12 HD Days of Christmas: Day 8

By Richard Lawler

"On the 8th day of Christmas....."

Admittedly, some of our most wanted gifts have been on the high end side, tis the nature of the beast. But if you're going to give a gift to someone who as already experienced the joy of HD or just want to know what will give the most bang for the buck, it would be hard to beat our next pick, the AVIA: Guide to Home Theater DVD.

If you somehow don't already have this continue reading to find out why you probably should.Ok, ok, ok, I understand.  Not everyone can afford or wants to pay for a professional to come in and set up their home theater. critique their furniture placement, cover up all windows etc. But at the very least, you should make sure the picture your HDTV is giving you is the best it can be, no matter what you're watching.

That is where the AVIA DVD comes in. Pop it in, it will take through a series of steps to optimize your TV and sound system for a theater quality experience. If you want to get more in depth, check out AVSforums.com,
where you can probably find instructions how to get even deeper into your TV's settings to perfect the calibration (as much as we like convergence, it isn't always good thing).

You can find the DVD pretty much anywhere for about $50 and it makes an excellent stocking stuffer for anyone who loves their home theater, or maybe a piggyback gift on to that new HDTV Santa is bringing. There are others in the field, while I haven't personally used it, a few HD Beat readers have said very good things about the HQV benchmark disc. Of course if you want to spend a little more, there is always the Spyder tool, to do what your eyes might not be able to. If you have the cash, feel free to send a professional over, trust us,
you'll feel it's well worth it when you come by with a new movie to watch,


Previous "12 HD Days of Christmas" posts:

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