Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and a
Speaker 1: lot of all things tech. And first of all, if
Speaker 1: I sound a little different, it's because I'm actually in
Speaker 1: the office in a studio, though I am recording on
Speaker 1: my normal at home equipment, so there might be some
Speaker 1: slight differences in the quality of sound. But just hang
Speaker 1: with me, guys. And recently, someone on Twitter called me
Speaker 1: out for an article that I wrote many years ago
Speaker 1: for how stuff Works dot com and it was about
Speaker 1: home theater systems. The article and the person called me
Speaker 1: out because I used the term man cave right at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of the article, and the criticism was
Speaker 1: that that I had fired off a gendered down right
Speaker 1: at the beginning of a piece. And I want to
Speaker 1: be clear, that was a crappy thing for me to
Speaker 1: have done. It was crappy back then. It's definitely crappy now.
Speaker 1: I would never right it that way today. I'd like
Speaker 1: to think that over the following year is from writing
Speaker 1: that article, I've grown a little bit as a person,
Speaker 1: and I certainly tried to do that. But all of
Speaker 1: this is my interest to say we're gonna do an
Speaker 1: updated episode about home theater systems, actually a couple of episodes,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot to talk about. Now. Maybe you
Speaker 1: want to put together a home theater, or maybe you're
Speaker 1: just thinking about upgrading your setup, or maybe you just
Speaker 1: want to know what's the deal with all the latest
Speaker 1: options out there and to figure out which one might
Speaker 1: be best for you, and you know your situation. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna try and build the perfect person cave together.
Speaker 1: And this episode is really gonna focus on, uh, the
Speaker 1: TV or the screen, depending on what you want to do.
Speaker 1: And here's a tricky thing. So there are a lot
Speaker 1: of terms and numbers and metrics when it comes to
Speaker 1: home theater systems, and these are not always the easiest
Speaker 1: to understand or parse. Also, there's this tendency to think
Speaker 1: that bigger numbers are better. They're not necessarily better, and
Speaker 1: that might shock some of my fellow Americans because we
Speaker 1: typically go with more please when it comes to metrics.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna try and do my best to demystify
Speaker 1: some of these different features and explain what it actually means.
Speaker 1: So at a minimum, a good home theater system needs
Speaker 1: a screen, whether a projection screen or a TV screen,
Speaker 1: and a sound system. So we're gonna really focus on
Speaker 1: the screen part for this episode, and let's start with
Speaker 1: talking about you know, UM resolutions, because when I first
Speaker 1: started writing about home theaters, the top of the line
Speaker 1: TV screens at that time, when I was first writing
Speaker 1: about them, they max doubt in the h D t
Speaker 1: V range that stands for high definition television, which is
Speaker 1: almost obsolete at this point as far as new televisions
Speaker 1: are concerned. So it's a good idea to kind of
Speaker 1: go down the path of those you know, definitions and
Speaker 1: resolutions to talk about what that means and what the
Speaker 1: state of the art is today now. Mostly it does
Speaker 1: come down to resolution, or how many distinct components called
Speaker 1: pixels ake a little points of light makeup and image
Speaker 1: on the screen. So when we look at a television,
Speaker 1: the images we see are made up of thousands of
Speaker 1: points of light of various colors. We'll get to color
Speaker 1: representation in a little bit in this episode. So there's
Speaker 1: this analogy that I typically use when I talk about resolution.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you've got yourself a wooden frame and
Speaker 1: it's on the ground. It's you know, it's edges are
Speaker 1: a couple of inches high, and the frame itself is
Speaker 1: about thirty five inches wide and twenty inches tall. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is roughly the dimensions of a forty inch television,
Speaker 1: because we actually measure TVs on the diagonal across the screen,
Speaker 1: so from an upper corner to a lower corner, uh,
Speaker 1: diagonally across rather than just vertically or horizontally. So if
Speaker 1: you've ever wondered, hey, the said it was a you know,
Speaker 1: forty two inch television, but it's not for you two
Speaker 1: inches wide. That's why it's on the diagonal. And let's
Speaker 1: say that I give you a bucket that's filled with
Speaker 1: little wooden blocks, and each of these blocks are you know,
Speaker 1: a various a specific color, so each block is a
Speaker 1: solid color, and they're all just one inch cubes, so
Speaker 1: you get one inch per side on these cubes. And
Speaker 1: I ask you to make a picture using those blocks
Speaker 1: inside this frame. And I want the picture to be
Speaker 1: a cat because I work on the Internet, and that
Speaker 1: means there's like a chance that any photo I'm talking
Speaker 1: about is gonna least have a cat in it. Well,
Speaker 1: because each block is a solid color. You would have
Speaker 1: to do your best to make a cat image within
Speaker 1: the confines of this frame I've given you. And those
Speaker 1: blocks are one inch you know, cubes, so you would
Speaker 1: end up with some pretty jagged edges for any curves
Speaker 1: that you wanted to represent in this cat picture. So
Speaker 1: this would be a pretty low resolution image. Now let's
Speaker 1: say we dumped out all those blocks after you made
Speaker 1: your picture of a cat, and I gave you another
Speaker 1: bucket filled with blocks. But these cubes are half an
Speaker 1: inch per side, so you can fit twice as many
Speaker 1: across the horizontal and vertical lines. So with the one
Speaker 1: inch cube, if you were to actually fill the entire
Speaker 1: frame from corner to corner, you would be able to
Speaker 1: fit seven hundred cubes total in that frame. Because we
Speaker 1: multiply twenty times thirty five bytes, we get seven hundred
Speaker 1: and that, you know, because the cubes are one inch,
Speaker 1: that tells you seven cubes could fit within that frame. Well,
Speaker 1: now we're using half inch cubes. With half inch cubes,
Speaker 1: you could fit two thousand, eight hundred cubes in the frame.
Speaker 1: So you've half the size and you've quadrupled the number
Speaker 1: of blocks you can use. So your cat picture that
Speaker 1: you use with these half inch blocks is going to
Speaker 1: be better than the first one because the blocks are
Speaker 1: using allow you to approach fine detail a little more effectively.
Speaker 1: So as we decrease the size of the blocks, but
Speaker 1: we're keeping the same shape of the frame, we increase
Speaker 1: the number of blocks that can fit in that frame,
Speaker 1: and our picture starts to look more sharp and clear
Speaker 1: as we do this. That is resolution to a point anyway.
Speaker 1: So by the time resolutions were standardized during the history
Speaker 1: of television, you really had two broad standards. You had
Speaker 1: the europe and pal and SCAM systems, which used a
Speaker 1: resolution that we referred to as five hundred seventy six.
Speaker 1: That meant there were five hundred seventy six rows of pixels.
Speaker 1: Uh So, if you isolated one vertical line of pixels
Speaker 1: from top to bottom on the screen and you counted
Speaker 1: them all, you would count up to five d seventy
Speaker 1: six across the screen from side to side, you had
Speaker 1: seven hundred four columns of pixels. So seven hundred four
Speaker 1: pixels from left to right, five hundred seventy six from
Speaker 1: top to bottom. Multiply those together, that gives us a
Speaker 1: total of more than four hundred thousand pixels to play
Speaker 1: with to make our pictures. In the US, it was
Speaker 1: a slightly different story. Standard definition was four hundred eighty
Speaker 1: pixels vertically so from top to bottom, and seven hundred
Speaker 1: four horizontally left to right. That gave us a slightly
Speaker 1: lower resolution of than Europe had of around three hundred
Speaker 1: thirty eight thousand pixels on the screen, a little less
Speaker 1: than that actually, And I should also add that most
Speaker 1: screens had an aspect ratio of four to three. This
Speaker 1: refers to the ratio of the television's width compared to
Speaker 1: its height. Now, in the example I gave earlier, the
Speaker 1: frame that I mentioned that would actually be more the
Speaker 1: modern standard of aspect ratios for televisions, which is sixteen
Speaker 1: by nine. That's what we used to call the wide
Speaker 1: screen format back when those TVs were first hitting the market,
Speaker 1: and not everyone was sold on them back in those days,
Speaker 1: because we are also used to the four by three ratio.
Speaker 1: But in the old days, most TVs looked a little
Speaker 1: more boxy than the ones we have today, and this
Speaker 1: is why when you watch older television shows, you frequently
Speaker 1: see that the image doesn't really extend all the way
Speaker 1: to the edges. Of your television screen unless someone has
Speaker 1: you know, like digitally punched in, which is awful because
Speaker 1: that means you lose the details that are otherwise at
Speaker 1: the edges. The Simpsons did this and it was terrible
Speaker 1: because a lot of visual gags got cut off because
Speaker 1: the image was punched in, and um, I want to
Speaker 1: say Fox and then Disney kind of relented and gave
Speaker 1: people the option of being able to view those episodes
Speaker 1: in their original four by three aspect ratio. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of how things were for decades, with you know,
Speaker 1: some exceptions, but that's all in the past, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave them for now because we don't really need
Speaker 1: to go into detail. But then we get up to
Speaker 1: the era of h D t V and things started
Speaker 1: getting really confusing because there were different flavors of h
Speaker 1: D t V more so than you found was standard definition.
Speaker 1: So the three big ones were seven ten A d
Speaker 1: I and ten A DP in most parts of the world.
Speaker 1: So let's go with the numbers first, then I'll explain
Speaker 1: what that I M P mean. So seven twenty referred
Speaker 1: to a resolution of seven D twenty pixels tall by
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred eighty pixels wide. That gives us
Speaker 1: a total of nine one thousand, six hundred pixels. This
Speaker 1: one often was called HD ready as opposed to full H.
Speaker 1: D t V ten eighty refers to one thousand eighty
Speaker 1: pixels tall by one thousand nine d twenty pixels wide.
Speaker 1: And you might say, all right, but when I multiply
Speaker 1: those two together, I get two point zero seven million pixels.
Speaker 1: And that's true. But here's where we got to talk
Speaker 1: about the P versus the eye. So the P stands
Speaker 1: for progressive scan, and the eye stands for interlaced. So
Speaker 1: with an interlaced display, the screen shows alternating horizontal lines
Speaker 1: of pixels and paints the image across the screen and
Speaker 1: then down the screen. So if we were to number
Speaker 1: the rows of pixels on the screen, going from row
Speaker 1: one and then working our way down until we had
Speaker 1: labeled all the way down to row one thousand eighty,
Speaker 1: and if we were slow things way way way down,
Speaker 1: like super super super low, we would see that the
Speaker 1: screen would display the odd rows first, so rose one, three, five, seven,
Speaker 1: and so on all the way down to one thousand
Speaker 1: seventy nine would display first. Then you would get the
Speaker 1: even rows two, four, six, eight, etcetera. Now this happens
Speaker 1: at a speed that is so fast our eyes can't
Speaker 1: detect it, so to us it just looks like a
Speaker 1: solid image. We don't see that it's really alternating these
Speaker 1: lines at all. We're getting the experience as if it's
Speaker 1: all happening at once. But it does mean that effectively,
Speaker 1: it's only showing half the number of pixels UH in
Speaker 1: a given moment. Now we say this means an interlaced
Speaker 1: screen uses two fields. One field has all the odd
Speaker 1: horizontal lines of pixels, and the second field has all
Speaker 1: the even ones, and these are necessary to create a
Speaker 1: single frame of videos. So each frame is made up
Speaker 1: a two fields with an interlaced screen. A progressive scan
Speaker 1: screen draws every line of a frame in sequence, so
Speaker 1: there's no reason to talk about video fields because field
Speaker 1: and frame are essentially the same thing. Here. Now, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the edge would go to progressive scan TVs among home
Speaker 1: theater aficionados. They these screens were just better at showing
Speaker 1: fast moving sequences in particular, so people who were serious
Speaker 1: about home theater in the h D t V era
Speaker 1: often would gravitate toward progressive scan screens. These days, you'll
Speaker 1: find higher in televisions in the U h D or
Speaker 1: Ultra high Definition ranges. In fact, four K is pretty
Speaker 1: much the standard now um, but you can also find
Speaker 1: eight K. So now we've moved away from the convention
Speaker 1: that we used to use to describe resolution in the
Speaker 1: in the s D and h D eras, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't help that there's some screpancies here as well. Like
Speaker 1: one of the issues that you often run into with
Speaker 1: home theater is that there's a lack of universal standards
Speaker 1: for a lot of stuff, and that can cause issues
Speaker 1: down the line. In televisions, we generally say it's a
Speaker 1: four K TV when it refers to a resolution of
Speaker 1: three thousand, eight hundred forty pixels wide by two thousand,
Speaker 1: one hundred sixty pixels tall and um. First of all,
Speaker 1: you notice that neither of those numbers is four thousand, right,
Speaker 1: three thousand, eight hundred forty is close, like you could
Speaker 1: round up to four thousand, but neither of those are
Speaker 1: four thousands. So that makes the four K thing a
Speaker 1: little confusing. Also, uh, we see that in previous resolution descriptions,
Speaker 1: the number that we used to refer to how many
Speaker 1: pixels tall and image was was the dominant one right,
Speaker 1: ten eighty means that you have one thousand eighty pixels
Speaker 1: from the top of the screen to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the screen. But with four K without three thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred forty pixels, we're actually looking at the width of
Speaker 1: the screen from left to right, not the height of
Speaker 1: the screen from top to bottom. So those three thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred forty pixels go across the screen. And if
Speaker 1: you're saying, you know, three thousand hundred forty isn't the
Speaker 1: same as four K, like I said, you're right. And
Speaker 1: if you're wondering, well, why don't we call it twenty
Speaker 1: one sixty because that would still be in the same
Speaker 1: line as ten eight, Right, we called it ten eight
Speaker 1: Why don't we call four K six? Well, that's because
Speaker 1: I don't know. For some reason, we decided to switch
Speaker 1: things up and talk about width rather than height as
Speaker 1: far as pixel density goes. Now, if we're talking about
Speaker 1: movie projection instead of television screens, four K usually has
Speaker 1: a different resolution of four thousand, nineties six pixels across
Speaker 1: and two thousand, one hundred sixty pixels up and down.
Speaker 1: So at least there we get to our four K bit, right,
Speaker 1: But for TVs, it's really more four K ish, and
Speaker 1: in fact, there are several different resolutions that are in
Speaker 1: that neighborhood that are lumped together in the four K designation.
Speaker 1: There even some TVs that you could argue are five K,
Speaker 1: but they get lumped down with four K, and it
Speaker 1: gets even more confusing when you start talking about cameras
Speaker 1: and stuff. But we're gonna leave all that here. It's
Speaker 1: mostly to say that it's a higher resolution than the
Speaker 1: h D t V market. I imagine the switch to
Speaker 1: four K nomenclature is mostly for the convenience of marketing,
Speaker 1: plus to cover the fact that there were so many
Speaker 1: slight variations on resolution that it kind of helped cut
Speaker 1: down on confusion because the differences didn't really translate to
Speaker 1: a massive difference in viewing experience. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: if one TVs four K resolution was technically slightly less
Speaker 1: than another four K TVs resolution, typically you couldn't really
Speaker 1: tell because it was at a level of resolution that's
Speaker 1: so high that our human i is aren't able to
Speaker 1: pick up on the differences. So, in other words, you
Speaker 1: could have two of these televisions right next to each other,
Speaker 1: they have slightly different resolutions and not be able to
Speaker 1: see a difference. Then we've got eight K resolution. And
Speaker 1: this is where the numbers get even bigger, and like
Speaker 1: four K, this is more about eight K ish than
Speaker 1: actually having eight thousand pixels across the width of a screen.
Speaker 1: That number is really seven thousand, six hundred eighty. And
Speaker 1: as for up and down the screen, well that's four thousand,
Speaker 1: three twenty. That is the maximum resolution allowed by the
Speaker 1: u h D or Ultra High Definition standards set down
Speaker 1: by the i TU DASH our recommendation bt DOT twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I t U in this case stands for International Telecommunication Union,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna touch on tech standards a lot throughout
Speaker 1: this episode, because boy, but at least this one is
Speaker 1: one that is well and truly set and standardized. It's saying,
Speaker 1: this is the up end. This is where eight K
Speaker 1: ends right here at this resolution. So yeah, eight K
Speaker 1: TVs that maximum resolution. Have a screen filled with more
Speaker 1: than thirty three million pixels. If you were to have
Speaker 1: every pixel light up and you were to number each
Speaker 1: one of them, you would come up with more than
Speaker 1: thirty three million of those suckers. So you've got thirty
Speaker 1: three million and change teeny little blocks of light which
Speaker 1: you can use to make your images. And right now,
Speaker 1: that's the top of the resolution charts that you can
Speaker 1: find for home theater television screens. So does that mean
Speaker 1: that more resolution means a better picture. Not quite. It's
Speaker 1: actually way more complicated than that. Resolution is important, but
Speaker 1: it's just one component of making a good picture. Also,
Speaker 1: there's a limit to the amount of detail that our
Speaker 1: human eyes can see, and that limit depends upon each
Speaker 1: person's vision. So it's not like I could give you
Speaker 1: a specific resolution and say this and no further. If
Speaker 1: you go any higher than this, it's a fool's errand
Speaker 1: because you'll never tell the difference. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Speaker 1: But there are some other factors that that tie in
Speaker 1: with resolution when it comes to your viewing experience and
Speaker 1: how clear or sharp an image is. One of those
Speaker 1: is the size of the television screen. So let's say
Speaker 1: we have three television's, all of them are at hd
Speaker 1: TV resolution just to make this easy, And one of
Speaker 1: those televisions is forty two inches, another one is fifty
Speaker 1: five inches, and the third is sixty inches, but they
Speaker 1: all are ten a DP resolution. Well, that means that
Speaker 1: if you were to count up all the pixels on
Speaker 1: each of those screens. Each screen would have the same
Speaker 1: number of pixels, but that means that the pixels for
Speaker 1: the six screen have to be a little bit larger
Speaker 1: than the ones that you would find on the forty
Speaker 1: two inch screen, and then the fifty in screen would
Speaker 1: be right in the middle, right, because the same number
Speaker 1: of pixels are on all three screens, but the screens
Speaker 1: are different sizes, So it's possible that you would spot
Speaker 1: a difference in resolution if you were to view the
Speaker 1: same video source on that forty two inch screen as
Speaker 1: the sixty inch screen at the same time. You put
Speaker 1: those next to each other, and you might say, oh,
Speaker 1: the picture looks more sharp on thet in screen than
Speaker 1: the sixty because you have greater pixel density per area there, right,
Speaker 1: So screen size does matter, and if you want to
Speaker 1: go really big, like obnoxiously big with your television screen,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna want to hire resolution to make up
Speaker 1: for all that real estate that you're gonna be using
Speaker 1: to view your stuff. Now, another factor is how close
Speaker 1: you are sitting to the screen, and this matters for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. The closer you are, the more
Speaker 1: likely you're gonna see issues with resolution up to a point. Um, So,
Speaker 1: if you have a really big screen and you happen
Speaker 1: to sit really close to it and it's all an
Speaker 1: h D t V resolution, you could end up saying
Speaker 1: this doesn't look high definition to me. Now, there are
Speaker 1: various sources that give out formulas for how far you
Speaker 1: should sit away from your television depending upon your television size,
Speaker 1: and I'll cover more of that in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: mentioned before the break that we needed to talk about
Speaker 1: viewing distances. See now, in the old days, you know,
Speaker 1: the h D t V days, how close you sat
Speaker 1: was dependent on a few things, not just the television size,
Speaker 1: but also the resolution of the TV and how good
Speaker 1: your vision was, because limitations and resolution would become apparent
Speaker 1: if the TV were particularly large or if you were
Speaker 1: sitting fairly close to it. So in other words, you
Speaker 1: would say, like, it doesn't look that great. But in
Speaker 1: the u h D era of four K and beyond,
Speaker 1: it's getting really super hard to spot those resolution issue
Speaker 1: unless you're talking about, you know, a gargantuan television like
Speaker 1: one of those that sharp would show off at c
Speaker 1: e s on some years something that's like a hundred
Speaker 1: inches or something. So now the main thing is how
Speaker 1: your vision. You know, how much of your vision should
Speaker 1: the television actually fill, or rather, how much of your
Speaker 1: field of view should be taken up by the TV.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you've got typical vision for a
Speaker 1: human being. And just for the record, I actually don't
Speaker 1: have typical vision. I have less than what is typical.
Speaker 1: So if you don't have typical vision, please don't feel
Speaker 1: badly about it. I'm just using it as a way
Speaker 1: of setting, uh, you know, a framework. So typically humans
Speaker 1: have a field of view of an arc of around
Speaker 1: two degrees or between two ten and two twenty in
Speaker 1: front of them, and that is, if you were to
Speaker 1: draw straight lines out from the very edges of your
Speaker 1: vision while you're looking straight ahead, then the angle between
Speaker 1: those lines would be somewhere around degrees. Now, not all
Speaker 1: of that vision is equal, right, The stuff closer to
Speaker 1: the edges of your vision, well, that's in your peripheral
Speaker 1: and you won't see as much sharp detail there. You're
Speaker 1: aware of things that happen in the periphery, but you're
Speaker 1: not focusing on that. In fact, when you get beyond
Speaker 1: about thirty degrees arc. You're really talking about the mid
Speaker 1: peripheral part of your vision. So generally speaking, you want
Speaker 1: your TV to take up no more than say, thirty
Speaker 1: to forty degrees of your field a few and this
Speaker 1: should guide your decision when it comes to figuring out
Speaker 1: where you need to put, say your chair or your
Speaker 1: couch or bean bag or whatever it is. But I
Speaker 1: don't know about you. I don't have like a handy
Speaker 1: dandy protractor to help me figure out that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: like what degree arc am I looking at when I've
Speaker 1: got something in front of me. So we go to
Speaker 1: a more basic formula to kind of rough it out.
Speaker 1: And that formula is to multiply the size of your
Speaker 1: television's screen and inches by the number one point six.
Speaker 1: That's our constant, and that will give us the number
Speaker 1: of inches that we should sit away from that TV
Speaker 1: to get that thirty degree view in our field of view.
Speaker 1: Or let's say that you are starting from the other
Speaker 1: side right like you already know how far away you
Speaker 1: plan to be sitting from where your TV is going
Speaker 1: to go, Well, you can take that distance and inches
Speaker 1: and then divide that by one point six, and that
Speaker 1: would give you a rough idea of how large a
Speaker 1: television you should go and shop. Four all right, so
Speaker 1: let's use an example. Let's say that I have just
Speaker 1: gone out and I've purchased a fifty five inch television,
Speaker 1: and I want to know how far from this television
Speaker 1: I should have my couch so that I can get
Speaker 1: that optimal viewing experience and have that thirty degree field
Speaker 1: of view view of the screen. So I take the
Speaker 1: size of the screen fifty I multiply that by one
Speaker 1: point six. That gives me eighty eight inches. So when
Speaker 1: I convert that into feat that's seven point three feet
Speaker 1: or so, so a little more than seven feet away,
Speaker 1: and that will give me that thirty degree view of
Speaker 1: the television. And it doesn't have to be exact. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the ballpark figure. It tells you, all right,
Speaker 1: somewhere around seven ft you should have a pretty good
Speaker 1: viewing experience. But what if instead, I've got a room
Speaker 1: and I've got set up so I know where the
Speaker 1: couch is gonna go, I know where the TV is
Speaker 1: going to go, but I haven't bought the television yet,
Speaker 1: but I know the couch has to be this distance
Speaker 1: from the TV, and I happen to know that it's
Speaker 1: eight feet away from where the television is going to be, Well,
Speaker 1: then we convert our eight ft two inches, that's inches.
Speaker 1: We divide ninety six by one point six. That gives
Speaker 1: us sixty So that means we would want something close
Speaker 1: to us sixty inch television to go in that space.
Speaker 1: It's a good general rule to follow, assuming that you're
Speaker 1: talking about uh D televisions, which again, those resolute sans
Speaker 1: are high enough where you're not likely to have any
Speaker 1: issues when it comes to resolution quality. Also, you don't
Speaker 1: have to be right on the dot for any of
Speaker 1: these measurements. Thirty degrees is your target, but really just
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a little bit closer, a little
Speaker 1: bit further away, it's not going to ruin the experience,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's resolution. And I should also add
Speaker 1: you should really get the benefits of resolution if the
Speaker 1: source of the video you're watching matches the resolution of
Speaker 1: your display, or to put it in another way, what
Speaker 1: you see on screen is limited by the weakest component
Speaker 1: in your system, and sometimes you might not even be
Speaker 1: able to view it, Like if your TV is an
Speaker 1: hd TV and you're trying to watch a four K
Speaker 1: video on it. That just ain't gonna work. Period. But
Speaker 1: let's say that your TV is the highest point in
Speaker 1: your system. Well, you're still limited about whatever the lowest
Speaker 1: point is. So if you're watching an old VHS tape
Speaker 1: and you're using your eight K U h D t V,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna look like eight K video. It's going
Speaker 1: to be limited to VHS levels of resolution, which is
Speaker 1: close to standard definition. So the quality of what you
Speaker 1: see depends on what that video source is coming from.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a source that can create outputs
Speaker 1: of four K, let alone eight K video, then you're
Speaker 1: not really going to get the benefit of that higher resolution. Well,
Speaker 1: there is one thing these higher definition televisions can do
Speaker 1: to compensate for lower resolution video sources. This is called upscaling,
Speaker 1: which is really a necessity. It's not like it makes
Speaker 1: it sound like it magically makes video better. That's not
Speaker 1: really what upscaling is doing. But let's say that you
Speaker 1: wanted to watch a lower resolution video on your high
Speaker 1: resolution screen and there was no way to adjust for
Speaker 1: this difference. Okay, so there's no system in place to
Speaker 1: have this video somehow expand to fill the number of
Speaker 1: pixels that are on your uh D television screen. Well,
Speaker 1: that video just contains information for an image that takes
Speaker 1: up a specific number of pixels horizontally and vertically. So
Speaker 1: what you could do is have that video play on
Speaker 1: your screen, but it only takes up those pixels, so
Speaker 1: it would be like a little thumbnail video. It would
Speaker 1: be like maybe in the corner, maybe playing in just
Speaker 1: the very center of your screen, with lots of black
Speaker 1: space around it, because it only takes up that subset
Speaker 1: of pixels and your television is way more pixels than
Speaker 1: the video source does. This would be kind of like
Speaker 1: those thumbnail videos you occasionally see on websites, and it's
Speaker 1: not a very satisfying experience. Or you could build in
Speaker 1: an upscale function, and this is a process in which
Speaker 1: the television essentially starts to fill in pixels to make
Speaker 1: up for the fact that the video source is a
Speaker 1: lower resolution than the screen can display, and it's a
Speaker 1: way of boosting the pixel count of the original video source. Now,
Speaker 1: typically this means that the television is is using light
Speaker 1: that's of a similar quality in neighboring pixels to fill
Speaker 1: in for missing ones. So let's say that we've got
Speaker 1: a video and it happens to be showing a green
Speaker 1: meadow and a blue sky. Well, the television would essentially
Speaker 1: be inserting pixels that would be shades of green similar
Speaker 1: to the green and the meadow over in the meadow
Speaker 1: side of it, or shades a blue similar to the
Speaker 1: blue of the sky and the sky part of it,
Speaker 1: and try to match the brightness to neighboring pixels to
Speaker 1: kind of fill out and even out this image. So
Speaker 1: you're adding information to something that was being fed to
Speaker 1: the screen. This process does not add detail, however, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't make those images more clear or more sharp.
Speaker 1: So the bigger gap you have in resolution between your
Speaker 1: display and the video source, the less good it's gonna look.
Speaker 1: So an eight K TV up scaling a VHS video
Speaker 1: would not just magically like eight K television. It would
Speaker 1: it looked pretty jankie. All that being said, resolution is
Speaker 1: really just one factor to consider when you're looking at television's.
Speaker 1: There are tons of uh D TVs on the market,
Speaker 1: and they are not all equal. Some are just playing
Speaker 1: better when it comes to picture quality, even if they
Speaker 1: happen to have the same number of pixels as a
Speaker 1: competing brand. Now, anyone who remembers the days when we
Speaker 1: used to buy digital cameras, you know, before all of
Speaker 1: our phones came with one, you'll remember how the megapixel
Speaker 1: number was a really big selling point for cameras. You know,
Speaker 1: the general marketing point was that more megapixels means better pictures,
Speaker 1: except it didn't, at least not necessarily. Megapixels, which just
Speaker 1: refers to the resolution output of a camera, is really
Speaker 1: just one part of what can make a picture good.
Speaker 1: But it is way easier to sell a camera to
Speaker 1: the public by saying this one goes to eleven, then
Speaker 1: it would be to try and describe all the different
Speaker 1: factors that go into the quality of a photo. So
Speaker 1: the same thing is true with television's But another really
Speaker 1: important thing besides resolution is a television's contrast ratio, and
Speaker 1: that refers to the ratio that describes the difference between
Speaker 1: the luminance or the brightness. If you prefer of the
Speaker 1: darkest shade that the display can produce and the brightest
Speaker 1: shade that it can produce, and you want a really
Speaker 1: high contrast ratio which indicates a wide spectrum of luminance,
Speaker 1: and that can really impact image quality. I'll explain a
Speaker 1: bit more, but first let's take another quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we were talking about contrast a shio. Now, some televisions
Speaker 1: naturally just have better contrast ratios, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to showing off the darker colors. And this comes down
Speaker 1: to the technologies that actually power the TVs. Televisions that
Speaker 1: have a back light, uh, that is, the image is
Speaker 1: generated on screen, it's coming courtesy a little tiny lamps
Speaker 1: that are behind each pixel. UH, those can have trouble
Speaker 1: with darker colors. And that's because that lamp is essentially
Speaker 1: it's always on, even during the dark scenes, and the
Speaker 1: liquid crystals that are meant to block the light, sometimes
Speaker 1: they allow a little bit of light to bleed through,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that means that dark stuff that should be
Speaker 1: say pitch black, might actually come out looking more like
Speaker 1: their charcoal gray when they're on your screen. And if
Speaker 1: you're trying to watch something in which a character in
Speaker 1: really dark clothing is moving around in a dark building,
Speaker 1: it might just look like you're looking at a big, dark,
Speaker 1: gray screen with nothing going on. In fact, that's what
Speaker 1: a lot of Batman movies might look like on one
Speaker 1: of these screens. And this is particularly noticeable if your
Speaker 1: room is really dark as well, in bright rooms it's
Speaker 1: not quite as bad. Some television's have what's called dynamic contrast,
Speaker 1: which puts the backlight into a low power mode to
Speaker 1: reduce that kind of bleed through, and that helps a bit.
Speaker 1: And of course not all televisions rely on the same technology.
Speaker 1: So l e ED television's have little l e ED
Speaker 1: you know, light emitting diodes as lamps behind a liquid
Speaker 1: crystal display or l c D panel, and this type
Speaker 1: is the kind that can have that light bleed through.
Speaker 1: The l c D crystals act kind of like window shades.
Speaker 1: They control how much light can pass through to the screen,
Speaker 1: but they aren't necessarily perfect at blacking everything out. There
Speaker 1: are actually a couple of different LED panels that can
Speaker 1: have different effects. So a vertical alignment panel, those tend
Speaker 1: to be more efficient in blocking light, they have better
Speaker 1: contrast as a result. Uh then you have in plane
Speaker 1: switching panel. These tend to let a little bit more
Speaker 1: light through. So this is where you might get some
Speaker 1: of that bleed through. But you rarely see these bits
Speaker 1: of information about what kind of l e ED display
Speaker 1: the television has on the TV box, right so it's
Speaker 1: hard to kind of shop for that, But then you
Speaker 1: could also use an oh LAD screen. Oh lads are
Speaker 1: organic light emitting diodes. They don't need those little backlights.
Speaker 1: They can sort of think of these as little bitty
Speaker 1: points that act as a light source and a pixel
Speaker 1: all in one go, and they can actually turn on
Speaker 1: or off, you know, dynamically, and thus they tend to
Speaker 1: be much better when it comes to contrast. They can
Speaker 1: show darker colors with more accuracy, and I would finally
Speaker 1: be able to tell what the heck Batman was actually doing.
Speaker 1: Several years ago. I would also be talking about plasma televisions,
Speaker 1: which could also provide pretty amazing contrast, although at the
Speaker 1: expense of brightness. They couldn't get as bright as L
Speaker 1: E D t vs could typically, but plas the TVs
Speaker 1: were really expensive, they never really caught on the same
Speaker 1: way that L E ED t vs did. Plus, there
Speaker 1: was this potential issue of burning, meaning that if you
Speaker 1: had a plasma screen and you were showing the same
Speaker 1: image for a long time, you might have a remnant
Speaker 1: of that image that can stick around even after when
Speaker 1: you're watching other stuff, So it affects the quality of
Speaker 1: your experience, but the major TV company has pretty much
Speaker 1: stopped making plasma televisions back in two thousand fourteen, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of a moot point. And before I move on,
Speaker 1: I should also talk about projectors too. So far I've
Speaker 1: been focusing on TV sets, but one way you can
Speaker 1: trick out a home theater is to get a really
Speaker 1: nice projector, which can give you a big screen experience
Speaker 1: at a much lower price point, depending on you know
Speaker 1: which model you're looking at, and I do mean depending,
Speaker 1: because there's some projectors out there for high end markets.
Speaker 1: They're in the tens of thousands of dollars range. That
Speaker 1: is way outside of my budget. But you can find
Speaker 1: others that are, you know, around five d two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: There's still expensive, but they are less expensive per inch
Speaker 1: than your flat screen televisions typically are. Like you can
Speaker 1: get screens that are a hundred twenty inches or larger,
Speaker 1: and if you have a really big home theater set up,
Speaker 1: that means that you could have a effectively a one
Speaker 1: or two hundred forty inch TV, but for a fraction
Speaker 1: of the cost of some of these other flat panel
Speaker 1: display styles. You can also find a range of resolutions
Speaker 1: with projectors as well, including ultra high definition projectors, so
Speaker 1: you can find four K projectors no problem, uh, and
Speaker 1: you can really create that kind of theater experience. But
Speaker 1: one thing that matters a lot with this particular setup
Speaker 1: is ambient light. You want as little light in your
Speaker 1: environment as possible. You want that room to be dark
Speaker 1: if you're going to be using a projector, So that
Speaker 1: usually means that projectors are best in spaces that have
Speaker 1: few or no windows, or you have treated those windows
Speaker 1: with like blackout curtains or blackout shades so that you
Speaker 1: can have a really dark movie Dungeon. Um televisions can
Speaker 1: give you a good experience at other light levels, so
Speaker 1: they you know, they're not as dependent upon this. So
Speaker 1: really this comes down to your setup, like what room
Speaker 1: you're planning on using as a home theater. If your
Speaker 1: home theater is going to be out in a sun room,
Speaker 1: well you're probably not going to have a good experience
Speaker 1: with a projector unless you're only watching things in the
Speaker 1: dead of night. Oh and what's more, you can also
Speaker 1: find projectors that have built in WiFi receivers and even
Speaker 1: ones that have apps included to let you access popular
Speaker 1: streaming services. So you don't have to hook the projector
Speaker 1: up to some other computer or set top box in
Speaker 1: order to get those functions. Those projectors do exist, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty darn cool too that they're kind of neat.
Speaker 1: Now it's time to chat about another confusing factor in
Speaker 1: image quality, and that is HDR. And this one's really
Speaker 1: irritating because while there is a standard HDR, there are
Speaker 1: other flavors of HDR, and that means there's lots of
Speaker 1: competing technologies all trying to accomplish the same goal, but
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily compatible with each other. That means you
Speaker 1: could end up buying an HDR TV and HDR set up,
Speaker 1: and that the two don't necessarily work together. Like if
Speaker 1: you're set up is working on one set and your
Speaker 1: TV is meant for a different set, you've got some issues.
Speaker 1: So let's get into that. So HDR, in case you're
Speaker 1: not familiar, stands for high dynamic range. This became the
Speaker 1: buzzword of modern TVs and it tends to be one
Speaker 1: of those features that gets positioned as a main selling point.
Speaker 1: So when resolution used to be the big differentiator, now
Speaker 1: it's does it have high dynamic range? Well? And it
Speaker 1: centers around this representation of color and brightness, So dynamics
Speaker 1: references extremes, right, So like in a in sound, let's
Speaker 1: say you're talking about music, you would say a song
Speaker 1: was really dynamic if there were was a lot of
Speaker 1: variation between the loud parts and the soft parts of
Speaker 1: the song, if there were a lot of levels there,
Speaker 1: volume levels. That's a lot of dynamics as opposed to
Speaker 1: a piece that maintains more or less the same level
Speaker 1: of volume throughout the whole piece. With televisions, these dynamics
Speaker 1: are in the shades and brightness of the colors on
Speaker 1: the screen, which ideally manifests as really vibrant on screen displays,
Speaker 1: so the colors really pop out at you, and there
Speaker 1: could be much more subtle shifts with light and shadow
Speaker 1: when you're working with a system that has really good HDR.
Speaker 1: In fact, a superior television with high resolution and HDR
Speaker 1: could even give you the feeling that you're looking through
Speaker 1: a window almost rather than a screen, because HDR, if
Speaker 1: it's implemented well, can even convey a sense of depth.
Speaker 1: And this is true even if the television isn't a
Speaker 1: three D TV. And let me tell you, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad we are past the three D television fad because
Speaker 1: that man I didn't have to talk about three D
Speaker 1: in this episode. But there are some caveats when it
Speaker 1: comes to HDR, and one is that every component in
Speaker 1: your system that deals with video has to be HDR
Speaker 1: compatible in order for you to get the benefit. So
Speaker 1: let's say that you have a game console and it
Speaker 1: supports hd R, and you've got a television that supports HDR,
Speaker 1: but the cable you're using to connect your console to
Speaker 1: your TV isn't HDR compatible, Well, you would not be
Speaker 1: able to take advantage of HDR. Or let's say that
Speaker 1: your TV and your cable are both HDR ready, but
Speaker 1: your video source isn't the same problem, every single component
Speaker 1: has to be hd R ready in order to take
Speaker 1: advantage of HDR. Moreover, HDR is kind of it's more
Speaker 1: of what you call guidelines. As Barbosa would say, it's
Speaker 1: like a defined goal. It's a system it has to
Speaker 1: achieve a certain benchmark in uh in in color representation
Speaker 1: in order to be considered HDR. But how it goes
Speaker 1: about achieving that benchmark, which is technically, you know, a
Speaker 1: resolution of at least four K and a certain contrast
Speaker 1: ratio that isn't standardized. So in other words, you're saying,
Speaker 1: here's your destination, but how you get there is up
Speaker 1: to you. So that means there are different flavors of HDR.
Speaker 1: There's HDR ten that's your baseline version. Most other versions
Speaker 1: support HDR ten, so hopefully if you have a setup,
Speaker 1: you can use that. But then you have other more
Speaker 1: you know, uh, feature filled versions. There's Advanced HDR, which
Speaker 1: was a product from Technicolor. There's Dolby Vision, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like hd R plus, and there are more
Speaker 1: besides that. So to take advantage of those versions, you
Speaker 1: would have to have your television and all your other
Speaker 1: components be compatible with that specific version of HDR for
Speaker 1: you to be able to experience riens it. So you
Speaker 1: could end up with an HDR system that can't really
Speaker 1: play certain HDR media, at least not with the HDR
Speaker 1: effects you were expecting, because the media was built for
Speaker 1: a different version of HDR, And yeah, that kind of stinks,
Speaker 1: but when it all does work together, it's pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: So your display should have a great contrast ratio, it
Speaker 1: should have great resolution, it should have HDR. What else well,
Speaker 1: you might consider the refresh rate. I don't see this
Speaker 1: touted as much as it was a few years ago,
Speaker 1: right around the time when Peter Jackson was releasing the
Speaker 1: Hobbit films. That's really when refresh rate became a big thing.
Speaker 1: It kind of got a bad name at the time too. Technically,
Speaker 1: refresh rate describes the number of times the television refreshes
Speaker 1: the image on the screen each second, and we measure
Speaker 1: this and hurts or cycles per second, and it's somewhat
Speaker 1: similar to the frame rate of a film. You know,
Speaker 1: we typically playback film at a speed of twenty four
Speaker 1: frames per second. That means the film is really a
Speaker 1: series of still photographs, but when we play it at
Speaker 1: a fast enough speed, it creates the illusion of movement.
Speaker 1: Video is a little bit different. We do still have
Speaker 1: a way of changing the image super fast, and typically
Speaker 1: we're talking around like thirty to sixty times per second,
Speaker 1: sixty times being way more common these days, so that's
Speaker 1: like sixty hurts. Higher in televisions can have higher refresh rates,
Speaker 1: or at least higher advertised refresh rates. Hurts is not uncommon.
Speaker 1: But what does this mean as far as your viewing experience?
Speaker 1: Goes well for fast moving stuff, like stuff that's moving
Speaker 1: quickly across the screen as you're watching it, you would
Speaker 1: typically see a blurring of that image, and the image
Speaker 1: kind of looks a little bit softer as a result
Speaker 1: with televisions that have lower refresh rates. When you have
Speaker 1: faster refresh rates, those same images appear to be more
Speaker 1: sharp and more clear, more solid. So this is really
Speaker 1: great for certain things like sports, where the effect is
Speaker 1: almost like you're there in person because you're not getting
Speaker 1: motion blur and stuff like that. In addition to refresh rate,
Speaker 1: TVs typically have some other anti blurring technologies built into them.
Speaker 1: This can boost the perceived effect. So a lot of
Speaker 1: companies will actually describe this by just saying the TV
Speaker 1: has an even higher refresh rate than the television actually does,
Speaker 1: Like it might really refresh the screen a hundred twenty
Speaker 1: times a second, but I might be advertised at to
Speaker 1: forty or even higher. Because the technical detail of how
Speaker 1: many times it refreshes the screen isn't as important as
Speaker 1: saying this is the effect you will perceive when you watch, right, Like,
Speaker 1: those numbers don't really matter if they don't relate to
Speaker 1: what it's like to watch something on that television screen.
Speaker 1: They're just numbers. It means nothing, you know. It's the
Speaker 1: experience that actually means something. So if the image seems
Speaker 1: more sharp and clear, even when you're looking at stuff
Speaker 1: that's moving fast, that's all that really matters, not which
Speaker 1: collection of technologies made it possible or what numbers we
Speaker 1: associate with them. However, these technologies can also create some
Speaker 1: weird effects that you might not like, so some folks
Speaker 1: complain that these faster refresh rates make stuff look artificial
Speaker 1: or fake. The phrase that you will frequently here to
Speaker 1: describe this is it makes everything look like a Mexican
Speaker 1: soap opera. Which don't get me wrong, I am not
Speaker 1: disparaging Mexican soap operas, but they do have a particular
Speaker 1: look to them, and you don't necessarily want everything to
Speaker 1: look that way. A lot of theater buffs I know
Speaker 1: would actually turn these refresh rates off. That usually there
Speaker 1: was a setting somewhere in the television where you could
Speaker 1: just turn it to like sixty hurts or one twenty
Speaker 1: anything beyond that, a lot of people just kind of
Speaker 1: shied away from and they would opt for that lower
Speaker 1: refresh rate and retain that motion blur for stuff like
Speaker 1: TV shows and movies, maybe activating the higher refresh rate
Speaker 1: for stuff like sporting events and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And as with many of the things I mentioned in
Speaker 1: this episode, a lot of this falls to marketing strategies, right,
Speaker 1: Like having a bigger number to point to is a
Speaker 1: way of saying, this is how we differentiate our product
Speaker 1: from our competitors. So knowing that being savvy as a
Speaker 1: consumer is really important, right, Being able to see through
Speaker 1: the marketing speak in order to understand what's actually being
Speaker 1: sold to you. That is critical, especially when you're talking
Speaker 1: about something like the centerpiece of a home theater, which
Speaker 1: is going to presumably be a fairly expensive technology, whether
Speaker 1: it's a television or a projector so it behooves you
Speaker 1: to do this kind of research, understand what these components do.
Speaker 1: Also think about the other things you want to have
Speaker 1: as part of your home theater and make sure they're
Speaker 1: all compatible before you go all in, because there's nothing
Speaker 1: worse than getting a whole bunch of pieces of technology together,
Speaker 1: hooking them up and then realizing there's a compatibility issue.
Speaker 1: I've had that happened to me in different aspects numerous times.
Speaker 1: It is incredibly frustrating and disheartening because you're so excited
Speaker 1: going into it. So it's good to know this stuff
Speaker 1: before you really start making purchases. Well, I'm gonna wrap
Speaker 1: this up now for the televisions, but we will do
Speaker 1: a couple more episodes. I want to talk about sound.
Speaker 1: We need to talk about sound systems for home theaters
Speaker 1: and what all those mean, because that's another confusing technological
Speaker 1: mind field to walk through, right because there's so many
Speaker 1: different variations on surround sound and which ones are right
Speaker 1: for you. I also want to talk about some of
Speaker 1: the other components that you would find, like what are
Speaker 1: the differences in the different resolution video streaming devices and
Speaker 1: video playing devices you can find? Does it make sense
Speaker 1: to buy an eight K television right now? How much
Speaker 1: eight K content is out there? What are the limiting factors?
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about more of those things in
Speaker 1: our our next episode, but this episode we're going to
Speaker 1: wrap up. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should cover in future EPISO, it's
Speaker 1: a tech stuff, please reach out to me and let
Speaker 1: me know. The best way is on Twitter. Um you
Speaker 1: can tell me about things I messed up in old articles.
Speaker 1: I can't change them. I don't work for Health Stuff
Speaker 1: Works anymore. But um, you know, we can always write
Speaker 1: to the editor and say, hey, we should really change
Speaker 1: this or you should really change this, because I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't do it because um, I would like to
Speaker 1: see that happen. I you know, I I'll own up
Speaker 1: to when I goof and using a gender now at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of an article that should be universally
Speaker 1: you know, applicable. That was a That was a bad
Speaker 1: That was a bad call on my part. So yeah,
Speaker 1: glad that I was called out for that. Uh. I
Speaker 1: mean it stinks that had happened, but that's my fault,
Speaker 1: not not not the person who told me. If you
Speaker 1: have any other suggestions, like I said, hit me up
Speaker 1: on Twitter Tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.