in a former life, a lawyer by trade. Oops!

I really like Blue Jeans Cable and have purchased a lot of cable from them. They believe in science, engineering, and being honest about manufacturing source. Monster is the more typical cable company that uses hyperbole and mystery to sell the same hardware at far higher prices. There's nothing wrong with Monster cables functionally, just that they'll sell you a $180 HDMI cable when you would get the same result from a $5 cable.

So big Monster (the bad guy) sends a threatening letter to little Blue Jeans (the good guy). The little good guy is fighting back.

Go Monoprice (The Truth About HDMI Cables)

It seems my comments have sparked a little blog fire.

• HDMI Ripoffs Continue: $89 HDMI Switcher Selling for $350
• HDMI Twins: Is BetterCables Selling an $89 HDMI Switcher for $350?

It started when I read a review of the Better Cables switch on the Secrets of Home Theater site. Other readers and I thought it looked familiar, and we were right. The excellent online retailer MonoPrice.com sells the same one under their house brand for almost 1/4 the price. Kyle at Geek With Family blogged this and got picked up by Gizmodo. He then looked further and found Belkin is also selling the same line for large markup.

Always use MonoPrice when possible, especially for HDMI cable. (at least until they inevitably raise their prices). When you buy a DVD player at Best Buy they will happily sell you an HDMI cable for $70 and even push you to a "better" one for as much as $300. Don't fall for it, it's all profit for them. Those $100 cables are no better than the ones MonoPrice sells for a tenth the price. Let me say that again:

Those HDMI cables are no better than the ones MonoPrice sells for a tenth the price.

You do NOT need a $200 cable to do 1080p, but the sales boy will insist you do. I take my home theater very seriously, some may say obsessively. I'm especially concerned about picture quality - you have to when you have a 100" screen. I use MonoPrice HDMI cables, MonoPrice digital audio cables and a MonoPrice HDMI switch. My analogue audio cables are from Blue Jeans Cable. It's always the engineering and science that matter, don't ever believe the "magic" that so often comes up when talking higher-end home theater.

Why Sony Must Be Stopped

First porn producer to choose has chosen HD DVD over Blu-ray. On it's own I don't care. I'm not a devotee of the smutty arts, and, despite popular lore, the porno industry had little if anything to do with VHS winning over Beta. No, what concerns me is the claim by said porn producer that Blu-ray was the first choice, but that Sony didn't allow it. If that's true, it paints a disturbing picture of Sony deciding what is acceptable use and what is not for the technology. Imagine in a few years Blu-ray were to become dominant. Would Sony then ban Microsoft from using it in a future Xbox system? Would they allow some special features to only be used by movies from Sony studios?

I don't like the idea of a content company controlling a technology standard.

The New Sherwood Newcastle Receiver Is Everything I'm Looking For

Forget Apple's new phone, for a couple of my colleagues and I, the big gadget announcement was really the Sherwood Newcastle R-972. Dolby TruHD, DTS HD, HDMI 1.3 switching, 1080p up-converting, that Sherwood quality - the hardcore-home-theater-geek forums are rightly hot and bothered over this.

It should be out in the summer and it should be available in P-972 form without the integrated amp. Around these parts we like our beer cold, our dollar low, and our components separate.

This may also mean an upcoming replacement for the Outlaw 990 since it's based on the P-965 (which I currently own) which is the predecessor of the R-972. For those truly interested, back in March I complied some background information on Sherwood.

Sony complains that you don't pay enough

Sony whines over HDTV price drops. 2006 was a great year for high-def television set prices. Well, if you're a consumer. Sony is worried low prices will hurt the industry. LOL. At least they're not one of the companies under investigation for LCD price fixing.

In other I-Hate-Sony news, how about that Wii? I read today that in Japan after one month of sales the Sony PlayStation 3 has already outsold the Microsoft Xbox 360 which has been on sale for over a year. OK, but everyone expected that, Japan hates the Xbox. To me the real news in that "Sony vs. Microsoft" article is near the end where they mention, almost in passing, that the Nintendo Wii sold more than both the other systems put together. In one week.

Go Mario!

Guide to blank DVD media quality

Blank media quality guide & FAQ. A detailed list of blank DVD manufactures and brands by reliability. I've been looking for a guide of this quality ever since I burned a batch of garbage DVDs a couple years ago.

The thing that must be realized is that most media is produced by a relative small number of factories, located in several different places. These factories are mostly present in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India, some European locations. There are more, but those are the largest ones. The best media generally comes from Japan and Singapore. The worst typically comes from Taiwan or China (in stores) and Hong Kong (online).

Cars: Tied for best looking movie of the year

We finally watched Pixar's Cars. Great movie, and i'd say as good looking as X3 on our home theater. It's going to be hard to pick a "Best picture quality" winner at this Jadies.

First weekend with our home theater

Our home theater officially had its opening weekend and the reviews are all positive. We've watched a few movies, a few TV shows (off DVD), and I've already just about finished the first season of Battlestar Galactica.

• For a while I had thought about getting a plasma, LCD, or rear projection TV in the 50" range. That would have been a mistake, because the 100" projector image is fantastic. There are no issues about being too close (12 feet). If you have a room where you can control the light, I definitely recommend a projector. The huge screen is a great immersive cinema experience. And it's generally cheaper than a plasma or LCD of even half the size.
• A little more seating would be nice. Unfortunately, we had to work around the layout of the basement. Still, it's not too bad. The couch holds 4 in total comfort, and a couple more can squeeze on if they're small. Beside it is some room to push a few chairs over. If need be I guess we could bring down chairs and fill the whole basement since most spots can see the screen, but like my wife said, it would look like a furniture store. We had 6 watching Munich on Saturday with no problems.
• Having the room lights on remote control is worth the relatively minor expense. It's most handy for when the movie has ended and you're suddenly in a pitch black room.
• Having the equipment and DVDs in a separate room is good.
• Having cup holders built into the couch is a dream come true for any man.

Another picture of THE couch

 

It's here

4 seats, each reclines, center console/armrest.

Basement contruction album

 

Basement: Dude, where's my couch?

I took yesterday off work to wait for THE couch to get delivered, the final electrical inspection, and a rep from another company.

• The couch didn't come.
• The electrical inspection failed.
• The rep never showed.

The rep not showing isn't a big deal. It wasn't that important and I was going to be home anyway. The electrical inspection failing was actually a good thing. I wasn't entirely happy with the way the switches controlling all the stair lights were setup. I should have checked it out before the drywall went up, because I was then told the walls would have to be opened up to get it the way I wanted. I didn't think it would be worth the patching, mudding, and painting again, but it turns out the way I wanted it is required by code. Brian is here right now finishing up and it turns out no walls had to be damaged at all. It was a subcontractor Brian used to finish the lights and it was that sub who said it couldn't easily be fixed.

So that's all good, but the one thing I really wanted yesterday was THE couch. The home theater isn't really ready until we get that couch, and we certainly can't have people over to watch with us without seating. I had the delivery setup for yesterday, July 6, from noon to 5pm. Believe me, the delivery of THE couch is not something I would have gotten wrong. When 5 o'clock came and went I called and was told it was scheduled for July 13th from 9am to noon. Stupid furniture companies, but what are you going to do? I didn't believe it would come in the promised 8 weeks, but secretly I still hoped it would. If it actually does come when they say it will this time, it will have been nearly 11 weeks.

Basement: Construction Album

Here's a large album of pictures from the construction. Once the dust settles and we get some furniture, I'll make a "Basement Finished" album.

Basement: What are all those wires?

When people see this picture I hear "That's a lot of wires". They are:

• 5 x passive speakers (12 AWG pair)
• 1 x active subwoofer (co-ax)
• 2 x Ethernet (cat 5)
• 2 x phone (cat 5)
• 1 x control in (cat 5)
• 1 x control out (pair)
• 2 x spare to upstairs (cat 5)
• 2 x cable/sat in (co-ax)
• 1 x cable/sat out (co-ax)
• power on dedicated circuit

While the phone and control only need 4 wires, I used 8 wire cat 5 because, for some reason, at Rona it's cheaper. The spare cat 5 go to the top floor and could be used for audio, video, remote control, etc. The control out will be used for the room lights. Why get up?

Basement: Screen size

This weekend we'll be doing a test setup of the screen and projector. It's a 100" 16:9 wide screen and the main seats will be about 12' away giving a 33.7 degree viewing angle from the center seat. Yes, that's a one hundred inch screen. Too big? Nah. I tested this setup in a few different stores and I'm happy with the size. Also, when watching 4:3 "TV-sized" content the viewing size will be only about 82". The THX recommended 16:9 screen size for this seating distance is actually 107", so maybe it's even too small (ha ha).

The truth about Sherwood Newcastle

I like Sherwood, in fact one of their fine Newcastle P-965 preamp/processors is currently somewhere in the nebulous world of parcel shipping, destined for my doorstep. This post is a place for me to put some information I've found on the history of company. It's not that Sherwood is trying to hide their current ownership by a Korean company and their relationship to other hi-fi brands, it's just that their website isn't exactly clear on it, and that's led to some confusion on the net and from the local dealer.

Today

Sherwood America is a division of Etronics Corporation of Seoul, Korea. To put it another way, Etronics is a large OEM who also sells their own equipment under various brand names, including Inkel, Vatel, Sherwood (the cheaper stuff) and Sherwood Newcastle (the good stuff). The Newcastle gear is manufactured in ChunAm, South Korea, and the other in China.

History

Sherwood Electronic Labs was founded in Chicago 1953 by audio engineer Ed Miller. In 1980, Sherwood was acquired by Inkel Corporation of Korea. Around 1995 Inkel was acquired by the Haitai group in Korea and became known as Haitai Electronics. When the financial crisis hit Asia in 1997, the Haitai Group was broken up (it is now defunct) and some of the Inkel acquisition was rolled back. With the Haitai name then discredited and Inkel still in the professional electronics business, a new name, Etronics, was chosen.

OEM

An original equipment manufacturer, OEM, is a company that builds products or components that are used in products sold by another company. Sherwood claims that they are the manufacturer of "nearly one third of the world's high performance receivers". I've heard brands like Adcom, SAE, Kenwood, Marantz, Philips, Yamaha, Denon and Harman Kardon and I've also heard the 1/3 figure was closer to reality in the 90s and that Harmon Kardon no longer uses Etronics. The real numbers of OEMs are a secret. This is understandable since the high-end A/V world is full of brands that are little more than their name on someone else's product for a lot more money.

One Sherwood OEM customer that isn't a secret is Outlaw Audio. They're a refreshingly open company that is frank about the fact they outsource the manufacture of all their products. Their 990 pre/pro is based on my P-965 and the Outlaw website not only says this, but outlines what they feel they've added to the product with their version. In this case the Outlaw direct sales model means their version is actually sold for less. (But I bought my P-965 used)

So, Sherwood's philosophy is still true today: "Design audio gear that offers only the highest levels of performance and make it yourself". Some people online are confused about the relationship and say Sherwood buys from Etronics (Sherwood IS Etronics). Or they say Sherwood buys from competing OEM Eastech of Taiwan (probably just mixing up Etronics and Eastech). And as a final note, apparently the Rotel development group is staffed by several ex-Inkel engineers and is also in Korea.

More links

• Etronics page for the P-965 except the picture shown is the R-965, the P-965 with a built-in amp.
• Some Etronics company info
• Some Sherwood company info
• A thread on the AVS forum where Sherwood employee "Stereojeff" provides a lot of company and product information. Stereojeff has been very active in that forum, providing information and help on Sherwood products for years.