ZVOX Audio

Don't Sell Your Old iPhone -- Use It To Create A Music System!

2011-12-20T09:42:00.000-05:00

I recently succumbed to the marketing and got an iPhone 4S, despite the fact that my iPhone 3G still works fine. I considered selling the 3G on Ebay, but instead I used it to create a very cool stand-alone music system in the "no television allowed" living room of our Santa Fe home. I put the iPhone in a little $30 docking station and connected it to a ZVOX 580 surround sound speaker system. The result is fantastic! I've got hundreds of songs on the iPhone, plus it uses my wifi network to access Pandora. The iPod dock's remote control let's me skip around without getting out of my chair. And the thing sounds incredible. And because the 580 sound bar has such a low profile, most people don't even notice the system -- event though it has five speakers and two powered subwoofers.

Some recycling projects are more fun than others.

Bing Goes Digital

2011-12-13T12:37:00.002-05:00

My brother lives in Japan and gets especially homesick and nostalgic around the holidays. He recently posted a link to my Facebook wall of Bing Crosby singing “Christmas in Kilarney”, which conjured up memories of listening to our parents’ Bing Crosby Christmas album around this time of year. Which, in turn, conjured up memories of albums…

I eventually bought the same compilation on CD for myself, but even that is about 10 years old and the cover is all cracked and falling off. A couple years ago I put all my Christmas CDs into iTunes and created a “XMAS” playlist that I put on my iPod for the holidays. My how the times have changed.

It’s interesting to think about how much technology has changed in the 25-ish years since we sat around listening to Bing on our old red and white Realistic record player. But, no matter how they make it to our ears, the songs are still the same and filled with great memories of Christmases past. I wonder what Christmas song memories my kids will have, how they will be listening, and how “archaic” the iPod might seem to them in 20 years.

Happy Holidays!

Kate, ZVOX

The Anti-Cable TV Rebellion

2011-12-01T14:24:00.000-05:00

There's a rebellion going on. After years of talking about it, people are giving up on TV -- or at least "TV in the conventional sense." It seems like every week or two I run across another person who has cancelled their cable or satellite TV service because the monthly rates are brutally high. Most of these people have simply switched to the internet.

- They get their news online as MSN.com, nytimes.com, bloomberg.com and hundreds of other sources.

- They get their movies -- and a lot more -- from a Netflix streaming account for under ten bucks a month.

- They get their TV shows from Huluplus for under ten bucks a month.

- They find clever ways to watch sporting events on line.

- And they can do most, if not all, of this from their living room TVs with a Roku streamer or an Apple TV.

My wife and I just spent two months away from our primary home, with just a 27" monitor/TV, a Roku streaming box and a ZVOX 555 sound bar home theater. We did not miss conventional TV even a little bit. In fact, not having local newscasters trying to frighten us every night was very peaceful.

This is a trend with some staying power....cable companies don't seem to be showing any signs of reducing their rates in a meaningful way. The result of course is less advertising revenue to local TV stations. Just like what started happening to local newspapers ten years ago.

HuluPlus, HBO Go and ITunes Accessibility Make Roku Streamer A Winner. Oh Yeah, And It's A Bargain.

2011-11-29T11:58:00.000-05:00

We're big fans of the Apple®TV media streaming box. It's sleek. The interface is slick. And it gives us access to the iTunes library that resides on our big computer upstairs. So anywhere we connect the Apple box to a TV/ZVOX sound bar combination, we get a instant home theater and music media jukebox.

We also like our Roku streaming box. And lately, we like it even more than the Apple TV.

The Roku interface isn't a slick as the Apple TV's, but it's pretty good. The biggest shortcoming of the Roku system, until recently, was that it didn't give us access to our iTunes® library. But last summer they added a feature called MP3Tunes which lets us do just that. Plus the Roku give us access to HuluPlus -- which allows us to watch a whole big mess of TV shows for $7.99 a month -- much cheaper than buying shows through iTunes on the Apple TV. The combination of a Netflix subscription and a HuluPlus subscription is cheap money compared to the cost of cable TV. And if you compare the cost of renting a cable box to the cost of buying a Roku box, pretty soon you'll be replacing cable boxes on your second and third TVs.

Another cool thing is traveling with a Roku player, especially for long term vacations. Just throw the little box in the suitcase and you bring entertainment wherever you go -- just plug in the HDMI connector. And now Roku has added HBO Go -- a service that allows HBO subscribers to watch HBO on demand, at no extra cost, wherever they travel with their Roku box! And the new model is less than 50 bucks (compared to Apples' $100).

Apple TV, we like your sleek design and interface. But until you add HuluPlus and HBO Go, we're gonna dance with Roku.

® Apple and iTunes are registered trademarks of Apple, Inc. Roku is a registered trademark of Roku, Inc.

Commercials Too Loud? How To Fix That.

2011-11-21T10:05:00.000-05:00

Why is it that the most annoying commercials are also the loudest?

And why are they SO loud?

Yes, we know that there is legislation in the works to force broadcasters and cable providers to "turn down" all those loud commercials. But we'll believe it when we hear it.

In the mean time, the cool Output Leveling (OL) feature in our new ZVOX 555 and 580 sound bars pretty much takes care of the problem. It automatically recognizes that a commercial is too loud and turns it down so fast your ear can't tell what happened. It's also good for minimizing the sudden volume jumps so popular with many modern movies -- you know, when all of a sudden the music and surround sound effects get three times as loud as they need to be, just to get you "more involved" in the movie?

Output Leveling also deals with another issue -- Blu Ray DVD players that don't play loud enough. Many of these new disc players seem to sacrifice overall volume level to improve dynamic range (the ability to go from soft sounds to loud sounds without distorting). The result is they just don't play very loud -- and our Output Leveling feature fixes that too, by pumping up the too-soft volume levels.

So if you don't like loud commercials, you can wait for our glorious legislators to force broadcasters what they should have been doing all along. Or you can buy a new ZVOX home theater system!

Dialog Emphasis -- Greatest Feature Ever On A TV Sound System?

2011-11-04T16:42:00.000-04:00

When we introduced our first single-cabinet surround sound system in 2004, we were surprised by how many customers bought it for one simple purpose: they wanted to hear the spoken voice on TV shows. They didn't care about surround sound effects, great bass or musical fidelity. They just wanted to be able to understand the news announcer -- or the actor on the sitcom or cop show.
So when we were designing our new ZVOX 555 and 580 sound bar systems we put a special focus on voice reproduction -- introducing a revolutionary "Dialog Emphasis" control. This "DE" setting is makes voices more clear and easy to understand than any other audio system we have ever heard. A 555 or 580 with the DE control on makes voices just "jump out at you."
DE works much the way a hearing aid works. It de-emphasizes non-vocal sounds, and emphasizes the frequency range where voices occur. The feature also makes the voices uniformly loud, without a lot of variation in volume from one person to another.
The folks in our Massachusetts call center (all trained ZVOX employees by the way, no script-reading mercenaries), tell me that DE is hugely popular. Sometimes it seems like it's all anybody wants to talk about. This is a feature people really, truly like.
We've been making a big deal about vocal clarity for years, because TV speakers keep getting worse and worse. So it's interesting to note that some TV manufacturers are now paying some attention to the issue. The latest TV we got has a "Clear Voice" audio setting that actually helps a little. But there's only so much you can do with little tiny speakers that are aimed at the floor (yes, they are pointed straight down -- heaven forbid that consumers be forced to look at a speaker grille!). The first step towards clear voice reproduction is a using high quality speakers and amplifiers. Step two -- like the electronic magic we work with our DE feature -- only works right when applied to good speakers.
If you've ever had trouble hearing dialog on a TV show, you should try one of our new home theater systems. DE is kind of like cell phones. Before you have it, you think it's an unnecessary and maybe just-plain-stupid luxury feature. But once you've lived with it for a week, it becomes a necessity.

Ed Villchur

2011-10-26T11:43:00.001-04:00

I had the honor of sitting at the feet of Ed Villchur during his most creative years. Roy Allison, his Executive with the title of Plant Manager assigned me to work with EV, as we called him, in developing the AR-4. I had discovered him in articles and in the letters to the editor of the hifi magazines of the 50's and a book written by him about hifi.

I worked next to the anechoic chamber on the fourth floor of the Thorndike St. building. The walls were covered with the rubber stamp of Henry Kloss, who had worked in developing the original AR woofer before going off to found KLH. My work consisted of building new prototypes, testing them in the anechoic chamber and occasionally bringing the promising one to EV's office for auditioning.

Edgar Villchur Helped Re-Define High Fidelity

His technical innovations and inventions were substantial. Even more impressive were his marketing innovations. When he started Acoustic Research, Inc. (AR), high fidelity was a home hobby affair, monophonic, of course. Hifi systems required many thoughtful purchases from many different sources. The typical hifi'er was usually an engineer who designed or built some of the components himself. The original Radio Shack store was in downtown Boston and the source of many components. The LP vinyl record was a recent development. Graduate students at MIT were working on pulsed amplifiers and four by four arrays of mid-range drivers (so-called "sweet sixteen", which were in a way the predecessor of the Bose 901.)

Marketing has always been a magical mystery to me, so I have no idea how he did it, but ten years later he had created a network of more than 3,000 distributors and dealers and a near monopoly on the hifi speaker market.

Having achieved his product and financial goals, he sold his company to a conglomerate, and more or less retired to his rustic home in Woodstock, NY.

Some of his inventions and innovations:

Acoustic suspension woofer system, which allowed true bass from a small enclosure.
The philosophy of accurate sound reproduction from a speaker, along with the requisite specifications. especially linearity and dispersion.
He was a pioneer in the technique of audio delay by a tape loop.
Dedicated public listening rooms (in Grand Central Station and Harvard Square.)
Live versus record public concerts, where musicians alternated with recordings of their performance.
Simulated "live vs recorded" as a R&D technique for subjective evaluation of new speaker designs.
Not only anechoic loudspeaker measurement but also reverberant in a twenty sided polyhedron of his own design of which no two sides were parallel or perpendicular to each other.
The development of an audiophile turntable for the mass market.

In marketing, his emphasis on quality and service were decades ahead.

When I started my own speaker company, virtually everything from product considerations to business practices were based on having worked with him. Unfortunately, I never learned anything about marketing.

Winslow Burhoe
AR, KLH, EPI, Burhoe Acoustics, Audio Products International, Genesis Physics, Direct Acoustics and ZVOX Audio, a long trail...

Our Cable Boxes Use Ridiculous Amounts of Power -- And It's Time To Do Something About It.

2011-06-27T17:29:00.000-04:00

Most cable boxes, because they never really go into "standby mode," use a lot of power. According to a recent New York Times article, if you have two HD cable boxes in your home, it's likely that they use more power in a year than an efficient refrigerator -- 446 kilowatt hours! (In contrast, we estimate that a ZVOX 555 sound system will use about 7 kilowatt hours per year.) We're not sure what can be done about this, but we have some ideas. Like send an email to your cable provider. Here's a copy of the email we sent to Verizon this morning (we recommend you send a similar missive to your cable supplier):

I want to get cable service that uses less electricity than my current set top boxes...which according to the New York Times use more power than a refrigerator! What can I do? Get service without the boxes? Cancel Verizon and switch to Apple TV? Do you have more efficient set top boxes? Help! This cannot go on!

Another option is to throw out the cable boxes and those handy DVRs and plug the cable right into our TV -- but picture quality seems to suffer. Or, as we hinted at in the email, we could just drop cable and watch Neflix and Hulu Plus through our Apple TV and Roku boxes. Or we could connect our cable box power cords to a Smart Strip power strip, which deprives the box of power when the TV is off -- but that means the DVR can't record while the TV is off. And it also means that every time we start the TV, it will take several minutes for the cable box to "boot up" (just like a computer).

But something's gotta be done.

Click here for information on Smart Strip power strips
Click here to link to New York Times article

Who Created The First Home Theater System? Maybe I did!

2011-05-27T10:02:00.001-04:00

I know of at least a dozen people who claim to have "invented" home theater. I am not one of them. But it is arguable that I "created” one of the very first -- maybe THE first -- legitimate home theaters...in 1974.
First, a definition. I will define home theater as the combination of three key elements: 1) a sound system capable of wide-range, loud, three-dimensional sound, 2) a television with a large (40" or more) screen and 3) programming material that combines quality video and high-fidelity multi-channel audio.

By the early 1970s "quadraphonic sound" was a big deal, with many companies offering four-channel receivers that typically used some sort of mechanical time-delay or phase manipulation to create the rear-channel signals. And good full-range loudspeakers were relatively plentiful. So the sound system wasn't a tough thing to build. But big TVs were another story.

Prior to 1972 the biggest TV you were likely to find was 25" -- but then Advent Corporation introduced Henry Kloss' amazing VideoBeam 1000 -- a projection TV with an 84" screen. The VideoBeam 1000 paved the way for big screen television as we know it today. It was plenty big enough for a home theater system.

But where, pray tell, was one to find program material that combined entertaining video and multi-channel audio? Cable TV didn't exist. Stereo VCRs didn't exist. DVD players were about 20 years away. The answer? Simulcast broadcasts -- where a TV station and a local FM stereo radio station joined forces to broadcast a live event. Which is exactly what happened in the summer of 1974, when Orchestra Hall opened in downtown Minneapolis.

Orchestra Hall was a big deal -- a beautiful venue with spectacular, state-of-the-art acoustics. Demand for tickets for opening night far exceeded the seating capacity of the hall. So Margaret Moos, a producer at Minnesota Public Radio, had a brainstorm -- why not set up a mini concert hall with big screen TVs and high quality sound and sell tickets to benefit the radio station? That's when she called me.

At the time I was Director of Marketing at a chain of stereo-video stores called, believe it or not, "Sound of Music."* We were one of the first 12 dealers in the country to sell the Advent VideoBeam TV. Working with Margaret, we set up two systems, each comprising of a 7-foot Advent TV, eight Advent loudspeakers and a Marantz quadraphonic receiver. Picture quality and sound quality were really very good. Hundreds of people paid to watch the show -- most of them wearing tuxedos and evening gowns.

It was a truly wonderful night. Excitement was in the air. Champagne was flowing. Beethoven ruled. And home theater proved to be almost as good as being there.

* Nine years later, "Sound of Music" changed its name to Best Buy. Since then they've become rather more successful than they were in 1974.

My ROKU Traveling Entertainment Machine

2011-05-18T13:24:00.001-04:00

My Roku XD|S streaming media player is pretty cool. Simple to use. High quality video. Affordable. And tiny. On a recent trip it took up less room in my suitcase than my tiny camcorder. When I got to the house we were renting, I plugged it into the TV, logged onto the house wifi network, and was watching Netflix streaming movies in less than eight minutes. No fuss. No muss. And no extra weight or clutter in my suitcase. I'm glad I brought it along.

Why Do Moms Like ZVOX Surround Sound Systems?

2011-04-25T09:01:00.000-04:00

I’ve worked in the consumer electronics industry for 15 years. I'm married and I'm the mother of four children.

When I started in the business, I worked on the sales floor for a chain of electronics stores -- where I learned a very important acronym: “WAF." Wife Acceptance Factor. Some products had it. Most didn't.

Back then, NO surround sound systems had high WAF. I saw many multi-speaker home theater systems get returned because the wife said “no way.” As a mom myself, I totally get it. It’s not that we don’t like good sound – we do. But we don't like speakers all over the room and wires on the floor -- or running up the walls. We don't like booming “movie-theater sound” that wakes up sleeping children. And we don't like things that are so complicated they require a 96-page owner's manual.

At ZVOX we see very few systems returned due to bad WAF . One box, one connecting wire, one-page owners' manual, good sound…what's not to like? But don’t take my word for it….Read some of the great reviews we’ve received from some Mom-Oriented blogs:

http://www.mommypr.com/index.php/2009/08/zvox-audio-review-giveaway/

http://www.lindsayblogs.com/2010/10/04/zvox-audio-home-theater-review/

http://thriftywifey.com/uncategorized/zvox-550-audio-surround-sound-review/

http://www.tobethode.com/2010/10/zvox-audio-review.html

-Kate, ZVOX Marketing Manager

How To Make Voices Louder On DVDs.

2011-03-28T18:02:00.000-04:00

Have you ever noticed that voices on DVD movies can be hard to hear? Without getting too technical, that's because modern DVD players are designed to provide wide "dynamic range." This means the "quiet" sections of the DVD are much lower in volume than what you find on cable TV or older movies. This is a good thing in a movie theater, where the "maximum" volume is often louder than you would want to hear in your home. Most people at home choose to listen to DVDs at a volume setting where the loud sounds aren't "movie theater loud".

The result is that voices are often too soft. But you can fix this problem by using the "Menu" button on your DVD player's remote control to engage the DVD player's "night mode" or "DRC."

Night Mode (also known as "TV Mode," "D.COMP," "DRC" or "Dynamic Range Control") is a feature on many (but not all) DVD players. You should be able to find it using the on-screen menu system of your DVD player by pushing the "Setup," "Audio" or "Options" button on your remote control. You may have to have a DVD with a Dolby Digital soundtrack in the player when you change the settings. Make sure you are examining the DVD player's on-screen menus, not the menu system for the DVD disc that happens to be in the player.

When you set your DVD or Blu-ray player to Night Mode or DRC, several things should happen. The overall sound level should go up. There should be less difference in volume between soft passages and loud passages. And voices should be louder and easier to understand.

Is "Big Night" The Most "Just Right" Movie Ever?

2011-01-24T10:34:00.000-05:00

Boy do I like Netflix streaming video! There is always something interesting to be found. I've now got an Apple TV in my living room and a Roku HDS system in my office, so the hunt for cool material is on. Jean-Michel Basquiat documentaries. Early episodes of Weeds and Dexter. Oddball foreign films. The list goes on.

On a recent Saturday night, in the "Recommended for You" category, up pops Big Night -- the quirky film about a struggling Italian restaurant in the 1960s. I remember watching it on a plane in 1996. It was great then, and maybe greater now. The characters are so well developed, so interesting, so real. Ian Holm's Pasqual has one of the great lines ever spoken in a movie, while lecturing Segundu (Stanley Tucci) on his philosophy of life -- "Bite your teeth into the ass of life -- and drag it to you!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lYs-2XDkz0

And the feast -- I so wanted a seat at that long table!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GFRixTtEcE

The drunken dancing scenes with Louis Prima on the phonograph lead me from Netflix to a YouTube journey through early Prima and Keely Smith videos that opened up a whole new world to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfNgcDvPn1M

If you haven't seen Big Night, do so! It's not the biggest movie ever, or the artiest, or the most clever. But it might be the most "just right" movie ever made.

Sound Bar: Elegant Chicago Nightclub or Odd Home Theater Name?

2011-01-21T14:16:00.005-05:00

When we created the first ZVOX systems in 2003, there was nothing else like them. They didn't fit into an existing product category. We didn't know how to put a label on our products.

At first we called them "sound consoles." But that sounded pretty old-fashioned. Then we moved to "single-cabinet surround sound system" -- a real alliteration mouthful. We also tried "all-in-one home theater." But none of these caught on.

Because most competing products use a long, skinny bar-like speaker cabinet, somebody started calling them sound bars (or soundbars)...a name that people seem to like. So now ZVOX systems are commonly classified as sound bars -- even though most of our speakers are not at all bar-shaped. We tried to fight it, but we were outnumbered. So sound bar is the winning name for our product category -- even though the top Google ranking for sound bar is "an elegant Chicago night club."

Oh well.

About.com Puts Four ZVOX Systems On List of Top Sound Bars

2010-12-06T10:28:00.000-05:00

Robert Silva, the Home Theater editor for the terrific web site About.com, recently released the list of his recommended sound bar systems -- and it included four ZVOX systems: the 575, 550, 425 and 325. And our top-of-the-line 575 system was the top-ranked amplified sound bar under $1,000.

Robert also included the 575 on his list of recommended "home theater gift ideas for mom." Hard to argue with that. We have yet to meet a mom that didn't love a sound system with no speaker wires.

http://hometheater.about.com/od/hometheaterinabox/tp/onepieceht.htm

http://hometheater.about.com/od/toppicks/tp/aatphtmoma.htm

Tiny Digital-to-Analog Converter Works Great, Is Cheap As Chips

2010-12-02T18:07:00.001-05:00

About four years ago some TV makers started removing a great feature -- simple analog audio output jacks. They replaced these jacks with digital outputs -- which only work with digital inputs. So a number of our early ZVOX models, which don't have digital inputs, would not work with these digital-out-only TVs. There have been little digital-to-analog converters around for a while now -- little boxes that convert the TV's digital signal into something any sound system can work with. But a new one from Monoprice is really cool because it works very well and it's just incredibly cheap. $25.60. We bought one and have been testing it for a week or so with no problems. Great little product.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10423&cs_id=1042302&p_id=6884&seq=1&format=2

39 Years Ago Best Buy Was Named After a Julie Andrews Movie, ZVOX Founder Had Full Head of Hair

2010-11-21T11:38:00.000-05:00

In the "About Us" section on the ZVOX web site we point out that our company was started by industry veterans. Evidence in support of this claim comes in the form of this clipping from the Sound Advisor newsletter of September 1971. It shows me, smiling and with a remarkable amount of red hair, as one of several new employees of The Sound of Music, the Minnesota chain of stereo stores that later morphed into Best Buy. It says "Tom's specialties are communications and live recording. He has consistently displayed a real determined instinct in helping our customers find the equipment that's best for them."

I did, in fact, get into the audio business to support my live recording habit. Revox tape recorders and Shure ribbon microphones weren't cheap, so I got a part time job at a store that sold them. Within a couple of years I had been named Director of Advertising and was one of the top five people running the company when I left to join Advent Corporation in 1976. Many of the guys I worked with at Sound of Music -- including Dick Schulze and Brad Anderson -- went on to become multi-millionaires (or in Dick's case, multi-billionaire).

They were good people. Hard working and driven. The same was true at Advent, where Henry Kloss had built a company that magnetically attracted smart, interesting people with a passion for music, video and unorthodox, high-value products. Looking back, it seems odd that we actually manufactured speakers and big-screen TVs in a building across the street from MIT.

The audio business has changed a lot in 39 years. But we'll do our best to keep coming up with unorthodox high-value products.

Fast-Tech vs. Slow-Tech: Why We Don't Build BluRay Players Into Soundbar Systems

2010-11-18T14:01:00.001-05:00

When we started ZVOX in 2003, one of our first ideas was to create a single-cabinet home theater system that included a DVD player. The idea was appealing because the product would save shelf space and reduce wiring needs. But it was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now for one simple reason. "Fast-tech" products should not be integrated with "slow-tech" products.

Fast-tech products like Blu Ray players, Apple TV and Google TV are constantly changing. Buy one and a year later it's out-of-date and over-priced.

Slow-tech products like high quality speaker systems tend to be much more stable. An early ZVOX prototype system from 2003 is still in use in our founder's kitchen. And Henry Kloss enjoyed the same KLH stereo system for 40 years.

So if we had integrated a DVD player with a ZVOX system in 2003, the whole system (not just the old-technology DVD player) would now be out of date. By keeping our slow-tech ZVOX speakers separate from all those fast-tech products, we extend the useful life of our systems.
If you buy a ZVOX sound system today, it should continue to work well with your future electronic purchases for many years to come. That may not be good for our business, but it's good for you.

How Loud Motorcycles Could Reduce The Deficit

2010-10-19T11:46:00.000-04:00

Many many motorcycles are too loud.

Don't get us wrong. Sometimes we like loud stuff -- great music, a good movie. ZVOX is all about loud when loud is good. But when we're reading a book in the back yard the sound of a 40-second 103 decibel internal combustion fart is just bad.

If you don't own a Harley, you're almost certain to agree with us.

If you do own one, you're almost certain to disagree with us. You'll tell us that your Harley needs to be loud for safety reasons. Then you'll put on your low-visibility black leather jacket and your totally useless skullcap helmet and ride away, thus demonstrating that your safety concerns are limited to areas that make you look (or sound) cool.

The EPA has national regulations banning the use of loud motorcycle exhaust pipes, and many states and towns have laws on the books. But they are rarely enforced, because proving that the bike is too loud is complicated and requires testing equipment and, often, court appearances. Maine has passed a law that requires bikers to have a current stamp proving their systems are within the legal noise limits. They even require the sticker be displayed prominently from the rear -- so police officers can see (or not see) it.

Monetizing noise.

Here's an idea. Each state should do what Maine's doing -- then enforce the law. Start collecting $250 fines from every loud Harley, every time it gets caught. Then offer a "safety exemption sticker." For $1,000 a month, motorcyclists can get a sticker that allows them to ride around with loud pipes. Currently there are about 7 million motorcycles in the United States. We don't know how many have illegal pipes -- but it sounds like a lot of them. If 10% of all motorcyclists received one $100 noise citation, that would raise $70 million. If 10% of bikers chose to pay $1,000 a month for the privilege of being loud -- for just four months of the year -- that would raise $2.8 billion a year. And if any bikers decided to go back to legal pipes, the world would become a better, quieter place -- and a lot of mechanics would get a lot of work. Good for unemployment!

Of course we think that the people buying the "safety exemption" stickers should also have to agree to wear bright pink helmets and jackets (to help them stay safe), but state legislators probably aren't as cruel-hearted as we are.

For more information about noise pollution of all sorts, check out www.noiseoff.org -- a truly great web site.

Installing The New Apple TV - A Love Story

2010-10-14T12:23:00.000-04:00

We just installed our zippy new Apple TV system. Because the installer (me) is old and rather bone-headed, the installation (including re-registering a lapsed Neflix account) took about half an hour of fussing and running up and down stairs between office PC and living room TV. I'm pretty sure most people could get it up and running in 10 minutes or so.

After hookup and keying-in passwords, operation of the device is gloriously simple. Intuitive to a fault. Picture quality on my new Samsung LED-backlit 40" TV is excellent -- a powerful testimonial for the quality of a good 720P HD signal. Audio quality is also good.

This simple little $100 box gives me access to my entire I-Tunes audio and video libraries, plus it lets me watch YouTube and Netflix videos. For me, it's all about I-Tunes music and Netflix. My living room ZVOX 575 home theater system is now -- for the first time, really -- also my first floor audio system. The I-Tunes user interface, translated to my TV screen (or my iPhone, which can act as a remote for the Apple TV system) is simply great because it is simple. Simple good. Complicated bad.

In the past I've used Netflix on demand on my PC, but having the service available on my main TV changes the game. I was quickly bouncing from the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup" to episodes I'd missed of "Archer" and "Better of Ted." This thing is fun!

But more than fun, it's simple. Sites like Gizmodo and Engadget tend to poo-poo the Apple TV because it's not 1080P and because other similar devices will do more. But the 720P picture I get is perfectly great -- and iTunes, Netlfix and Youtube are pretty much all I want. So Apple's remarkable simplicity and affordable price won me over....for now. But I may have to check out the recently-announced Sony BluRay player with built-in Google TV.

Why We Don't Build iPod Docks Into ZVOX Systems.

2010-09-30T13:02:00.001-04:00

We love our iPods® and our iPhones. ® We also love the convenience of a dock that recharges and connects to a ZVOX audio system. But we have a couple of really big issues with the idea of building a dock into a ZVOX system:

1) Apple® changes the connectivity specifications. There are thousands of people who bought expensive sound systems with iPod docks -- only to have the dock become obsolete when they bought a new iPod.

2) The 30-pin connectors built into the docks are susceptible to breaking. A friend of ours just visited his daughter in her college dorm room. The daughter, her roommate, and three people on the floor all had sound systems with broken connectors.

What we recommend.

Buy a separate iPod dock. The one from Apple is $50 and works very well. If the connector breaks, you can buy a new dock. If the connectivity or charging protocol changes for a new iPod/iPhone model, you can buy a new dock. It's a lot easier and cheaper to buy a new dock than to buy a new sound system.

And that is why we don't build them into our systems.

® iPod, iPhone and Apple are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.

Truly Disturbing....Results From Our Ugly TV Contest.

2010-05-19T14:24:00.000-04:00

We were pleased and horrified by the entries we received for our "Ugliest TV Contest" -- where was asked people to submit photos of the wired-up messes in back of their televisions. Wow. We knew that "wire hairballs" were a problem, but we saw some real catastrophes! We've seen razor wire on prison fences that was less scary than the back of some of these TVs. The winning photo was awe-inspiring. It was like looking into the Grand Canyon of Wire.

We also loved the one where the owner had wedged in a small fan to cool his DLP TV. It was interesting to note that some of the ugliest messes used high-end interconnects and speaker wire. Those tangled jumbles of glowing blue cables were hypnotic, big, hot expensive messes (many of those cable sell for more than the price of a complete ZVOX system).

Thanks to all our participants. It was great fun. We will do it again. Click here to see all of our entries.

3D TV, 3D Sound And 3D Marketing.

2010-05-12T17:50:00.000-04:00

Several years ago goofy demonstrations of 3D television started showing up at the Consumer Electronics Show. They were goofy because all they did was highlight the (limited) capability of a technology that had no good content. We would walk by these silly displays without giving them a serious thought. But really decent 3D TVs from Samsung, Panasonic and others, as well as movies like Avatar and Alice in Wonderland -- and the floodburst of 3D titles that will soon hit us -- have changed all that. 3D TV is here, and it's probably here to stay.

Right now a good 3D TV is going to cost you more than $2,000, maybe a lot more. And then there are...the 3D glasses. Because the first generation of 3D TVs requires special electronic glasses that synch up with the TV via a Bluetooth connection. And the glasses cost about $150 a pair.

So let's do a "value equation." Let's say you buy the "small" Samsung 3D set (46") for $2,599. Then at least two pair of 3D glasses, $300. BluRay player with 3D capability, $200. Total: $3,099. And what are you going to watch? Right now there is ONE 3D movie available in the correct format on a BluRay DVD (the children's movie Monsters vs. Aliens). There should be between 50 and 100 available by the end of the year, including Avatar.

So if you're like us (and most of you are, we think), you're going to wait a bit before running out to buy a 3D TV. The good news is you can buy a ZVOX system today and get three-dimensional sound with your current DVDs and the 3D discs you buy in the future. We've been promoting our "room filling three-dimensional sound" for six years -- because our systems really do create sound with a sense of depth to it.

And unlike many of the "3D compatible" sound systems that are about to flood the market, we pay a lot of attention to old-fashioned concepts like...fidelity. Accurate tonal balance. Crystal-clear vocal reproduction. Dynamic bass. We continue to believe that the number one criterion for choosing a sound system should be good sound -- not "3D compatibility,"

True confession time...

2010-05-12T10:05:00.002-04:00

Until a couple weeks ago, I didn’t use a ZVOX as my main TV system. I had one downstairs in the den on the “kid’s TV”, and I had a Mini under my computer monitor. But upstairs on the big Toshiba in our living room we had a full-blown 5.1 surround sound system. Denon receiver, Cambridge SoundWorks tower speakers, center and rears, and a Velodyne powered subwoofer. We don’t watch a lot of movie these days but when we do, we really like to experience the “home theater” effect.

Anyway, we were recently rearranging our living room furniture and I started thinking how nice it would be to get those huge speakers out of there, not to mention the receiver with all the buttons and lights that was like a homing beacon to our newly mobile 8 month old. I thought my husband would resist but he surprised me by agreeing to give it a go. So, we packed up the speakers and receiver, took the rear speakers off the wall (yay!) and put a IncrediBase 575 under the Toshiba. I already knew the system sounded good but I had no idea how much nicer my room would look without all that extra equipment and speakers in it. It’s clean and neat and sounds great and there is nothing for the baby to mess with. Unless of course he gets his hands on the remote….

Bottom line? The 575 has successfully replaced our 5.1 surround sound system, without causing causing home theater withdrawal…even for my husband.

-Kate, ZVOX Audio Internet Marketing Manager

How Ugly Is The Back Of Your TV? It Could Win You A ZVOX Sound Bar!

2010-04-01T16:29:00.003-04:00

We are amazed at the giant "wire hairballs" that seem to grow behind TVs. About eight years ago, we decided to reorganize all the wires behind a TV, and found two cords that weren't connected to anything! It's as if the other wires mated and had offspring! So we're having a contest to see who has the ugliest "wire hairball" behind their TV. The winner gets a ZVOX Z-Base 550 surround sound system with one cabinet, a one-page owner's manual, and one connecting wire! Contest deadline is April 30, 2010. Send your images to info@zvoxaudio.com -- and put "Ugly TV Contest" in the message line. Click here to size up the competition....