Reviews

The prospect of wiring surround or multi-zone loudspeakers is often fraught with difficulty and may be a job best left to someone who can open up walls, fish speaker wire and install a wallplate with wire terminals. Instead of hiring a costly contractor or spending several hours and dollars in parts, Aperion Audio presents the Zona Wireless Speaker System which promises to lift the burden of wires from us. After our positive experience with Aperion Audio’s Intimus 4T speakers, our interest in Aperion Audio’s wireless solution was piqued.

The $399 Zona Wireless Speaker System are stereo speakers that can be employed in a variety of scenarios: serving as speakers sourced directly from a PC, stereo or surround speakers in a home theater or as part of a separate zoned speaker system where the installation may be in a remote room or patio.

Having spent a couple days with the new Apple TV I figured it would be great to share some of the finer, and not so fine, points of the user experience. While I could write it up, a video seemed like a much better idea. Enjoy!

Silverstone Technology was founded in 2003 and has been building cases specifically for the home theater PC (HTPC) market since almost the very beginning. Aimed at HTPC users who must have a low profile case but don’t want to sacrifice expansion options, Silverstone offers the Milo ML03b. At a mere 105 mm in height, and only 340 mm in depth (4.13 x 13.38 in), it will fit into places that other HTPC chassis could only dream about while offering expansion options typically only available in a full-height HTPC case. Today, we will put this case to the test and max out all expansion options to see if it is up to the task.

The Fractal Design Array R2 chassis instantly recalled for us the decidedly niche, but incredibly functional, cube-style cases popular a few years ago. which were incredibly niche but very functional. The R2 was flexible, silent and sleek in a very limited amount of space. The Lian Li PC-Q25 chassis shares many of the same appealing traits, but goes for a taller design in a similar footprint. This allows it some interesting arrangements inside and allows for even more internal storage options. As a small form factor case there are always trade-offs to be made, and the omission of an optical drive space is just one of them. With some very attractive features in a small form factor cube-like chassis, the Lian Li PC-Q25 has a lot to offer a variety of consumers, which we will examine closer.

My first exposure to DLNA devices was lacking. It was the clunky standard that everyone “supported” in their own way, but no one really did well enough to call “working”. Fortunately it has slowly evolved on both the device and software layers to the place we are today, where DLNA is actually useful for many things like control and media playback on our TVs and mobile devices. The standard still requires some growth (mostly around synchronized playback) to take over the whole home audio space, but where that is not a requirement audio Digital Media Renderers (DMR) like the $132.60 ARCTIC Audio Relay we will review today can provide an excellent solution to single point music distribution within the home.

When we were at CES, CyberLink was showing a beta version of PowerDVD 12.  There were some advancements in the product versus its predecessor, PowerDVD 11 - most notably automatic refresh rate switching, but the best part was that they gave me a copy to bring back and test on a variety of systems to provide a preview of what PowerDVD 12 has to offer. As much as I would have liked to publish this earlier, they asked that we not until today. This turned out to be a good thing though, because there was time to create a few videos and take a much more thorough look at the product than would have been possible otherwise; just keep in mind that the copy that was tested was not the final revision so some of the issues may not be present in the real release and I was not able to get the APK for their DLNA application for my Kindle Fire so that aspect will only be covered briefly.

Creating the right audio environment is a critical part of enabling an immersive home theater experience, but is often neglected either due to ignorance or the erroneous assumption that good sound is unattainably expensive.  The process of finding the right speakers is made even more difficult with few shops providing an adequate listening environment, let alone one with options in an affordable price range.  Speaker manufacturer Aperion Audio has a solution for these issues, offering their 150 watt, $550/pair Intimus 4T tower alongside a no-risk thirty day trial with shipping covered both ways, so they can be tested in the actual environment where they will see use. 

Connected media streamers, like the pair from Roku and NETGEAR that we reviewed recently, focus on providing access to IP content but generally cannot handle local media well enough (if at all) to be a viable unifying solution.  Until we have enough bandwidth, and services able to deliver quality audio/video services over the Internet, those devices act as a supplement to players like the Dune HD Smart H1 that we will look at today.  Locally cached content includes a diverse set of file types and formats, so H1’s support for disc-less Blu-ray, M2TS, MKV, and all of the codecs commonly found within is an essential starting point.