I’m not sure how old the DVD player was, but knowing my brother, it was probably considerably older than my six year old daughter and younger than, well…..dirt?

It seems the component video was no longer working and the S-video was shot as well. After figuring out that one of the pins of his S-Video cable had broken, he connected via composite video and stated “that’s good enough!” After hanging up, I thought to myself, “I gotta get him a Blu-Ray!” (After all, what good is it to being the AV bussiness, if I can’t help out my own brother that has does so much for me.)

He had purchased a Panasonic 50″ plasma television a year ago and the thought of anything being connected to it via composite video was bordering on sacreligious. If not for him, for my two nieces! Fast forward to this weekend when my daughter, my son (5 months old and already using the remote – as a teething ring), and myself were going to stay the weekend. It was the perfect opportunity to get them one!

I was already picking up a couple of SONY BDP-570 for a client, so I figured I’ll pick them one up too. I have used the BDP-570 in the past, and along with a host of other features, it had built-in wireless capabilities. I normally hard-wire network components for clients when possible, but not knowing my brothers exact network configuration this would be a plus.

After connecting the player to the display the SONY prompted to complete a Quick Set-Up. A few selections and we were ready to move on to the network set-up. After selecting “wireless” under the Network tab, the next step was to search for our preferred network and enter the security key. The SONY found the network with ease and was getting a relatively robust signal considering its proximity to the router.

So, it was on to the firmware update. It has been a rule of mine to update the firmware on all of my personal A/V equipment as well as clients before proceeding any further. This insures that you have the latest firmware and features available, but also that you don’t perform various other menu settings only to have them lost.

The update took a modest 10 minutes and after rebooting it was on to the fun stuff! I informed my nieces, much to their delight, that the player had several of latest and greatest apps including – Youtube, Netflix, and Pandora to name a few. My youngest niece dashed to her cell when I told we had to activate the player and sync it with her Pandora account. Without any instruction, other than me calling the activation code and website, we were up and running in minutes.

And as I soon found out, GLEE is an available genre on Pandora. I went on to show them Netflix and some of the other features. Over the weekend we watched several movies and it seemed every time I walked in the room there was a capella version of a Journey song or some other remake of an 80′s rocker. There were a couple of hiccups while streaming movies from Netflix, but all in all, I would say it was a hit and I would recommend the SONY BDP-570 to anyone who is looking for a reasonably priced Blu-Ray Player with latest Apps and wireless connectivity.

At the end of the day if its about smile quotas, the SONY BDP-570 was worth its weight in gold!

Take receivers, for instance. A few years back, it was question of whether or not to spend the extra money and get a unit with HDMI or wait until they had perfected. Here of late, it’s been whether or not to spend the extra cash on a receiver that is network enabled.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been recommending to my clients that they spend the extra money and step up to better, more feature-packed receiver models, from the DENON line in particular. There were several reasons for this, a few being the internet radio, IP control, the ability to update the firmware, and for future feature sets that my clients would find desirable.

DENON and DM holdings (DENON’s parent company) proved me right earlier this year, announcing that they would partnering with Apple and offering a Air Play UPGRADE on their latest line of network enabled receivers.
Air Play, an Apple technology, allows the user to stream music from their iTunes library wirelessly or via a wired network from any AirPlay capable device to any other AirPlay capable devices, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, DENON network enabled receivers.

When I first learned that DENON was a featured partner with Apple, I have to admit I was giddy with excitement! The possibilities were endless. I imagined lounging by the pool, streaming music to the patio speakers while surfing the net on an iPad… my clients throwing a party and playing DJ while socializing with their totally impressed guests…

Needless to say, I could not resist including DENON’s AVR-991 in one of my projects earlier this month with the promise to my client that when the upgrade was available I would come back out I would come back out and make it all work. After completing installation of the project, I enabled DENON’s upgrade notification feature that would notify us when the upgrade was available.

Sure enough, when the upgrade was released, my client received a friendly reminder that the upgrade was available on his display. I’m not sure if he called me immediately, but judging from his excitement, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t long after. The very next day I was at my client’s home, prepared for a long frustrating session of trial and error to get it up running. I’m happy to say that wasn’t the case.

After going to DENON’s website and clicking on the “learn more” tab, about the AirPlay, I was given concise and easy instructions on how to upgrade the receiver. I won’t bore you with all details, but the whole process excluding the updating of the client’s iPod Touch took less than an hour.

After paying the $49.99 through DENON’s website and entering some required info about the client’s receiver, I downloaded DENON’s free remote app through Apple App store. I updated the DENON and voila!! it was done.

Operation was simple and staight forward with two major points of interest, the Denon app and iTunes. From the DENON app, I was able to control the receiver as if I had the remote in my hand. It allowed me to turn on and off the different zones, select sources, volume levels, even surround modes. The iTunes portion was even more staightforward. After selecting the desired playlist , I was given the option at the bottom of the iPod Touch’s display, to either have the selected music play on the iPod Touch or the AVR-991 which I had given a user friendly name during my initial set-up of the Denon.

This was not really necessary in this application, but is very useful when more than one AVR is being used in a project. After selecting I was able to control the volume of the DENON without having to navigate out of iTunes, via a very responsive slide volume bar located at the bottom of the iPod Touch’s display. Absolutely amazing!

See specs on Denon’s blog

The Panasonic AE1000U projector has become their most-used television and as I was there I was struck by the incredible picture quality with far more natural light in the room than we tend to tolerate.

Panasonic has a new model of this projector, the AE2000U, which is even better than the original.