Egads, downloads. Lossless audio is pretty much the best thing that the HDM formats have going for them: the picture quality is marginally better, but the sound is intense. If hidef downloading means Dolby 5.1 at best, then count me out.
Oh, and trmacdonal, that's a false dichotomy you have going there. My system is in a living room, not a home theater, and it can get EXTREMELY loud -- but that doesn't mean that it always is. We process all sources through the AVR, and most of that is at a normal volume level that you would get from any speaker system, including those built into a TV. The fact that a system CAN be loud does not mean that it always is or has to be. As for wires: I don't have an "expensive installation" -- its all out of the walls -- but you'd have a hard time even finding my surrounds in our living room (they are well hidden by un-impeded), let alone tracing the wires. It just takes some creativity and an appreciation of good sound.
“Getting too close completely blurred what we saw to the point of incomprehension, but again, this shows a whole heap of potential that's fascinating to us.”
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Egads, downloads. Lossless audio is pretty much the best thing that the HDM formats have going for them: the picture quality is marginally better, but the sound is intense. If hidef downloading means Dolby 5.1 at best, then count me out.
Oh, and trmacdonal, that's a false dichotomy you have going there. My system is in a living room, not a home theater, and it can get EXTREMELY loud -- but that doesn't mean that it always is. We process all sources through the AVR, and most of that is at a normal volume level that you would get from any speaker system, including those built into a TV. The fact that a system CAN be loud does not mean that it always is or has to be. As for wires: I don't have an "expensive installation" -- its all out of the walls -- but you'd have a hard time even finding my surrounds in our living room (they are well hidden by un-impeded), let alone tracing the wires. It just takes some creativity and an appreciation of good sound.
AMEN!