Very cool article by Steven Castle of Electronic House, explaining the features and their importance when choosing a universal remote control.  Enjoy.

One of the most important decisions you can make when buying a whole-house music system, home control system, or home theater system is choosing the remote control. It’s the thing you use to communicate with all that equipment. And it better work…

via Home Theater: Anatomy of 6 Remote Controls, by Steven Castle – Electronic House Info and Answers.

At CEDIA, Optoma showed their new 3-chip DLP 1080p home theater projector, the HD8600. Designed specifically for custom installation, the HD8600 has ISFccc Day and Night modes, three options for lenses, accented lens placement and full lens-shift.

It also has an Auto235 mode that automatically positions Optoma’s optional anamorphic lens/sled kit to move the lens into place without user intervention for enhanced 2.35:1 content viewing. The projector features a 50,000:1 contrast ratio, and a brightness of 1600 ANSI lumens and the list price for it is $7499.99.For more information, please go to http://www.optomausa.com/

via rAVe HomeAV Edition — Volume 6, Issue 19 — October 6, 2009.

If you absolutely need to impress your buddies this football season, this “Brat-Shack” will turn heads whether you are in a Soldier Field parking lot or in your own driveway.

Were you looking for an ultimate “Man-Cave” on wheels?  Sam’s Club could be your last stop.  Tailgating Innovations 7.5′ x 12′ Big Cook features a 52″ Sony Bravia LCD HDTV, an additional 19″ Sharp LCD HDTV, 5.1 Sony Home Theater System/DVD Combo, slide out 1000 sq in event propane grill. bathroom and sink, 2.7 cu ft refrigerator, 1/2 Barrel Keg Cooler. Rear and side doors allow easy access, and interior cabinets provide organized storage. The trailer also features electrical outlets w/ 30 amp breaker box & 25′ shore cord, internal E-tracks for secure hauling, internal lighting, smooth aluminum exterior and aluminum wheels w/ spare tire and wheel.

How much does it cost? A mere $35,000 (shipping included).

via Sam’s Club.

More than a year after dropping video podcast support into TiVo Desktop 2.6, the company will let users download them directly to their Series3, TiVo HD and HD XL set-top boxes.

This allows expansion beyond its own directory of web videos, allowing users to stream instantly, download a single episode, or setup a Season Pass (subscription) and download them automatically. As Dave Zatz points out the press release mentions supporting h.264, but offers no specifics on resolution or bitrate. Check out TiVo’s site for more info on setting it up either through the box or creating a compatible feed, and let us know if your preferred web series are working yet.

via www.engadgethd.com.

Optoma HD20 projector

It looks like sub-$1,000 pricing is shaping up to be the new 1080p as the headline spec for projectors tempting you to reach for your wallet. Don’t get us wrong — $999 isn’t exactly in the “impulse buy” category, but it opens up projectors appeal tremendously. Optoma’s HD20 has joined Vivitek’s H1080FD in the $999, 1080p, DLP-powered beamer segment. Competition is always good, and the HD20 is happy to oblige by bringing 1,700 lumens, a 4000:1 contrast ratio, two HDMI inputs, and a bulb life of 4,000 or 3,000 hours depending on whether you take in the movies in “standard” or “bright” mode. Oh yeah, and the Optoma name might be a little more familiar to consumers than Vivitek, too. Competition is good, indeed.

via endgadgethd.com.

Reference-quality Blu-ray performance and video processing • Full interactivity and audio decoding • Fast operation and load times • SACD and DVD-AudioDawn.

Price: $499

Oppo’s DVD players belong in the mid-range category of high performance HD playback devices. Oppo sells his products solely online, but has a great reputation for excellent performance at a lower price point and its outstanding customer support .  Many of you don’t realize that Oppo was first to introduce a fully upconverting dvd player, with picture quality so amazing, that regular dvd playback almost matched some of the popular BD players today.

The BDP-83 combines Blu-ray playback with universal DVD playback that includes SACD and DVD-Audio.  No player has offered both in one unit. The only other player that now offers it is the new Denon DVD-A1UDCI, which comes in at a hefty $4,500.

via Home Theater: Oppo BDP-83 Universal Blu-ray Player.