The industry has taken advantage of people's lack of accurate information and lack of experience about audio and video standards, equipment and usable functionality.

We take a different approach. First we believe that you don't have to be an audio or video-phile to understand the basics of home audio and video. When it's explained properly in easy to understand terms you may be shocked at how easy it really is to understand.

You just need to understand that the immense amount of information is designed by the industry to support the needs of that very small percent of consumers that call themselves audio or video-philes.

An audiophile will obsess about every comparable statistic and measurement even if it beyond a human's ability to see it, hear it or use it. Does it really matter if a TV can display 659 billion colors, if the human eye can only see 223 million? Does it matter if a tweeter can play frequencies only dogcan hear? Does it really matter that your amplifier puts out 200 watts RMS per channel, when you neighbors would be calling the police at 100 watts?

You get our point, THERE IS NO POINT..

...other than you can say that this receiver is better, or this speaker is better, or this TV is better than another based on a statistic. The missing part of that lopsided argument is that most people want value and most people are willing to pay a little more to get it. Value is an equation made up of quality, sufficient but not excessive usable performance, ease of use and price.

I sat in a Yamaha training meeting once and listened to the trainer praise some incredible statistics that left the room of custom integrators sighing, oohing and awing.

What was this news? Their new top of the line receiver weighed over 98 lbs and had over 1 million user adjustable sound settings. I know. It's ridiculous. Ridiculous to you and me but not ridiculous to audiophile. To an audiophile 1 million sound settings gives them bragging rights none of their friends has, (at least until the receiver with 2 million settings is launched!)

So why does this ridiculous circle of technological one-upmanship continue between the major brands?

The root of this issue is based on a concept called commodization and a very old marketing model.

Commodization is what happens in a product lifecycle where competitors refine the product to the point that there's no benefit to choosing one brand over another. Take a 42" flat panelTV. Once the industry reaches a point that the number of colors, brightness, contrast ratio, and resolution exceed customer's needs, you have the start of commodization. Once a 42" flat panel becomes a commodity it becomes about price and quality. When manufacturer's match each other's warranty it becomes about price. When it becomes about price, reducing price is what garners market-share. Industry cannibalism starts and profitability suffers.

Manufacturers Avoid Commodization

1) They sell the customer on new features of their product.

2) They improve the product specifications over their competitors

In the first case, let's consider the manufacturer of a 42" flat panel TV. They keep selling the customer on additional features of their model flat panel. These can be real benefits or customer perceived benefits. So you can see what happens. The marketing department develops campaigns around creating customer perceived benefits of their brand or model. Some are real improvements. Pioneer's Kuro technology with blacker blacks.Sharp's 120MHz technology. Let me give you afew examples of perceived benefits: Phillips ambilight that flashed the major color of the screen on the wall behind the TV. Samsung's TV line with a hint of red color in the bezel.

In the second case, only some of the above mentioned improvements are really discernable by the customer. The rest is just puffery!