Page 1 of Poor, poor reviews in HCC - Is this what YOU, the readers, really want ?!

Time for a rant : I picked up Home Cinema Choice today. I don`t normally bother with the DVD rags anymore, but I was going to be stuck on a train, I`d already read the paper and my Axim battery was flat...

One piece, above all the others, struck me as really poor. They reviewed the new Yamaha DSPX750SE - An award-winning amp into which I`m looking currently. However, when boiled down to the real meat, the review was no more than a handful of paragraphs. It never even mentioned the remote speaker YPAO, nor anything about the component video switching and upsampling (HD compatible) !! These are two of the major new features of this amp, and two of the reasons why it`s being so highly regarded in it`s price bracket.

Compare that to my review of the A5 a few years back.

It just struck me as rather sad and just a little bit screwy - do you, the readers, really want to spend £3.99 an issue getting fed cheap, crappy reviews like that, interspersed with 50% of pages of adverts with "call now" where the prices should be ?!?! If you`re trying to invest your hard-earned in a/v hardware don`t you really want to know what it offers you, and how it rates first ?

Am I going off on one here, or do others agree ?

(I suppose the upshot is that you get better content here, for free, so keep clicking on the banners ;), but that makes it sound like a self-serving argument ! )

This item was edited on Tuesday, 21st September 2004, 23:44

I haven`t got a cinema system yet, because I`m so bog down with one magazine telling me that one system is good, then another telling me that this other system is good, and then it blinds me with science with all the techno-babble etc.

And it daunts me when I do see a good home cinema system, and it has millions of sockets on the back of it, and I`m thinking my DVD says it`s DTS digital out, but it doesn`t have that many holes for all those wires.

So now I`m thinking do I need a new DVD player? All I want is a really good cinema system that plays DTS EX, ES, THX approved, to play all these THX approved DVDS, that all the magazines agree on.

Is that too much to ask?

floyd

Did I ever tell you my favorite color was blue?

DVD collection & WANTED list

The AV press seems to be seriously weighted towards Denon/Marantz and screw everything else.

What HiFi panned the Sony STRDB790 when it came out and yet the seemingly unbiased Hi Fi Choice (run by the same people who used to run Home Entertainment) applauded it (quite rightly) even saying that for music it absolutely walloped kit costing twice as much.

I think the only thing which matters is your ears - make sure you demo stuff before buying it, and don`t believe the hype from magazines. Westy and I have had discussions about this in the past.

The AV press is a joke - I only get What Hi Fi for the news, these days...

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Clayts, Moderator, DVD Reviewer
UK webmaster for Area 450 the independent Sampo/Maxent DVD site

I haven`t read Home Cinema Choice for a few years now, but it sounds like it`s gone seriously downhill of late. Dear old Bob Tomalski must be spinning in his grave. :(

Mike

Quote:
with 50% of pages of adverts with "call now" where the prices should be

Now that really annoys me - mind you I wonder how many sales they lose by people not phoning to ask for the price?

Another thing that`s started bugging me about HCC is that they now show one large photo of the amp/dvd player/plasma etc but then spread around it three or four smaller photos but each one only shows the smallest amount of detail. When you`re looking for a new amp or whatever you want to see the back panel in full not a small shot of just the speaker connections. Home Entertainment went all arty with their photos and as such made it pointless buying it, I mean who wants to see just the top left three inch piece of the back panel of an av amp?
Or is it just me getting narky?

Quote:
Now that really annoys me - mind you I wonder how many sales they lose by people not phoning to ask for the price?

annoys the hell outta me too - it defeats the object of advertising surely???
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"When my people were writing philosophy, your people were still swinging from trees..."

I suspect it has a lot to do with the date the publishers need copy by - probably about 6 weeks before the mag hits the street.

Mind you, Richer Sounds seem to manage it but add a caveat to their advert that the prices may be cheaper by the time people read What Hi Fi :)

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Clayts, Moderator, DVD Reviewer
UK webmaster for Area 450 the independent Sampo/Maxent DVD site

This item was edited on Wednesday, 22nd September 2004, 23:44