A Home Theater Podcast Worth Checking Out

I’m a little delinquent in posting about this. When I attended Blu-Con last month, I met a couple of guys at lunch who were covering the conference for a home theater podcast called ‘HD Nation’. They seemed like nice guys, and gave me a bunch of good suggestions for restaurants to try during my trip to San Francisco the following week. Ever since then, I’ve been meaning to check out the podcast. For whatever reason (mostly procrastination), I kept forgetting about it until now. Anyway, I finally hunted it down, and it’s definitely worth a look for anyone interested in the subject.

If I have my timeline right (and I may not), hosts Patrick Norton and Robert Heron both worked for TechTV back in the day. Norton was one of the hosts of ‘The Screen Savers’ there, until the network was swallowed by G4 and ‘The Screen Savers’ was replaced by ‘Attack of the Show!’ (The less said about that, the better.) Norton and Heron (and others) later moved to an “internet television” company called Revision3, where they currently work on the shows ‘Tekzilla’ (which covers gadgets and technology in general) and ‘HD Nation’ (which focuses specifically on video and home theater).

These and a number of other shows can be watched on the Revision3 web site, on YouTube, on iTunes, or several other outlets. The following is the episode with Blu-Con coverage. (Unfortunately, they don’t talk about my panel in the episode.)

This episode is of course more than a month old at this point. There have been several more since then. New episodes run on Tuesdays. Give it a look if you have some time to spare.

If our readers have other favorite home theater podcasts (whether audio or video), please tell us about them in the comments.

3 comments

  1. Yeah HD Nation is a awesome show. I highly recommend it to anyone reading this blog. One extra note about it. The show has now merged with the other Patrick Norton hosted show Tekzilla. Though you can still download the show separately there a much shorter 10 to 15 minute show now.

    There a two other home theater podcast I listen to.

    The EngadgetHD podcast is a great what’s happening in HD news show. They live stream the shows on Ustream at which I’m frequent contributor. The host Ben and Richard are huge HD nerds and I love there rants on things like Tivo and crappy DVRs. They tend to focus on a lot of HTPC topics to. Listen for chevelleman on the show. That would be me. Link: http://hd.engadget.com/podcast/

    The other HT podcast I’m listening to is the Home Theater Geeks show on the TWiT network. The host Scott Wilkinson is the online editor of UltimateAVmag.com and HomeTheaterMag.com. Weekly he interviews the leaders and pioneers of Home theater tech. For example just this week he interviewed the Image Technology Director of THX, Ltd Kevin Wines. He also live streams his shows at which you can send in live questions to the guest. Link: http://www.twit.tv/htg

    A couple more podcast that I listen here and there. The HDTV and Home Theater podcast. http://www.htguys.com/ and the AVrant podcast. AVRant.com

  2. Ryan

    Once you start your own podcast Josh, I will be your first guest and do my best to play Devil’s Advocate as much as possible offering counterpoints to your points. That will be awfully tough however if you bring up Buffy (not likely on a HD podcast) or Lost (much more likely)…

  3. Definately endorse HDNation! I don’t watch the show as frequently as I used to (used to watch it on the train, but my commute changed from 90 minutes one way to 5 minutes each way), but I definately like it.

    Norton is great! I started watching the network back when it was ZDTV, and Leo just annoyed me a bit, as he tried to over-simplify everything. Norton, however, not only knows his stuff, but knows his target audience, and doesn’t try to insult his audience’s intellegence!

    Yeah, G4 taking over TechTV was a tragedy (actually, I don’t think the network was great since it was ZDTV), but the best thing is people like Norton and Leo went on and started doing cooler and better stuff.

    If you like HDNation, I STRONGLY recommend checking out This Week In Tech, which Norton, Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, and John C. Dvorak kinda co-host together. http://www.twit.tv/

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