I read this :-

Today' Home Theater Too Good?

How sad huh?

So maybe we will be the last few bunch of people who appreciates carefully calibrated display and sound?

Well, life is short, enjoy while you can....

Just because some high end stores drop dead, doesn't mean the end of higher-end equipment. They'll just find a different method to sell it.

Not likely. There will always be an opportunity to make money on higher end theaters. It may end up as a smaller market, but it will not go away.

On the flip side, the technology for putting up a calibrated image will continue to get better and easier to use. For the technically literate, it is possible to do a reasonably good DIY calibration with low cost equipment.

Along with this, the out-of-box calibration will get better (when you flip from torch mode to cinema).

It will be easier to get good image and sound quality, but more expensive to get that last 10-20% out of your system using a pro.

A couple of other recent articles also questioning aspects of the current state of things in this market:
B&W Heads to Magnoliaville
Do receivers have too many features?

From Henry's second article:



None of these features factored into the purchase of my last receiver because I either don‘t want them or don‘t need them because I already have something that covers it. I did choose my previous receiver because it had Audyssey but it’s no longer important to me.

Even the features I use like the various DSP modes are overwhelming because there are so many combinations it’s very hard to test them all out.