Home theaters: what should I invest in?

Going to theaters is quickly becoming obsolete. Thanks to the advantages offered by the latest technologies such as DVD and satellite, people are more and more moving towards watching movies at home. Home theaters are rapidly gaining popularity as a good selection offers one cool feature that you can watch your old favorite movies still on VHS tapes, which is something you really enjoy. Moreover, the sound is much better with surround sound technology as well as the latest DVD players, which provide great quality and can burn via VCR.

 However, the video display unit plays an important role in making or spoiling your entire experience. For most of us, the display unit is just a regular TV, which produces somewhat unacceptable images depending on the make and model of the unit, which ultimately leads to people choosing HD.

Now let's analyze what to look for in a good home theater setup — sound quality, VCR to DVD players, and maybe a new TV set. We'll look at all of these as if the money is out of our own pocket and we'll watch movies as much as the average family in the United States, which is roughly 20 hours a week.

The Logitech Z-640 6 Speaker Surround Sound System is offered at an affordable price of just $69 on Amazon.com. Or if you're looking for decent performance, look no further than the Sony HT-DDW670 Home Theater in a Box System that costs about $179 at Amazon.com. Both will produce respectable sound without making a hole in your pocket.

Going back to the player unit, the Panasonic DMR-ES40VS VHS/DVD Recorder is great, with its performance and efficiency, with an approximate price from Amazon.com of $210, and it comes in two color combinations - silver and black and perhaps the best feature of this unit is that it can convert VHS tapes old ones, which we all have, to DVD easily.

And now step into the display arena, with HDTV sets available in a wide range of prices and design from flat to curved and small to giant 50 Samsung HL-R5067W 50 HD-Ready DLP TV, costing approximately $1,500 at Amazon.com, Which is hard to refuse. But if you want to project your photos across the wall, expect to spend anywhere from $1,100 to several thousand dollars, and for obvious reasons, they aren't popular yet. 

So, if you have a regular consultant who keeps TV, books, and records, you'll probably look for something in the 32 to 38 range, readily available in the market, prices ranging from seven or eight hundreds all the way up to the thousands. Choosing a fairly pleasant TV, the Samsung TX-R3080WH 30 Wide SlimFit HDTV with a built-in HD tuner, which costs about eight to nine hundred, is worth mentioning with good picture quality, an excellent reputation and all that.

While some couples avoid pregnancy and take birth control pills and expensive methods, for other couples it is still important to have their own baby. In fact, some couples have used the latest technology that modern medicine has offered. According to the National Center for Women's Health Resources (NWHRC), five percent of infertility treatments include in vitro fertilization (IVF) or other types of assisted reproductive technologies. It is a method in which a laboratory is used to try to help a couple get pregnant. More than 70,000 babies were born in the United States using assisted reproductive technologies, including 45,000 born as a result of in vitro fertilization. IVF allows pregnancy for more than half of couples after treatment.

Techniques like IVF have been making headlines since the 1970s, however, they are still something of inaccurate or inaccurate science. Success rates for each therapy range from as low as 1% to as high as 50%, and a successful pregnancy depends on a variety of factors. It may include the age of the woman, the cause of the infertility, and the ability of the technician to perform the procedure. One natural procedure that is still very popular today and is said to increase a woman's chances of getting pregnant.

Although modern medical science has failed to definitively explain how it works, acupuncture is said to help some to get a baby. Acupuncture is based on the Chinese belief that a balance in the flow of energy known as qi and chi is needed by the body to stay healthy. When a blockage or imbalance occurs in that stream, its force is adversely affected. There are 20 major pathways that qi is thought to travel along and these pathways, or meridians, are accessible through 400 different acupuncture points.

Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine believe that a variety of energy patterns can interfere with pregnancy. Acupuncture works for infertility by increasing the production of endorphins in the brain, which helps people to relieve stress and relax. Traditional treatment can help stabilize hormone levels for the couple. This can mean an increase in sperm production for men and can improve the supply of blood to the uterus and ovaries among women. Doctors believe that integrating acupuncture will help reduce any stress and anxiety that patients may encounter.

Acupuncture can be used in combination with other Western medicine treatments for infertility when trying to conceive. Acupuncturist Jin Jin Hua claims that the 4,000-year-old practice of using thinner hairpins to penetrate and stimulate organs can work in conjunction with IVF to create a successful pregnancy. It has a surprising success of sixty percent among infertile women. And there is some scientific evidence to support this, Ms Jin said. A German study published in April 2002 showed that 42.5 percent of women who underwent acupuncture, both before and after the transfer of embryos to the uterus, became pregnant.

The desired effect of acupuncture is to harmonize the body and bring the body and its systems to an optimal state of well-being. In contrast, using acupuncture as a birth control goes against those desired effects. Most acupuncturists do not have the level of mastery necessary to ensure that acupuncture is as effective as birth control pills and other traditional forms of birth control.