This week at Hooked Up Installs, we put the spotlight on what may be some sweet new additions to your home theater and home entertainment system. If you believe that you already have the basics – HDTV, powerful home audio, a video-on-demand service – all hooked up, then you might want to check out these recommended components, which may enhance the value of your home theater and heighten your home entertainment experience.
Definitive Technology SuperCube 4000 Subwoofer
Looking for a powerful subwoofer that’s under $1,000? Check out Digital Tech’s all-new SuperCube 4000, a spectacular subwoofer compact enough not to take up too much precious home theater room real estate – yet powerful enough to provide explosive bass for those high-octane action movies and head-banging club anthems.
The SuperCube 4000 features: 56-bit, digital-signal processor (DSP) preamp stage (essentially a mini-computer) for extending and improving the bass response, an all-new 1200-watt digital tracking power amplifier, an optional wireless kit for wireless connectivity, and a Performance Optimizer Remote control for convenient and precise home audio system tweaking. The coolest thing about it all may be the subwoofer’s price tag: at $799, the Definitive Technology SuperCube 4000 is a terrific home audio bargain.
Pioneer VSX-1122K A/V Receiver
If your media files come from multiple audio and video sources, you’ll have to find a good A/V receiver to do the job of integrating them all together. Very few will do a better job than Pioneer’s new VSX-1122K, a 7.2-channel, 3D-ready AV receiver built for the modern-day home theater.
The VSX-1122-K is network-ready and works with AirPlay, Pandora, vTuner, and SiriusXM. You can also connect your Apple devices like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod to the receiver (cable included). A rear panel Ethernet port, meanwhile, allows full integration with your home network, with Windows 7 and DLNA 1.5 certification, Bluetooth connectivity, the latest HDMI technology, 192 kHz / 24-bit WAV and FLAC file compatibility, and instant streaming of MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV and FLAC files to your home theater system.
The $600 receiver is equipped with advanced audio and video processing technologies, too. Pioneer’s Advanced Multi-Channel Acoustic Calibration system (MCACC) provides an optimized, multi-channel listening experience that can be customized specifically for your home theater. Qdeo video processing, meanwhile, provides video conversion from composite and component video to HDMI – making everything look beautiful, wherever of where the video is coming from.
Western Digital My Book Live Duo
If you’re still storing all your media in CDs, DVDs, or USBs, or if you’re not quite at peace with paying monthly fees for Amazon or Apple to store your stuff in the cloud – you might welcome a safer, more efficient way to store and back up data. This is where WD’s My Book Live Duo comes in.
A personal cloud storage device (with a storage capacity of 4 TB to 6 TB), the My Book Live Duo creates a personal cloud for your media and files, so you can access them securely over the Internet using your PC, Mac, iPad, iPod, iPhone, smartphone, game console, or media player. That way, your media and files stay safe at home – and, through the cloud, always with you. No monthly fees, no mysterious server locations. It’s all there in a centralized storage device.
Not only can you store, sync, and stream your stuff anytime and anywhere with the My Book Live Duo; you can also use it as your backup solution: RAID mirroring technology continuously maintains a second copy of all your files for real-time data backup. To open content on mobile devices, Western Digital offers two free apps: WD Photos (photo viewer) and WD 2go (file viewer).
