Mar
23
Plasma Television Longevity
Filed Under Plasma Television | Leave a Comment
Many don’t stop to consider the life expectancy of plasma televisions but there are a few things worth keeping in mind to ensure longest life-span possible from your new purchase. Unlike DLP’s, or even LCD’s to some extent, there’s no such thing as a plasma bulb replacement and there certainly isn’t any way to “re-charge” the gas in them, that one’s pure urban legend. Now once a plasma starts to dim there’s really nothing one can do to reverse the process but that’s not to say there aren’t ways to lengthen your plasma’s life-span.
Most new plasmas can last ten or more years if treated well but running one hot can cut that life-span considerably. Hot would entail running the brightness and or contrast wide open and or leaving static images onscreen for long periods of time. That’s not to say the plasma will just shut off like clockwork at the ten year mark, but by this time it will be significantly dimmer than when it was new.
60,000 hours or more aren’t unheard of with plasma televisions so don’t think of them as poor investments. It’s just the displays that are taken care of last longer but that goes for anything right? To put things into perspective let’s say the plasma does indeed give up the ghost at 60k hours, you’d probably go through twelve or more DLP lamps during the same time period; at an average cost of $400, that’s $4800 easily more than the plasma’s cost to begin with. So as you can see, just because a display has a finite life-span that doesn’t necessarily make it a poor investment.
Mar
22
1080p Broadcasts?
Filed Under HDTV | Leave a Comment
I’m often asked when the networks will start transmitting their programming in 1080p. I usually reply something to the effect of: when they scrap 90% of the gear they use, replace it all with equipment capable of transmitting at those bandwidths and have every local affiliate across the country do the same, or in other words, please don’t hold your breath.
The good news however is that much of the 720p programming that is already broadcast into our homes looks excellent and the 1080i content that makes up the majority of all HDTV programming can be de-interlaced inside our televisions and displayed as 1080p. Given the current (good) state of HDTV broadcasting and the fact that the majority of HD displays in use are still 720p, and a few 1080p displays as well, many of them can’t even accept a true 1080p signal.
Again this probably isn’t something you should wait for with baited breath, you’ll surely run out of breath first. It’s unlikely we’ll even see widespread 1080p broadcasts this decade but again, the quality we already have is quite good in many cases, and if it absolutely must be 1080p at 24fps there’s always Blu-ray waiting in the wings.
Mar
21
This tip is aimed at the do-it-your-selfers out there, specially the folks wiring up new homes or adding additional wiring to their existing homes. Wiring is obviously an integral part of home theater. Wireless solutions are getting better and better every day but they still have a long ways to go towards the performance of traditional hard-wired systems.
We all know that speaker cables, CAT-5 and HDMI cables need to be ran to their corresponding locations in the home theater but don’t forget the coaxial cables. Coaxial is used for cable TV and also for component video, but do you know that RG-6 and RG-59 have specific applications and aren’t (ideally anyway) always interchangeable? Most coaxial cable can be identified by reading the cables jacket but it should be easy enough to tell RG-6 from RG-59 just from the cables diameter, RG-6 should appear considerably thicker than 59.
Use RG-6 for cable TV and RG-59 for component video feeds, RG-6 has better shielding for noise rejection and tends to work better for CATV. RG-59 on the other hand is rated at 75ohms and is better suited for the individual RGB (red, green and blue) carriers of a component video cable. RG-59 is also a bit more flexible which could come in handy considering the need for three cables versus the one for a single cable TV feed.
Mar
20
Dolby Digital or DTS?
Filed Under Surround Sound | Leave a Comment
One of the age old arguments in home theater has to be Dolby Digital versus DTS for surround sound. You’ll hear a wide range of reasons why one may be better than the other or why one might be better than the other, but it’s really much simpler than might’s and maybes. This is a case of the “bigger” technology not necessarily being the better technology.
Even though Dolby Digital processing is more familiar to the consumer at large, it’s actually DTS that holds the slight (depending on how you look at things) edge in overall sound quality. DTS uses less compression, roughly 1,536,000 bits per second versus Dolby Digitals 448,000 bits per second. Yes you’ll hear some say “but Dolby Digital has a more efficient encoding scheme, it doesn’t need as many bits to deliver the same quality of sound” or something along those lines. Simply put, it just doesn’t pan out that way in the real world,
More bits is more bits, efficiency is great but the data transfer rate can bottleneck performance just as fast as a low-bit encode. Now none of this is meant to paint Dolby Digital in a poor light, it’s a great codec and one that’s served us well, it and DTS however are bettered by PCM, TrueHD, DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master audio. So while this may be of interest to those of you with huge DVD collections, know that sun is already (albeit slowly) setting on both Dolby Digital and standard DTS in terms of overall performance.
Mar
19
Subwoofer Placement
Filed Under Speakers | Leave a Comment
I thought we’d get a little deeper into subwoofer positioning as the last speaker placement post focused on maximizing high frequencies, this time we’ll tackle the lows. Low frequencies produced by subwoofers are omni-directional, meaning the sound should reach you regardless of where the subwoofers placed in the room, that doesn’t mean that placement cant affect the sound however.
I tend to experiment with different spots in the room for optimal subwoofer placement but I almost always start with a front corner. If my first corner sounds too boomy I’ll adjust the volume and if that still doesn’t work I’ll try the other corner. If the bass is still flabby I’ll try another spot in the room, moving it from the front of the room, slowly, back, stopping every now and then to hear how it sounds. Yeah it’s a lot a trial and error but the room’s sweet-spot can make all the difference in the world as to how the sub sounds.
If after all this I’m still having trouble finding the perfect spot I’ll flip that method around and place the sub at my listening position and move (myself) around the room listening for subtle changes in how tight and articulate the bass sounds. This isn’t as spot-on accurate as the first method, but it can help in narrowing things down in a troublesome room.
Mar
18
Purchasing a Blu-ray Player?
Filed Under Blu-ray | Leave a Comment
This tip will have a shelf-life of about a month tops, because I’m going to examine the current state of Blu-ray player profiles and make a recommendation based on where we stand today, March 18, 2008. Ok with all the formalities out of the way let’s get to it.
By now I’m hoping everyone knows about the different Blu-ray profiles. The early players were profile 1.0 and handled basic playback only, recently we got into the profile 1.1 (also called Final Standard Profile) players which added picture-in-picture video playback and 256 MB of local memory storage.
Sometime later this year we should begin to see profile 2.0 players (also known as BD-Live) which will have mandatory ethernet connections and 1 GB of local memory storage. So unless you’re willing to wait till the fall and or settle for a PS3 as your primary Blu-ray playback device, you’re looking at a profile 1.1 capable player.
So which one do I recommend? The Panasonic DMP-BD30K can be found for as little as $430 and from all accounts is a fine player. Its features include HDMI v1.3, profile 1.1 playback, 5.1 analog outs and 24fps 1080p output. My basis for the recommendation really boils down to the fact that I’ve just gotten less negative feedback about this player than any other model we sell. As with all things Blu-ray however, what’s on top today might not be tomorrow, I’ll revisit this topic often throughout the year.
Mar
17
I can tell you one of the fastest ways to waste a lot of time (yeah I know no one would actually want to do that, but just in case) and that’s to not label and or organize the cables in your home theater system. Sooner or later for trouble shooting or re-arranging purposes you’re going to need to identify that left-rear surround or front-right speaker lead from the rest of the cables in your system. You know, the cables behid your system that resemble some abstract painting of a bowl of spaghetti.
Whether it’s with a sharpie on masking tape or nice n’ neat labels printed from a Brother label maker or freaking hieroglyphics* get something on those cables to identify them. Go all the way through the speakers, LF= left front, RF= right front, SUB= subwoofer etc. etc. Also try and get all of your audio and video source cables labeled as well, this makes fast work of system maintenance and hardware additions.
Another habit I try to keep is sorting cables by type when installing the system or doing any maintenance after the fact. If you haven’t peeked behind your system in months (or years in many cases) the gaggle of cables may look like an incomprehensible rats-nest, grouped by type however they can be sorted in half the time. *note: should you opt for hieroglyphics, the symbol for center channel speaker is one legged crane, moon in sky, jumping fish, one legged crane.
Mar
16
If you’ve researched wall-mounting a plasma or LCD television you’ve undoubtedly noticed there are several different types of wall-mounts available for the task. Each of these mounts serves a different mounting purpose so we’ll run them down one by one. The most common type of wall-mount is the standard non-tilt “flat” mount, what you see is what you get here, the TV mounted on the wall, no muss, no fuss.
From there you get into the low-profile wall-mounts which in a nutshell give you a slimmer, tighter fit to the wall, sometimes as little as an inch and a half gap between the wall and display. Moving to something a little fancier there are the tilting mounts. A wall-mount with tilt allows you to do just what the name implies, tilt the display up or down a few degrees which can be really handy for finding that just right angle and or tilting the display to avoid glare.
Moving right along into the swivel mounts you gain the ability to pan the television left and right up to 45 degrees, and in most cases these mounts also tilt up and down by 15 degrees. Obviously the tilt/swivel mounts afford a level of flexibility not possible with other mounts but they aren’t necessarily the best value. In other words there is nothing inherently valuable about a wall-mount that can tilt and swivel if you don’t need it to do so. Pick the right mount for the right job and leave the bells and whistles for new cars.
Mar
15
HTPC Pointers
Filed Under Media Servers (HTPC) | Leave a Comment
I’m stepping just a wee bit out of my comfort zone here today with some HTPC tips, but I feel as if I’ve learned enough in the process of building two of them that I might have some worthwhile pointers. First off no matter how powerful you thought/think a HTPC should be; if you haven’t factored in 1080p you’re probably way off in the amount of raw horsepower needed for “Full HD” video processing.
In my experience you’re going to want at a dual-core CPU in the 2.3 GHz region or faster and or a video card with full MPEG-2/4 hardware acceleration, (the ATI 2400, 2600 or NVIDIA 8600/8500 come to mind) to get smooth playback with a variety of sources at 1080p.
Ok so with CPU and GPU considerations addressed the other big area I see mistakes being made is with the operating system itself. Think of your HTPC’s operating system as a petri dish you want to run a controlled experiment with, any contaminants (unnecessary updates, malware, etc.) that enter that dish raise the chance of hang-ups and crashes exponentially. Simple things like turning off automatic updates and removing unnecessary startup programs via msconfig; can go a long-ways toward a stable, trouble-free HTPC.
Mar
14
Home Theater Calibration Discs
Filed Under Calibration | Leave a Comment
Earlier when I spoke about having a professional calibrate your home theater system I promised I’d get into the various methods of calibrating your own system with calibration discs. There are several of these discs on the market and while they all present the data and tests differently from one another the end goal of these discs is the same, to allow you calibrate your home theater system without the expensive, specialized testing equipment the pros use.
One of the better known calibration discs would be ‘Digital Video Essentials’ (available in several formats and editions). DVE has been around in one form or another since the laserdisc days. You’ll find that each of the various calibration discs have their own personality as it were, by this I mean one may be more comprehensive than another and some may be easier to navigate while offering less overall test material. DVE certainly falls in the comprehensive category. You’ll probably find it too comprehensive if you’re just looking to run a few quick tests, the upside to this however is that you can grow into the disc as you gain knowledge.
From there, we get into the AVIA test discs and newcomers like the Monster ISF calibration disc. The AVIA series of calibration discs from Ovation are widely recognized as easy to use and comprehensive enough to handle all but the most stringent of requirements. I haven’t had a chance to use the Pro-Series AVIA discs but I hear they’re quite nice. That newcomer I mentioned is the ‘Monster ISF Calibration Wizard’, its lean (in a good way) and to the point, you pop the disc in and after a brief intro you’re calibrating. The Monster disc certainly isn’t a bad choice especially if you find one on sale, last I checked they could be found for as little as $29.99.
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Mar
13
Basic Room Acoustics
Filed Under Room Acoustics | Leave a Comment
Room acoustics is a topic unto itself but no time like the present to delve in and get started. As I hinted before all the equipment in the world can’t correct a deficient room (in the world might be a stretch but not by much). Simply put, if your room isn’t optimized for sound your audio system can only take you so far. With our limited time here today I’d like to focus on the two most common problematic room types and then I’ll give a few pointers for each.
The first room-type is the reverberant, empty, we haven’t gotten around to doing any decorating in this room yet, room. Err just reverberant will do actually. As you might guess these rooms are prone to echo and well for lack of better term, reverberation. Luckily this cavernous effect can be managed with what are often inexpensive additions to the room. Number one on the list for taming a reverberant room is carpet, even if it’s just to a place rug in front of or near the main speakers, carpet makes a difference. From there obvious things like drapes, throw pillows, other chairs, books, magazines and just about anything else you can throw at a reflective surface will surely help.
The second room type would exhibit just the opposite characteristics as the first. It would be dead, lifeless and require quite a bit more amplification to drive to the same levels as the first room. For lack of a better term these “dead” rooms are a bit harder to snap into shape but some of the same principles apply as the reverberant rooms. Start by trying to reduce the amount of absorption in the room, replace huge overstuffed pillows with smaller, denser ones. Are there any absorbent items in the room that just don’t have to be there, throws, stuffed animals, pretty much anything that doesn’t serve a purpose? After all this is a home theater right?
Mar
12
Add HDMI Switching to any System
Filed Under HDMI | Leave a Comment
People who spend any time at all talking to me in person are often surprised to find out I’m not a proponent of constant equipment upgrades. Even as someone who sells A/V gear for a living I really don’t see the need to toss out gear that’s in perfect working order, there’s always time for upgrades and replacements down the road. That said, two of the biggest changes to happen to home theater gear in the last few years were 1080p displays and HDMI switching for A/V receivers. While I can’t help with turning a 720p display into one capable of displaying 1080p I can help with the HDMI switching issue.
Assuming you have a recent AVR without HDMI switching (but would like to add it) and a universal remote-control and your source equipment is equipped with optical and or digital coaxial audio outputs, the process is actually quite simple. First you’ll need a HDMI switcher with an infra-red (IR) remote control, I told you it was simple… Monoprice sell’s these for as little as forty dollars but search around for “IR HDMI switcher” you never know what you might find.
Ok, with HDMI switcher in hand, the audio cables ran to their respective inputs (sans video cables) on the receiver, all that’s left to do is hook-up the switcher and program the remote. Hooking up the switcher couldn’t be more straightforward, run one HDMI cable to your display and then the individual cables to your source devices.
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