Here is a Maplin placeholder to the upcoming 500GB Freesat+ PVR. Price not the best at £329 but they are selling the Humax at £299, so only a £30 premium, so the price should be lower at other retailers.

Weirdly, Argos are trying to sell the Goodmans 500GB model at £100 more than the Humax 320Gb. For goodness sake an external 1Tb drive can be got for less than £70 so why the £100 premium for an extra 180Gb and a less prestigious brand....

Don't forget that for the general public Goodmans is a name that has been around forever whereas Humax would probably elicit a response of "who?".

Still pretty odd pricing though. A mistake, maybe.

Shouldn't that be "Hu" ? As in who is the president of China?!

That's true but up to now the Humax Freesat kit has been sold at a premium over the Goodmans. These days I think far more people associate Goodmans with cheap electronics rather than a quality loudspeaker manufacturer of long standing. The same is undoubtedly true of Wharfedale.

If you were to ask the non-enthusiast these days to name a famous loudspeaker manufacturer, of those who could even come up with an answer, I would think Tannoy and Bose would come before the ones who sold their brand.

I think we might underestimate how the existence of these forums and the AV press raise the profile of an unknown like Humax - these days many many non-enthusiasts and non-forum members will do a little bit of internet research and find from forums and reviews that the Humax may actually be worth a premium.

Unfortunately both of those companies ceased to exist long ago, and any slight trace of quality went with them


Well Tannoy were (perhaps still are?) a top brand, but Bose is just cheap Cihinese gear with a massive price tag and a huge advertising budget. Notice Bose don't advertise in HFi magazines, only in things like Country Life.

Au contraire . Wharfedale the original version not the Argos branded stuff.

Yes Bose has always annoyed with the whole "try it at home" stuff

Funny to think that when I was young Tannoy were famous for being the 'Hoover' of public address systems.

I still use a pair of Goodmans speakers (c) 1980 they cost £1000 back then but I doubt I'll ever change them so they won't cost that much per annum.

That's the 'better end' of Wharfedale, but it's still not 'Wharfedale' as was, the website says "part of IAG Group Ltd."

Wharfedale isn't particularly an Argos brand (although it may be so at this precise moment in time) - they sell exclusive rights to anyone who will make them an offer. A little while ago it was an exclusive brand of Euronics, I presume they sell the rights a year at a time?.

Some people may still associate the "Goodmans brand" with high quality audio equipment. They would be wrong of cause being it nowdays sell cheap low end quality products

People will frequently pay a huge premium for a brand name. In very few cases is that premium justified.

A lot of people will still pay over the odds for "Sony" branded equipment in spite of a lot of it being little more then badged. Sony probably still sell reasonable quality product but the price premium is not justified.
A lot of people have noticed that though. Its probably why Samsung have been doing well. They actually make a lot of the LCD panels for Sony and also manufacture some of the Sony product range.

Complete rubbish again, only a very small amount of Sony equipment is badged, and there have never been any badged TV's.


Still the number one brand, with top performance and reliability, and the best service as well.


Again completely wrong (where do you make this rubbish up from?), Sony use mainly S-LCD panels, a joint venture between Sony and Samsung, but also various other panels as well. I don't know of anything bought in from Samsung?, although the last years of Sony VCR's were bought in from Samsung, as many other manufacturers were as well.

Did not Tannoy join up with James Bullough Lansing (JBL)?

Still all of these are just brand names and the item can of course really be made by another company and just have their badge.

Be it a car, a dvd player or a freesat box.

Automan.

The Grundig 500GB should be available within a couple of weeks. I've seen the independent trade prices so would be expecting to sell (providing I'm happy to do so) at around £280. That's assuming the price doesn't adjust closer the time.

Celestion are 'The' speaker manufacturers

http://www.celestion.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestion

Certainly one that I always mention, another (better one?) would be B&W - there have been many great British speaker manufacturers.

Given the reputation of the SD Alba boxes, they must be in cloud cuckoo land if they think they are going to shift many at that price, especially with the HDR update soon to come out and the new (and more high quality) Technisat and Humax PVRs on the way.

Ah Nigel, I didn't know that advertising in "HiFi" magazines was a requirement to be considered HiFi.
Some BOSE kit is good, some not so good, and some excellent. I would recommend anyone interested in it to give it a try - and then make their minds up.
(I often wonder how many of the people who slag off BOSE have actually listened to it in their own homes.)

Many HiFi magazines are pure twaddle - pandering to the less well informed. Why would any reputable company, such as BOSE, want anything to do with them?

Don't believe me? How about this extract from a review of HDMI Cables:

"Let us introduce you to XXXXX Company's chunky Active HDMI cable.

For

* Muscular, exciting sound; incredible sonic impact

Against

* It's not cheap"


The "Five Star" cable in question costs £115 and will give exactly the same result as a cheap cable costing £5.

Well that is reassuring, given that I have just ordered a Sony KDL40w5500 didn't much like the KDL28DX30 effort....

Speakerwise my UK Heybrook HB1s are going strong after 24 years

I don't think there was a KDL28DX30?, KDL signifies a later LCD - I think you mean KD28DX30 - I can't say I thought much of the CRT IDTV's either.


Another good make we forgot to mention, I used to have some Castle Acoustic speakers which were pretty good, but currently (and for 25 years+) I have some Peerless kit's I built from Wilmslow audio.

I just remembered I have a set of Leek speakers that I aquired when my father passed away I'm sure they were a British manufacturer but I can't find any info to verify the nationality. Any ideas Nigel?

Edit: just tried the correct spelling 'Leak' indeed they are British

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEAK

Leak were indeed British, and from the same part of the country as Wharfedale - but were more an amplifier manufacturer than a speaker one (in fact, I seem to recollect that they badged Wharfedale speakers?).

I used to have a Leak Stereo 70, a great little amp.

Now that, I do agree with.

I only replaced it because I couldn't get it to work happily with a three head Trio cassette deck I bought

So I bought a matching Trio amplifier, which I still have (a KA-660).

The Leak got used for disco's, as a guitar amp, all sorts of abuse

Certainly not my recollection.

Leak were always trumpeting the 'sandwich' construction of their bass units so I doubt they shared a design with Wharfedale (although whether they had a manufacturing agreement with them for any part of the process is another matter).

Anyone interested in Hi-Fi in the late sixties will remember the 'Leak Point One', supposedly the first (Hi-Fi) amplifier in the world with a THD of less than 0.1% at rated power.

Mine's long gone, too.

I'm willing to bet that the magazine in question was "What Hifi", I had similar concerns with one of their earlier HDMI cable reviews.


Graham.