I recently did my twice yearly stint in the Home Show (Jeff's shed as it is known locally).This is part of our marketing efforts and specifically is a promotion of our wares and services into the non enthusiast marketplace.

Clearly for middle Australia the "home theatre" has replaced the swimming pool or the billiard room as the aspirational home accessory for those trapped in the suburbs. The inquiry level for theatre was very high and my friends at the Big Picture People were capitalising on this market by offering keenly priced packages firmly aimed at price conscious middle Australians.

And yet, whilst the awareness of home cinema is higher than ever I found that the general level of understanding of the technology involved was actually at an all time low. Mostly the people looking at the screen didn't realise that there was a projector involved, lacked any brand recognition beyond Sony and Samsung, expected the speakers to be wireless, expected music to play out of all five loudspeakers, and want to know how many Watts a system should be ...

Perhaps I'm expecting too much of consumers. After all I understand that many people drive their cars without being aware of the mechanics of the internal combustion process. In Consumer Electronic Audio and Video however it seems that customers are happy to have simple real knowledge substituted by advertising schpiel and biased hearsay.

This is not surprising given that the manufacturers have made an industry out of acronyms that disguise everyday electronics as revolutionary innovation and have resorted to quoting ever larger specification numbers regardless of actual technical measurement that are then corroborated by commissioned salespeople out to make the quickest dollar in the shortest time.

Whilst this has bred a school of mistrust sometimes expressed by internet newsgroups and the occasional independant retailer such as ourselves it appears the majority of the
buying public are happy to accept the superficial advertising messages to buy by brand and number that they are fed by the cash-for-comment media.

The British Magazine "What Hi Fi" has struck a medium between the partly digestible and completely facile that appeals to many potential consumers largely through their use of "stars" to mark a product with. Indeed there is a particular variety of consumer in the UK that will only buy a product if it has five stars appended to its review, these same people are now appearing via internet in our own stores although generally I find that our customers at least are wary of reviews done in a hundred words or less ...

Generally in the enthusiast HiFi/Visual Scene "What Hi Fi?" is considered to the tabloid for reviews that are just a little too short and pat, the favourites for quality subjective inpressions in my book remain the likes of "Hi Fi World", "Hi Fi News", "The Gramophone", and the American publication "Stereophile". Alas for base level consumers these publications are probably not accepatable fare unless they have that seed of enthusiasm that marks them as potential AV buffs of the future.

I am left with the feeling that if a goodly proportion of these home cinema customers were to buy a simple pair of high quality speakers and an amplifier rather than their multi channel tangle then they would actually be much happier and fiscally and intellectually bettered in the short and long term. Alas if one attempts to convey this to that type of individual you are left with the sense that they think of you as being a slightly insane Hi Fi heretic ...

I find myself preaching to people that the should be listening to music rather than watching movies ... a slightly odd thing to do in a shop full of Loewe and Aquos ... and then showing them just how good a simple system comprising Amp Cd Player and speakers can sound. My personal favourite system compounds the heresy by comprising a Rega Apollo Cd Player, Rega Brio Amplifier, and a pair of Monitor Audio Bx2 Loudspeakers. So the Cd Player is the most expensive bit at $1299 and the Speakers are the cheapest at $599. There is no remote for the amp ... you put the Cds in through the the top of the Cd Player ... it sounds fantstic and you will still have it in thirty years time ... if you need to have a vision source put a Cambridge Audio play everything Blu Ray Player through the amp for sound and hook its video out through to the TV for fantastic quality DVD/Blu Ray vision.

That longevity aspect is fundamental to good simple Hi Fi ... our technicians recently had the job of quoting on a repair for a three year old surround amplifier that had been HDMI hotplugged (meaning the HDMI connected componenets were powered up when the lead was reconnected ... can cause arcing and serious damage ... switch kit off when doing leads!) ... the price for the repair of this $2699 when new surround amplifier was ... $3000 ...

The technicians are now telling us that any Surround Amplifier needing repair should expect a minimum charge of $500 ...

Hi Fi stereo product of good quality on the other hand is nearly always repairable. The Rega Brio Stereo amplifier mentioned above is not only explicity simple to use and simple to repair for a technician but has an intinsically low failure rate and a very long term duty cycle.