As many of you may know, I'm a regular guest on a nationally syndicated radio talk show hosted by Leo Laporte, aka The Tech Guy. The show is broadcast live from 11AM to 2PM Pacific time on Saturdays and Sundays, and my segment is right after the 11:30 news on Saturday.

Some stations only carry part of the show, and some air a recording rather than the live feed, so the timing may be different in your neck of the woods. To find a station near you that carries the show, click here; to download podcasts of the show, click here. (BTW, I was live in Leo's studio for the entire show on Saturday, August 2, 2008, which is podcast 479.) You can also watch a live video stream from the studio during show hours by clicking here.

Last Saturday, I followed up on a question posed by a listener who had called in the week before asking about how to configure an upconverting DVD player for a 720p display. Unfortunately, the 12 minutes of my segment wasn't really enough time to fully explain this confusing subject, so I thought it might be a good idea to go over it again here...

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Robert is just getting started in the whole home-theater game, and he has some basic questions:

What is the best LCD TV from Sony or Panasonic between 47 and 60 inches? I'm looking in the price range of $1500 to $4000.

Who is the best calibrator to hire to calibrate my HDTV?

Should I get 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound?

Which 5.1 or 7.1 system should I get?

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I got home from my THX adventure on Saturday, after three long days of hard-core tech training in a darkened room while the most perfect weather I can imagine beckoned just beyond the walls. But it was worth it—although I already knew most of the material, I did learn a number of useful things, and I got to observe the course itself to see what aspiring calibrators can expect if they take it.

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My blog is a bit later than usual this week, but I've been pretty busy. Tom Norton and I are taking the newly developed video-technician training course offered by THX at the company's headquarters in San Rafael, California, just north of San Francisco in Marin County. Tuesday was the first of three full days of instruction and hands-on lab work, after which some of us went out to dinner and caught Hugh Masekela's set at Yoshi's, a famous jazz spot in Oakland. After a wrong turn by Laurie Fincham, THX's brilliant but directionally challenged chief scientist—thanks for the grand tour of San Francisco, Laurie!—I just got back to my room.

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Colin Robertson, a thoughtful commentator on many UAV blogs, is facing the age-old question as he contemplates upgrading from 2-channel to surround sound:

For some time now, I've wanted to move up from stereo to surround sound. My problem—besides having expensive tastes!—is that my speakers, Vandersteen 2Ces, seem to dictate that I should go for separates, but my budget says otherwise. I love my Vandersteens and am not willing to part with them, nor am I willing to go with another brand for the other channels. I currently have a pair of 125-watt Rotel monoblocks and an Adcom preamp.

My question is this: Should I wait until I can afford some decent separates or go with a receiver for now, possibly suffering a drop in sound quality from my current setup? Can you recommend a receiver that will adequately drive the Vandersteens?

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Peter Zolldan asks a perennial question:

I have been thinking about buying a larger LCD HDTV soon. Should I wait a little longer until more LED backlit displays are available or purchase now? My short list includes the Sharp LC-52SE94U, Samsung LN52A750, and a few different Sonys, such as the KDL-52XBR4 and KDL-52W4100, which I believe is about the equivalent of the XBR4. I also really like the looks of the KDL-40Z4100.

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Mike Slough in Australia has some questions about A/V receivers:

1. Are there any reasonably priced A/V receivers that can maintain the volume at a steady level? I have a problem with different TV stations and pay-TV providers delivering different volume levels—I am constantly having to adjust the volume when I change channels or sources. It would be nice to set the volume I want and have the receiver compensate for the difference in input levels.

2. Will A/V receivers made for the US market work with Australian AC power (240V, 50Hz)? Receivers and other equipment are a lot cheaper in the USA than Australia, mainly because the US dollar has weakened so much. It is very easy to order online and have the items sent to Australia—even after taxes and shipping costs, many items can be as much as half the price when ordered from the USA. But if they won't work with Australian AC power, that could be a problem.

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Dan Golus of Irvine, California, recently wrote to me with two A/V "beefs" about which he feels very strongly:

1. Why don't LCD and plasma TV makers include an option to "step down" a hi-def TV's resolution to simulate a CRT screen for watching old TV shows like I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners? Old TV shows look great on old CRT TVs. I know that an HDTV's high resolution cannot make these old shows look better than a CRT, but there's no reason they should look worse.

2. Why hasn't Sony released hybrid Blu-ray discs with a DVD layer so they can be played in any DVD player? Many people have more than one DVD player—home, office, car, PC, laptop, portable. They do not want a movie disc that can only play in one player. They don't want to tell their kids they can't watch a favorite Disney Blu-ray disc on their car's DVD player. A number of people have told me this is the main reason they keep buying DVDs and haven't purchased a Blu-ray player.

In 2006, Sony told me they were considering it, but at the time it would add $10 to the cost and would hurt the format's introduction. Okay—now it's 2008, and Blu-ray won the format war. Where are the hybrid Blu-ray/DVD discs?

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If there's a choice between convenience and quality, convenience usually wins out. The best example of this is the sad tale of DVD-Audio and SACD vs. MP3, all of which were introduced at roughly the same time. The convenience of quickly downloading MP3s into portable players easily trumped the vastly superior quality of DVD-A and SACD. Granted, the skirmish between the two high-res audio formats didn't help, but I suspect the outcome would have been much the same even if there had been no competition at the high end. So what's an audiophile to do?

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Last Tuesday, I attended a demonstration of the BD-Live capabilities that will distinguish Disney's Blu-ray release of Sleeping Beauty, the first Disney animated title with these enhancements. Of course, to take advantage of them, you need a BD-Live (aka Profile 2.0) player, of which there are very few so far. In fact, the only ones available as of this writing are the Sony PS3 and Panasonic DMP-BD50, with the Sony BDP-S350 and S550 expected to ship soon.

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A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Bogeun Chung, general manager of the LCD TV product-planning team at LG's headquarters in Seoul, Korea. He wrote that he would be passing through L.A. with one of his engineers on Monday, June 9, and asked if we could meet at Grayscale Studio, the video-testing facility for UAV and Home Theater. I value any personal contact with manufacturer representatives, so I quickly agreed. Little did I know how interesting that meeting would turn out to be...

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My wife Joanna was on a business trip last week, and she found herself in a hotel room with an LCD TV. As she was doing her daily stretching routine on the floor, she turned on the TV and noticed that the colors looked very weird from that angle, "almost like a color negative" as she wrote in an e-mail. "What's up with that?" she wondered.

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In the comments following my blog last week, Neil Richards asked a follow-up question that is the cause of much confusion. I wrote a bit about it in the comments attached to that blog, but I thought it deserved a more thorough treatment this week.

Here's Neil's question:

Please explain the differences between 1080i and 1080p. Is there a huge difference in picture quality?

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Here's a question I get a lot. This one's from Kevin Iole, a boxing and MMA columnist for Yahoo! Sports:

I have a 56-inch Samsung HL-R5667W DLP RPTV that I bought in June 2005. It's a 720p television. I wouldn't mind a larger screen, though we're happy with the picture we get on this one. But I keep hearing how great the picture is on a 1080p set. So my question is this: Will I see a significant improvement if I upgrade to a 1080p TV?

If I change, I'll either go with a Pioneer Kuro plasma or stay with DLP but go bigger with something like a 73-inch Mitsubishi. Is this change just throwing money away, or will we see a significantly better picture?

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It's really strange—and a little unsettling—being without Internet access, though it's also kind of refreshing to unplug from the constant torrent of incoming information and spam for a little while. After a long day of bus rides, factory tours, and presentations by Epson execs, we ended up at a hotel in Matsumoto (near Nagano) with futons for beds on woven-wicker tatami floors.

Also notable was the natural hot spring in the hotel—a scalding 104 degrees—and a complete lack of Internet access, which is said to be common in that part of Japan, a country otherwise famous for embracing technology. As a result, I had to post this blog a day late but hopefully not a dollar short.

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As I write this, I am 34,000 feet above the Bering Strait traveling at 575mph aboard a new Boeing 777-300. We just crossed the International Date Line, turning Monday into Tuesday, after passing over Adak Island, a small member of the Aleutian chain stretching westward from Alaska. I can't help thinking of my father, who spent much of his Navy service there during WWII as a member of the band that played for high-ranking officers and other dignitaries who stopped at the remote base going one way or the other.

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As I drive around L.A. and see gas prices approaching—and exceeding—$4 per gallon, I wonder how this might affect people's entertainment activities. I'd love to know how it's affecting you...

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Once again, I am very gratified at the thoughtful responses to last week's blog that were posted here and e-mailed to me. Clearly, UAV has many intelligent, articulate readers, and I thank you for sharing your insights, which will help me select the best products to review. Instead of posting inline replies to the comments left during the week (sadly, an activity I don't often have time for), I'll summarize my thoughts here, partly so I can devote some undivided attention to them and partly in the hopes that the discussion will continue...

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First, I'd like to thank all of you who responded to my query of last week. I got more than 30 replies that expressed a wide range of opinions on what products UAV should review—not only specific products, but types of products, price ranges, and other criteria. Here's a summary and a follow-up question...

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In this blog a couple of months ago, I asked readers to vote on whether you wanted more audio reviews with fewer objective measurements or fewer reviews with more measurements, a choice I had to make in the face of budgetary constraints. Your input was very helpful, so now, I have another question for you...

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