CinemaVerdict compares projectors and screens, soundbars and subwoofers, AV receivers and amplifiers, speakers and speaker packages, and sources such as streaming boxes and Blu-ray players — 264 products in 30 families. This is the American edition, written for Amazon.com; four other editions, in French, German, Spanish and Italian, are separate sites. We are a small independent editorial operation, not a retailer, not a brand, and not a media group.
We write about what makes the image and the sound of a living room, and only about that. We do not cover televisions themselves, because a television model number is national: the same set carries a different suffix in each country, sells on separate catalogs, and a link that works in one market is dead in three others. We also leave out studio equipment — recording microphones, audio interfaces, monitor speakers, room treatment — along with computer peripherals, games consoles, electrical wiring, and the subscriptions and films you watch. What is left is the equipment that puts a picture on a wall and a soundtrack in a room.
One claim runs through this subject more sharply than any other, so we state it outright. A "lumen" is not an ANSI lumen. The same projector is routinely sold as "12 000 lumens" and measured at a few hundred ANSI, and both figures can appear on the same listing. We write the unit exactly as the maker publishes it, we say when it is not ANSI, and we never convert one into the other. The same restraint applies to a contrast ratio that is dynamic rather than native, to a power figure quoted at peak rather than RMS, and to a Dolby Atmos badge, which means the format is decoded and not that anything fires at your ceiling.
Every figure here is reported from the manufacturer that published it, named on the page where it appears, and never worked out by us. We are not a testing laboratory, and the full rules are on how we judge. Anything that goes on a wall or a ceiling — a motorized screen, a projector bracket — is installed to the maker's instructions, which we point to rather than paraphrase.
How the site is funded
Every "Check price" button on this site is an affiliate link to Amazon. If you buy something after following one, Amazon pays us a commission. The price you pay is identical either way.
We think you should know the shape of that incentive rather than just its existence. Amazon pays a percentage of the sale, so in principle we earn more when you buy something expensive. Three things push against that:
- Commission has no bearing on the ranking. No shelf here is ordered by commission: we never look up which reference pays best, and a shelf runs by whether the model is on sale on Amazon.com, then by price tier. Where a cheap accessory is the right answer, it goes first.
- Price is not a measure of usefulness. Some of the advice we give most firmly costs nothing — setting a television's audio output to the right format, turning on a soundbar's dialogue mode, moving a subwoofer three feet. A 3.1 bar with a center channel answers a dialogue complaint that a dearer two-channel bar does not.
- A ranking place cannot be purchased here. We have never accepted payment, product or otherwise, in exchange for a position in a ranking. If that ever changes, it will be labeled on the page, not in a footer.
What we do not do
We do not run sponsored posts. We do not publish "top 10" lists assembled from other people's reviews. We do not rank by commission value, by conversion rate, or by what is in stock this week.
We also do not sell by specification. A bigger number makes effective copy and poor advice, and a page built on the figure printed largest tends to close by recommending the most expensive thing on it. Every verdict here names what it rests on: the specifications and manuals, the standards a format actually defines, and the Amazon.com listing the product is sold under. We do not collect or summarize buyer reviews. Where a judgment leans on one source more than the others, the review says which.
Corrections
Prices move, models get replaced, ranges are renamed, and manufacturers quietly change a panel, a lamp or a license for a streaming service. If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say what changed. Every review carries the date it was last updated, and every price the date it was read.
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