Home Theater Enthusiast
Rob H. remembers model numbers and tech specs the way other people recall sports stats or famous quotes. Doesn’t everybody read AV Receiver manuals for fun?
“I just want to make the podcast that I would want to listen to. And I just want to offer the advice that I would want to receive if I were the one asking the questions.”
Those words are Rob’s “North Star” that guide his approach to podcasting. He’s grown weary of the “influencers” and YouTubers whose motivations seem questionable sometimes. And co-founding Actually Honest Advice with Tom is Rob’s response: an effort to provide an incorruptible, evidence-based souce for genuine, value-conscious recommendations and suggestions.
Rob first became interested in home theater at the tail end of high school, right when DVDs were exploding in popularity. His first job was working in a video rental store where he witnessed the rapid shift in shelf space allocation as discs overtook VHS tapes. An RCA brand CRT TV, DVD player, and home-theater-in-a-box were Rob’s first exposure to 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound at home. But it was actually the release of the Nintendo GameCube with its support for Dolby Pro Logic II that really created Rob’s lifelong interest in fully understanding formats and codecs, and the equipment needed to play them back to their full potential.
Rob’s education and work life are entirely separate and unrelated to the home theater hobby that he loves so much. Rob is the sort of person for whom the enjoyment of a passion project is ruined once it becomes a job or a profession. And that is why podcasting and home theater has always remained strictly a personal pursuit for Rob, with no ambitions of making either interest into anything more than the fun, friendly, enjoyable pastimes that have enriched his life, and will hopefully enrich the lives of others.
Rob believes that anybody and everybody who has even a faint interest in TV shows, movies, games, and music deserves to experience all of these art forms to their full potential. There are no dumb questions. And it’s also ok to ask the same question more than once!