Welcome to The Conch Tech

Conch ShellThank you for visiting.  The Conch Tech offers information for the Home Theater and Home Electronic user. There are How To guides to help you install and setup televisions, home stereos or media sharing systems. Here you can also find information on basic equipment needed to get your HDTV and other home electronics to work at their best. And finally, you can find informational articles explaining the different technologies and issues a Home Theater or Electronics user may encounter.

Comments and content suggestions are always welcome. If you’re a guest blogger and would like to contribute to The Conch Tech please here for more information.

Top Reasons for Using an HDMI Extender

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This may be a bit on the Techie side for some, but these are great gadgets if you need to run HD video and audio to a remote TV.

HDMI is most common interface on High Definition devices like HD cameras, HD camcorders, video gaming consoles, LCD and LED TVs. Most of the applications call for HDMI signal to be extended ranging anywhere from a few feet to several hundred feet. If you are looking to extend the HDMI signal a few feet from your video source you can use a standard HDMI cable.

HDMI Extender

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DIY In-Wall Speakers Installation

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Having in-wall speakers in your home can provide room for other more important stuff. Speakers have to be heard but you don’t really need to see them. This is why they provide an option for placing them in a wall. But how is it done?

It certainly is a matter of time and effort, but if you know what you are doing, you will be finished in a few hours and you will have a nice and useful décor on the walls. In this article, we provide information that will help you install your speakers in the wall. Read along.

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TV Mounts – Things to Consider Before Installation

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Home Theater showing automationAre you going to be mounting a television? It is not too difficult to do on your own, but you really do need to make sure you are doing things safely and properly. Safety is one of the most important aspects, but is it just one of them. Here are some of the things you need to consider when putting your television onto the wall.

The Height

How high up on the wall do you plan to mount your television? You first need to Read more!

Creepy – Is LG Collecting Data on its Smart TV Owners?

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Smart LG Home TheaterLast December I published an article about the Samsung Smart TV’s having a security flaw that allowed hackers to enter and download your personal information. Now we have LG downloading your personal viewing choices and sharing it with advertisers.

Earlier this month an article was published on DoctorBeets blog telling all about how the author discovered that LG was spying on him.  It all started when he noticed an ad on his Smart Menu Screen.  He dug a bit into it and found a LG corporate video describing their collection practices. Read more!

Benefits Of Using Satellite In Rural Locations

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The New Deal brought electricity to rural America. During this time, the vast infrastructure of electrical transmission lines and power plants were established, putting hundreds of thousands of citizens to work. While this infrastructure has been maintained and added to over the decades since, there are still some problems with communication. Few people have “party lines” any more, and with cell phone technology, many long distance calls are free. But, quite often, calls are dropped. Internet can be frustratingly slow or completely non-existent. This is where satellite communications may make a real difference. Read more!

How To Set Up Your Home Theater Speaker System

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If you have just bought your new home theater system, you are most probably going to need some help getting it setup. If your home theater system has an auto-setup feature, don’t expect much from it. The auto-setup feature on your home theater is just to help keep the system in your home instead of in the return line. The settings of the auto-setup system are not accurate and don’t always make the proper equalizer adjustments. So much for the auto-setup system. Here are a few tips that can help you get your home theater system installed and performing at its best.


Setup the A/V Receiver Read more!

Choosing Your Surround Sound System

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In the world of home audio entertainment, a great surround sound system can be the difference between watching and listening to movies and music and experiencing the same movies and music. Building a quality surround sound system takes time and a decent budget, but it also helps to know what to look for in different setups. High quality audio doesn’t have to be overly complicated or extremely expensive since there are plenty of options for every kind of entertainment expectation and budget. No matter if you are putting together a new system from nothing or looking to upgrade to some better speakers and add more amplification to your space, here is a look at some of the coolest, most effective surround sound system setups.

Sound bars Read more!

Top Articles for October 2013

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These are the top articles for October 2013.

5 Creative Uses For A Home Projector


If you're looking for some fun things to do as a family, it's time to think beyond movies or TV shows. Sure, that's fun, but where is the imagination? If, instead, you turn to the projector, you now open up a world of opportunities.

4 Simple Ways To Connect Your Mobile Device To Your Massive TV Screen


Instead of fiddling around with a small screen people can now hook their mobile device up to their main TV. Here are a few different ways this can be accomplished.

The Best Sites To Watch Your Content Wherever You Are


If you love to watch TV shows and movies then it's a great time to be alive. Numerous companies are now offering Streaming videos over the net to any device be it a Smartphone, tablet, PC or Mac, giving you the flexibility to watch what you want, when you want, where you want. Let's take a look at the top 6 content providers and why you should consider them..

How To Pick The Right HDTV For Your Home Theater

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A few years ago, it was much easier to pick the right HDTV for your home. We neither had such a big variety of options, nor were able to tell the difference between models. But times have changed, modern technologies become more and more innovative and this simple choice turned into a really big challenge. How to pick up the best HDTV? How can we be sure that it will satisfy our needs? After all, this expensive purchase is a long-term investment and it is very important to choose wisely. So here is a short, buying guide.

The Size

LED TV

This is the first important thing that you will need to consider. As soon as you enter the store, you will see a big variety of large and small screens, which it is very likely to get you confused and eventually go home with the wrong one. Don’t lose heart! Before you leave for the TV store, you will need to take into account several things. The first one is the overall size of your apartment or home. Is the space in the living room limited (we say the living room, since most people prefer to put their TV there)? Are you planning to hang your TV on the wall, or would you prefer to place it somewhere on the living-room section. How much money have you planned to spend on this luxury? Each of these factors are very important and will give you some basic idea on what to look for. Read more!

10 Innovative And Economical Ways For Managing Cables In Your Home

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The truth is that most people at one point or another have cluttered and messy cables running in their homes. It could be those messy tangles behind the home entertainment system, or those scary knots of cables under the desktop computer in the home office. If your cables at home are currently in such a state and you decide it is about time you did something about it, you do not need to spend plenty of money or time doing so. Here are ten cool suggestions you can use that will save you both time and money as you bring these cables under control:

  1. Label all your plugs for easy identification – Trying to arrange your cables so that they can look neat and order is hard enough without even having to guess where each cable belongs. That is why it is vital to label all your plugs before you begin with the rearranging process. You can use a masking tape, marker and label maker to accomplish this.
  2. Use wrappers to shorten the length of the cables – At times, your cables become cluttered and entangled with one another because they are too long. You can now shorten the length of these cables using DIY wrappers such that they are the exact length between the devices they are connecting. To make a wrapper at home cut out a thin, soft cable strip from an old rubber mat using scissors.
  3. Tie similar cables together – Once you have shortened the length of the cables, they may still appear to be untidy especially if you have plenty of them. It is a good idea to tie similar cables together such that they will appear as one big cable. Select a group of cables going towards the same destination and tie them using inexpensive cable ties.

Green Cable Farm Read more!

The Death of Plasma: Panasonic Throws in the Towel

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TC-P65VT50If  you were thinking of purchasing a TV this season and a Plasma TV was on that list, you better hurry up and get to the store.  Why? because one of the best plasma TV makers is calling it quits.

Rumors were in the wind for months now.  Panasonic, the maker of the recently released VT60 and ZT60, will be out of the plasma business by 2014, or while supplies last.

…[I]n order to create a business structure that can respond to changes in the business environment and to accelerate the growth strategy of the company, the company will end the production of plasma display panels(PDP) in December 2013…-Panasonic Corporation

Panasonic enjoyed a strong demand for it’s plasma’s worldwide. Their products always received high acclaim and good reviews. Never the less, Panasonic feels that “drastic changes in the business environment and a declining demand” for plasma’s made it necessary to stop production.  Panasonic has already stopped or suspended production its Amagasaki P5 and Amagasaki P4 factories. The last factory, the Amagasaki P4 Factory, will stop production at the end of March 2014.

Plasma’s are popular because of their better contrast ratios, faster refresh rate, better overall picture quality and lower prices. LED’s have been improving over the years and had narrowed the performance gap. Now with the arrival of Ultra and OLED HDTV’s that gap has been closed to the point where they may surpass the picture quality of plasma, but at a price.

If your thinking Samsung or LG will pickup the torch, you might be right.  Samsung and LG have already announced they will be bringing new Plasma models to the 2014 International Consumer Electronics (CES) show in January. This year Samsung released it’s stunning F8500 Plasma HDTV. So, for at least the next year, Plasma’s will still be on the shelves.

Bottom line is if you want what I consider to be the best of the plasma TV’s made and at a good price, you had better get to your favorite online retailer or local box store and pick up a Panasonic Plasma HDTV’s before it goes the way of the Dodo Bird.

Here is the full press release.

Eco-Friendly Televisions: 4 Tips For Choosing An Energy-Efficient Model

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Radios, televisions, video players, and home cinema systems all use energy. Among them, televisions account for 75% of all electricity utilization within the consumer electronics industry. This level of energy consumption costs a lot of money and it also increases carbon dioxide emission which could harm the environment.

When you need to buy a new television unit or replace an existing one, you should consider choosing an energy-efficient model. Doing so will help you save money on your bills and lower its negative impact towards the environment without compromising any of the product features you expect to enjoy. There are advantages to using eco-friendly and energy-efficient television models, including:

  • Lowering the running costs and increasing long-term savings on your energy bills
  • Use less energy; therefore, lowering carbon dioxide emission
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the functional life of the television.

Tips For Choosing Your Next Big-Screen TV

Size: You need to understand that larger television models use more power. In fact, larger TVs use more energy than the old-fashioned tube models because of their size. This is despite the fact that old models are not even energy-efficient. In addition, large TV models also use a lot of energy to manufacture, to test, to ship, and to operate. To be more energy-efficient, you should purchase a model that is no larger than what you actually need.

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