home theater

I have two second gen HomePods set up in "home theater audio" mode with my Apple TV 4K. Is it possible to stream video on the TV and play music on the HomePods at the same time? Currently, it pauses the video feed on the TV and the audio (with graphics) takes over. I don't mind there being no...

I'm considering an upgrade from the Bose TV Speaker, as it doesn't seem to meet expectations for a Bose soundbar. Wirecutter recommends the Polk MagniFi Mini AX as its top pick. While I've been eyeing a dual HomePod setup, the $600 cost is twice that of the Polk soundbar. Has anyone compared the...

I have a second home theatre with a Marantz AVR and a 5.1 speaker setup (all wired to a media cabinet where all my equipment is kept). As this is my secondary home theatre I haven‘t updated it in a while and need to replace my left and right channel front speakers. I was looking at B&W as my...

Some of us still prefer a fully-featured desktop computer HTPC, but at $800 even the base model Mac mini is hard to justify. It's telling that Apple doesn't market the mini's HTPC capabilities anymore, only the Apple TV is targeted at that market now. Really a shame that modern Apple seems so...

Hey guys, Just thought I would post this odd situation here to see what kind of feedback people could offer. I've had an AppleTV 4k 64 GB in my living room for most of 2018, and I also have my iMac in the living room, so the home theater, and computer are on the same breaker circuit, but not...

Hello all, I'm taking my 2011 Mac mini out of mothballs (still turns on and runs without any issues) and turning it into a digital home theater of sorts. Anyways, I got a great Black Friday deal on an SSD and wanted to see what's the best way of going about formatting it, installing Mac OS, and...

I currently have a rather nice Pioneer receiver with a 5.1 speaker system. I do enjoy the great sound quality but I have been thinking of taking it a notch down to save some space in the living room. I’ve been considering getting 2 HomePods to replace all of it. Does anyone here use HomePod for...

My wife ask if she could have 2 speakers on the night stands instead of using the soundbar across the room. This would allow her to use a lower volume since they are on her side of the room. So I setup 2 HomePods (in stereo) and told the Apple TV to use them over Airplay 2 (as a single...

I had a crazy idea to try an HEVC file on my Apple TV. I ripped a blu-ray I had to a 2gb, 1080p HEVC MKV with 5 channel AAC audio and sent it over to the VLC storage on the Apple TV. Low and behold, VLC played it with almost no error. There was one scene of a newsreel with a huge amount of...