August 25, 2021 • 48 mins
Maybe you want a new television, or maybe you want to set up a whole home theatre. This episode dives into the world of UHD experiences, from resolution to contrast ratio to HDR and beyond.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and a
lot of all things tech. And first of all, if
I sound a little different, it's because I'm actually in
the office in a studio, though I am recording on
(00:27):
my normal at home equipment, so there might be some
slight differences in the quality of sound. But just hang
with me, guys. And recently, someone on Twitter called me
out for an article that I wrote many years ago
for how stuff Works dot com and it was about
home theater systems. The article and the person called me
(00:48):
out because I used the term man cave right at
the very beginning of the article, and the criticism was
that that I had fired off a gendered down right
at the beginning of a piece. And I want to
be clear, that was a crappy thing for me to
have done. It was crappy back then. It's definitely crappy now.
I would never right it that way today. I'd like
(01:11):
to think that over the following year is from writing
that article, I've grown a little bit as a person,
and I certainly tried to do that. But all of
this is my interest to say we're gonna do an
updated episode about home theater systems, actually a couple of episodes,
because there's a lot to talk about. Now. Maybe you
want to put together a home theater, or maybe you're
just thinking about upgrading your setup, or maybe you just
(01:34):
want to know what's the deal with all the latest
options out there and to figure out which one might
be best for you, and you know your situation. So
we're gonna try and build the perfect person cave together.
And this episode is really gonna focus on, uh, the
TV or the screen, depending on what you want to do.
(01:58):
And here's a tricky thing. So there are a lot
of terms and numbers and metrics when it comes to
home theater systems, and these are not always the easiest
to understand or parse. Also, there's this tendency to think
that bigger numbers are better. They're not necessarily better, and
(02:18):
that might shock some of my fellow Americans because we
typically go with more please when it comes to metrics.
So I'm gonna try and do my best to demystify
some of these different features and explain what it actually means.
So at a minimum, a good home theater system needs
a screen, whether a projection screen or a TV screen,
(02:39):
and a sound system. So we're gonna really focus on
the screen part for this episode, and let's start with
talking about you know, UM resolutions, because when I first
started writing about home theaters, the top of the line
TV screens at that time, when I was first writing
about them, they max doubt in the h D t
(03:01):
V range that stands for high definition television, which is
almost obsolete at this point as far as new televisions
are concerned. So it's a good idea to kind of
go down the path of those you know, definitions and
resolutions to talk about what that means and what the
state of the art is today now. Mostly it does
(03:23):
come down to resolution, or how many distinct components called
pixels ake a little points of light makeup and image
on the screen. So when we look at a television,
the images we see are made up of thousands of
points of light of various colors. We'll get to color
representation in a little bit in this episode. So there's
(03:46):
this analogy that I typically use when I talk about resolution.
Let's say that you've got yourself a wooden frame and
it's on the ground. It's you know, it's edges are
a couple of inches high, and the frame itself is
about thirty five inches wide and twenty inches tall. Uh.
That is roughly the dimensions of a forty inch television,
(04:08):
because we actually measure TVs on the diagonal across the screen,
so from an upper corner to a lower corner, uh,
diagonally across rather than just vertically or horizontally. So if
you've ever wondered, hey, the said it was a you know,
forty two inch television, but it's not for you two
inches wide. That's why it's on the diagonal. And let's
(04:29):
say that I give you a bucket that's filled with
little wooden blocks, and each of these blocks are you know,
a various a specific color, so each block is a
solid color, and they're all just one inch cubes, so
you get one inch per side on these cubes. And
I ask you to make a picture using those blocks
(04:50):
inside this frame. And I want the picture to be
a cat because I work on the Internet, and that
means there's like a chance that any photo I'm talking
about is gonna least have a cat in it. Well,
because each block is a solid color. You would have
to do your best to make a cat image within
the confines of this frame I've given you. And those
(05:11):
blocks are one inch you know, cubes, so you would
end up with some pretty jagged edges for any curves
that you wanted to represent in this cat picture. So
this would be a pretty low resolution image. Now let's
say we dumped out all those blocks after you made
your picture of a cat, and I gave you another
bucket filled with blocks. But these cubes are half an
(05:35):
inch per side, so you can fit twice as many
across the horizontal and vertical lines. So with the one
inch cube, if you were to actually fill the entire
frame from corner to corner, you would be able to
fit seven hundred cubes total in that frame. Because we
multiply twenty times thirty five bytes, we get seven hundred
(06:00):
and that, you know, because the cubes are one inch,
that tells you seven cubes could fit within that frame. Well,
now we're using half inch cubes. With half inch cubes,
you could fit two thousand, eight hundred cubes in the frame.
So you've half the size and you've quadrupled the number
of blocks you can use. So your cat picture that
(06:22):
you use with these half inch blocks is going to
be better than the first one because the blocks are
using allow you to approach fine detail a little more effectively.
So as we decrease the size of the blocks, but
we're keeping the same shape of the frame, we increase
the number of blocks that can fit in that frame,
(06:42):
and our picture starts to look more sharp and clear
as we do this. That is resolution to a point anyway.
So by the time resolutions were standardized during the history
of television, you really had two broad standards. You had
the europe and pal and SCAM systems, which used a
(07:02):
resolution that we referred to as five hundred seventy six.
That meant there were five hundred seventy six rows of pixels.
Uh So, if you isolated one vertical line of pixels
from top to bottom on the screen and you counted
them all, you would count up to five d seventy
six across the screen from side to side, you had
seven hundred four columns of pixels. So seven hundred four
(07:26):
pixels from left to right, five hundred seventy six from
top to bottom. Multiply those together, that gives us a
total of more than four hundred thousand pixels to play
with to make our pictures. In the US, it was
a slightly different story. Standard definition was four hundred eighty
pixels vertically so from top to bottom, and seven hundred
(07:48):
four horizontally left to right. That gave us a slightly
lower resolution of than Europe had of around three hundred
thirty eight thousand pixels on the screen, a little less
than that actually, And I should also add that most
screens had an aspect ratio of four to three. This
refers to the ratio of the television's width compared to
(08:08):
its height. Now, in the example I gave earlier, the
frame that I mentioned that would actually be more the
modern standard of aspect ratios for televisions, which is sixteen
by nine. That's what we used to call the wide
screen format back when those TVs were first hitting the market,
and not everyone was sold on them back in those days,
(08:28):
because we are also used to the four by three ratio.
But in the old days, most TVs looked a little
more boxy than the ones we have today, and this
is why when you watch older television shows, you frequently
see that the image doesn't really extend all the way
to the edges. Of your television screen unless someone has
you know, like digitally punched in, which is awful because
(08:51):
that means you lose the details that are otherwise at
the edges. The Simpsons did this and it was terrible
because a lot of visual gags got cut off because
the image was punched in, and um, I want to
say Fox and then Disney kind of relented and gave
people the option of being able to view those episodes
in their original four by three aspect ratio. And that's
(09:14):
kind of how things were for decades, with you know,
some exceptions, but that's all in the past, so we're
gonna leave them for now because we don't really need
to go into detail. But then we get up to
the era of h D t V and things started
getting really confusing because there were different flavors of h
D t V more so than you found was standard definition.
(09:34):
So the three big ones were seven ten A d
I and ten A DP in most parts of the world.
So let's go with the numbers first, then I'll explain
what that I M P mean. So seven twenty referred
to a resolution of seven D twenty pixels tall by
one thousand, two hundred eighty pixels wide. That gives us
(09:58):
a total of nine one thousand, six hundred pixels. This
one often was called HD ready as opposed to full H.
D t V ten eighty refers to one thousand eighty
pixels tall by one thousand nine d twenty pixels wide.
And you might say, all right, but when I multiply
those two together, I get two point zero seven million pixels.
(10:22):
And that's true. But here's where we got to talk
about the P versus the eye. So the P stands
for progressive scan, and the eye stands for interlaced. So
with an interlaced display, the screen shows alternating horizontal lines
of pixels and paints the image across the screen and
then down the screen. So if we were to number
(10:44):
the rows of pixels on the screen, going from row
one and then working our way down until we had
labeled all the way down to row one thousand eighty,
and if we were slow things way way way down,
like super super super low, we would see that the
screen would display the odd rows first, so rose one, three, five, seven,
(11:08):
and so on all the way down to one thousand
seventy nine would display first. Then you would get the
even rows two, four, six, eight, etcetera. Now this happens
at a speed that is so fast our eyes can't
detect it, so to us it just looks like a
solid image. We don't see that it's really alternating these
(11:30):
lines at all. We're getting the experience as if it's
all happening at once. But it does mean that effectively,
it's only showing half the number of pixels UH in
a given moment. Now we say this means an interlaced
screen uses two fields. One field has all the odd
(11:50):
horizontal lines of pixels, and the second field has all
the even ones, and these are necessary to create a
single frame of videos. So each frame is made up
a two fields with an interlaced screen. A progressive scan
screen draws every line of a frame in sequence, so
(12:10):
there's no reason to talk about video fields because field
and frame are essentially the same thing. Here. Now, generally speaking,
the edge would go to progressive scan TVs among home
theater aficionados. They these screens were just better at showing
fast moving sequences in particular, so people who were serious
(12:30):
about home theater in the h D t V era
often would gravitate toward progressive scan screens. These days, you'll
find higher in televisions in the U h D or
Ultra high Definition ranges. In fact, four K is pretty
much the standard now um, but you can also find
eight K. So now we've moved away from the convention
(12:53):
that we used to use to describe resolution in the
in the s D and h D eras, and it
doesn't help that there's some screpancies here as well. Like
one of the issues that you often run into with
home theater is that there's a lack of universal standards
for a lot of stuff, and that can cause issues
down the line. In televisions, we generally say it's a
(13:16):
four K TV when it refers to a resolution of
three thousand, eight hundred forty pixels wide by two thousand,
one hundred sixty pixels tall and um. First of all,
you notice that neither of those numbers is four thousand, right,
three thousand, eight hundred forty is close, like you could
round up to four thousand, but neither of those are
(13:36):
four thousands. So that makes the four K thing a
little confusing. Also, uh, we see that in previous resolution descriptions,
the number that we used to refer to how many
pixels tall and image was was the dominant one right,
ten eighty means that you have one thousand eighty pixels
from the top of the screen to the bottom of
(13:58):
the screen. But with four K without three thousand, eight
hundred forty pixels, we're actually looking at the width of
the screen from left to right, not the height of
the screen from top to bottom. So those three thousand,
eight hundred forty pixels go across the screen. And if
you're saying, you know, three thousand hundred forty isn't the
same as four K, like I said, you're right. And
(14:18):
if you're wondering, well, why don't we call it twenty
one sixty because that would still be in the same
line as ten eight, Right, we called it ten eight
Why don't we call four K six? Well, that's because
I don't know. For some reason, we decided to switch
things up and talk about width rather than height as
far as pixel density goes. Now, if we're talking about
(14:41):
movie projection instead of television screens, four K usually has
a different resolution of four thousand, nineties six pixels across
and two thousand, one hundred sixty pixels up and down.
So at least there we get to our four K bit, right,
But for TVs, it's really more four K ish, and
in fact, there are several different resolutions that are in
(15:03):
that neighborhood that are lumped together in the four K designation.
There even some TVs that you could argue are five K,
but they get lumped down with four K, and it
gets even more confusing when you start talking about cameras
and stuff. But we're gonna leave all that here. It's
mostly to say that it's a higher resolution than the
(15:25):
h D t V market. I imagine the switch to
four K nomenclature is mostly for the convenience of marketing,
plus to cover the fact that there were so many
slight variations on resolution that it kind of helped cut
down on confusion because the differences didn't really translate to
a massive difference in viewing experience. So, in other words,
(15:45):
if one TVs four K resolution was technically slightly less
than another four K TVs resolution, typically you couldn't really
tell because it was at a level of resolution that's
so high that our human i is aren't able to
pick up on the differences. So, in other words, you
could have two of these televisions right next to each other,
(16:06):
they have slightly different resolutions and not be able to
see a difference. Then we've got eight K resolution. And
this is where the numbers get even bigger, and like
four K, this is more about eight K ish than
actually having eight thousand pixels across the width of a screen.
That number is really seven thousand, six hundred eighty. And
(16:26):
as for up and down the screen, well that's four thousand,
three twenty. That is the maximum resolution allowed by the
u h D or Ultra High Definition standards set down
by the i TU DASH our recommendation bt DOT twenty twenty.
I t U in this case stands for International Telecommunication Union,
(16:47):
and we're gonna touch on tech standards a lot throughout
this episode, because boy, but at least this one is
one that is well and truly set and standardized. It's saying,
this is the up end. This is where eight K
ends right here at this resolution. So yeah, eight K
TVs that maximum resolution. Have a screen filled with more
(17:08):
than thirty three million pixels. If you were to have
every pixel light up and you were to number each
one of them, you would come up with more than
thirty three million of those suckers. So you've got thirty
three million and change teeny little blocks of light which
you can use to make your images. And right now,
(17:29):
that's the top of the resolution charts that you can
find for home theater television screens. So does that mean
that more resolution means a better picture. Not quite. It's
actually way more complicated than that. Resolution is important, but
it's just one component of making a good picture. Also,
(17:53):
there's a limit to the amount of detail that our
human eyes can see, and that limit depends upon each
person's vision. So it's not like I could give you
a specific resolution and say this and no further. If
you go any higher than this, it's a fool's errand
because you'll never tell the difference. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
But there are some other factors that that tie in
(18:13):
with resolution when it comes to your viewing experience and
how clear or sharp an image is. One of those
is the size of the television screen. So let's say
we have three television's, all of them are at hd
TV resolution just to make this easy, And one of
those televisions is forty two inches, another one is fifty
five inches, and the third is sixty inches, but they
(18:36):
all are ten a DP resolution. Well, that means that
if you were to count up all the pixels on
each of those screens. Each screen would have the same
number of pixels, but that means that the pixels for
the six screen have to be a little bit larger
than the ones that you would find on the forty
two inch screen, and then the fifty in screen would
(18:58):
be right in the middle, right, because the same number
of pixels are on all three screens, but the screens
are different sizes, So it's possible that you would spot
a difference in resolution if you were to view the
same video source on that forty two inch screen as
the sixty inch screen at the same time. You put
those next to each other, and you might say, oh,
the picture looks more sharp on thet in screen than
(19:20):
the sixty because you have greater pixel density per area there, right,
So screen size does matter, and if you want to
go really big, like obnoxiously big with your television screen,
then you're gonna want to hire resolution to make up
for all that real estate that you're gonna be using
(19:42):
to view your stuff. Now, another factor is how close
you are sitting to the screen, and this matters for
a couple of reasons. The closer you are, the more
likely you're gonna see issues with resolution up to a point. Um, So,
if you have a really big screen and you happen
to sit really close to it and it's all an
h D t V resolution, you could end up saying
(20:03):
this doesn't look high definition to me. Now, there are
various sources that give out formulas for how far you
should sit away from your television depending upon your television size,
and I'll cover more of that in just a moment,
but first let's take a quick break. Okay, so I
(20:26):
mentioned before the break that we needed to talk about
viewing distances. See now, in the old days, you know,
the h D t V days, how close you sat
was dependent on a few things, not just the television size,
but also the resolution of the TV and how good
your vision was, because limitations and resolution would become apparent
if the TV were particularly large or if you were
(20:47):
sitting fairly close to it. So in other words, you
would say, like, it doesn't look that great. But in
the u h D era of four K and beyond,
it's getting really super hard to spot those resolution issue
unless you're talking about, you know, a gargantuan television like
one of those that sharp would show off at c
e s on some years something that's like a hundred
(21:08):
inches or something. So now the main thing is how
your vision. You know, how much of your vision should
the television actually fill, or rather, how much of your
field of view should be taken up by the TV.
So let's say that you've got typical vision for a
human being. And just for the record, I actually don't
have typical vision. I have less than what is typical.
(21:31):
So if you don't have typical vision, please don't feel
badly about it. I'm just using it as a way
of setting, uh, you know, a framework. So typically humans
have a field of view of an arc of around
two degrees or between two ten and two twenty in
front of them, and that is, if you were to
draw straight lines out from the very edges of your
(21:54):
vision while you're looking straight ahead, then the angle between
those lines would be somewhere around degrees. Now, not all
of that vision is equal, right, The stuff closer to
the edges of your vision, well, that's in your peripheral
and you won't see as much sharp detail there. You're
aware of things that happen in the periphery, but you're
(22:17):
not focusing on that. In fact, when you get beyond
about thirty degrees arc. You're really talking about the mid
peripheral part of your vision. So generally speaking, you want
your TV to take up no more than say, thirty
to forty degrees of your field a few and this
should guide your decision when it comes to figuring out
where you need to put, say your chair or your
(22:39):
couch or bean bag or whatever it is. But I
don't know about you. I don't have like a handy
dandy protractor to help me figure out that kind of stuff,
like what degree arc am I looking at when I've
got something in front of me. So we go to
a more basic formula to kind of rough it out.
And that formula is to multiply the size of your
(23:01):
television's screen and inches by the number one point six.
That's our constant, and that will give us the number
of inches that we should sit away from that TV
to get that thirty degree view in our field of view.
Or let's say that you are starting from the other
side right like you already know how far away you
plan to be sitting from where your TV is going
(23:23):
to go, Well, you can take that distance and inches
and then divide that by one point six, and that
would give you a rough idea of how large a
television you should go and shop. Four all right, so
let's use an example. Let's say that I have just
gone out and I've purchased a fifty five inch television,
and I want to know how far from this television
(23:44):
I should have my couch so that I can get
that optimal viewing experience and have that thirty degree field
of view view of the screen. So I take the
size of the screen fifty I multiply that by one
point six. That gives me eighty eight inches. So when
I convert that into feat that's seven point three feet
(24:05):
or so, so a little more than seven feet away,
and that will give me that thirty degree view of
the television. And it doesn't have to be exact. It's
kind of the ballpark figure. It tells you, all right,
somewhere around seven ft you should have a pretty good
viewing experience. But what if instead, I've got a room
and I've got set up so I know where the
couch is gonna go, I know where the TV is
(24:26):
going to go, but I haven't bought the television yet,
but I know the couch has to be this distance
from the TV, and I happen to know that it's
eight feet away from where the television is going to be, Well,
then we convert our eight ft two inches, that's inches.
We divide ninety six by one point six. That gives
us sixty So that means we would want something close
(24:48):
to us sixty inch television to go in that space.
It's a good general rule to follow, assuming that you're
talking about uh D televisions, which again, those resolute sans
are high enough where you're not likely to have any
issues when it comes to resolution quality. Also, you don't
have to be right on the dot for any of
these measurements. Thirty degrees is your target, but really just
(25:11):
you know, if you're a little bit closer, a little
bit further away, it's not going to ruin the experience,
all right. So that's resolution. And I should also add
you should really get the benefits of resolution if the
source of the video you're watching matches the resolution of
your display, or to put it in another way, what
(25:31):
you see on screen is limited by the weakest component
in your system, and sometimes you might not even be
able to view it, Like if your TV is an
hd TV and you're trying to watch a four K
video on it. That just ain't gonna work. Period. But
let's say that your TV is the highest point in
your system. Well, you're still limited about whatever the lowest
(25:53):
point is. So if you're watching an old VHS tape
and you're using your eight K U h D t V,
it's not gonna look like eight K video. It's going
to be limited to VHS levels of resolution, which is
close to standard definition. So the quality of what you
see depends on what that video source is coming from.
(26:14):
If you don't have a source that can create outputs
of four K, let alone eight K video, then you're
not really going to get the benefit of that higher resolution. Well,
there is one thing these higher definition televisions can do
to compensate for lower resolution video sources. This is called upscaling,
(26:36):
which is really a necessity. It's not like it makes
it sound like it magically makes video better. That's not
really what upscaling is doing. But let's say that you
wanted to watch a lower resolution video on your high
resolution screen and there was no way to adjust for
this difference. Okay, so there's no system in place to
(26:57):
have this video somehow expand to fill the number of
pixels that are on your uh D television screen. Well,
that video just contains information for an image that takes
up a specific number of pixels horizontally and vertically. So
what you could do is have that video play on
your screen, but it only takes up those pixels, so
(27:18):
it would be like a little thumbnail video. It would
be like maybe in the corner, maybe playing in just
the very center of your screen, with lots of black
space around it, because it only takes up that subset
of pixels and your television is way more pixels than
the video source does. This would be kind of like
those thumbnail videos you occasionally see on websites, and it's
(27:40):
not a very satisfying experience. Or you could build in
an upscale function, and this is a process in which
the television essentially starts to fill in pixels to make
up for the fact that the video source is a
lower resolution than the screen can display, and it's a
way of boosting the pixel count of the original video source. Now,
(28:03):
typically this means that the television is is using light
that's of a similar quality in neighboring pixels to fill
in for missing ones. So let's say that we've got
a video and it happens to be showing a green
meadow and a blue sky. Well, the television would essentially
be inserting pixels that would be shades of green similar
(28:24):
to the green and the meadow over in the meadow
side of it, or shades a blue similar to the
blue of the sky and the sky part of it,
and try to match the brightness to neighboring pixels to
kind of fill out and even out this image. So
you're adding information to something that was being fed to
the screen. This process does not add detail, however, so
(28:45):
it doesn't make those images more clear or more sharp.
So the bigger gap you have in resolution between your
display and the video source, the less good it's gonna look.
So an eight K TV up scaling a VHS video
would not just magically like eight K television. It would
it looked pretty jankie. All that being said, resolution is
(29:10):
really just one factor to consider when you're looking at television's.
There are tons of uh D TVs on the market,
and they are not all equal. Some are just playing
better when it comes to picture quality, even if they
happen to have the same number of pixels as a
competing brand. Now, anyone who remembers the days when we
(29:30):
used to buy digital cameras, you know, before all of
our phones came with one, you'll remember how the megapixel
number was a really big selling point for cameras. You know,
the general marketing point was that more megapixels means better pictures,
except it didn't, at least not necessarily. Megapixels, which just
(29:54):
refers to the resolution output of a camera, is really
just one part of what can make a picture good.
But it is way easier to sell a camera to
the public by saying this one goes to eleven, then
it would be to try and describe all the different
factors that go into the quality of a photo. So
(30:15):
the same thing is true with television's But another really
important thing besides resolution is a television's contrast ratio, and
that refers to the ratio that describes the difference between
the luminance or the brightness. If you prefer of the
darkest shade that the display can produce and the brightest
shade that it can produce, and you want a really
(30:38):
high contrast ratio which indicates a wide spectrum of luminance,
and that can really impact image quality. I'll explain a
bit more, but first let's take another quick break. Okay,
we were talking about contrast a shio. Now, some televisions
(31:01):
naturally just have better contrast ratios, especially when it comes
to showing off the darker colors. And this comes down
to the technologies that actually power the TVs. Televisions that
have a back light, uh, that is, the image is
generated on screen, it's coming courtesy a little tiny lamps
that are behind each pixel. UH, those can have trouble
(31:23):
with darker colors. And that's because that lamp is essentially
it's always on, even during the dark scenes, and the
liquid crystals that are meant to block the light, sometimes
they allow a little bit of light to bleed through,
and sometimes that means that dark stuff that should be
say pitch black, might actually come out looking more like
(31:44):
their charcoal gray when they're on your screen. And if
you're trying to watch something in which a character in
really dark clothing is moving around in a dark building,
it might just look like you're looking at a big, dark,
gray screen with nothing going on. In fact, that's what
a lot of Batman movies might look like on one
of these screens. And this is particularly noticeable if your
room is really dark as well, in bright rooms it's
(32:07):
not quite as bad. Some television's have what's called dynamic contrast,
which puts the backlight into a low power mode to
reduce that kind of bleed through, and that helps a bit.
And of course not all televisions rely on the same technology.
So l e ED television's have little l e ED
you know, light emitting diodes as lamps behind a liquid
(32:29):
crystal display or l c D panel, and this type
is the kind that can have that light bleed through.
The l c D crystals act kind of like window shades.
They control how much light can pass through to the screen,
but they aren't necessarily perfect at blacking everything out. There
are actually a couple of different LED panels that can
have different effects. So a vertical alignment panel, those tend
(32:52):
to be more efficient in blocking light, they have better
contrast as a result. Uh then you have in plane
switching panel. These tend to let a little bit more
light through. So this is where you might get some
of that bleed through. But you rarely see these bits
of information about what kind of l e ED display
the television has on the TV box, right so it's
(33:14):
hard to kind of shop for that, But then you
could also use an oh LAD screen. Oh lads are
organic light emitting diodes. They don't need those little backlights.
They can sort of think of these as little bitty
points that act as a light source and a pixel
all in one go, and they can actually turn on
or off, you know, dynamically, and thus they tend to
(33:37):
be much better when it comes to contrast. They can
show darker colors with more accuracy, and I would finally
be able to tell what the heck Batman was actually doing.
Several years ago. I would also be talking about plasma televisions,
which could also provide pretty amazing contrast, although at the
expense of brightness. They couldn't get as bright as L
E D t vs could typically, but plas the TVs
(34:00):
were really expensive, they never really caught on the same
way that L E ED t vs did. Plus, there
was this potential issue of burning, meaning that if you
had a plasma screen and you were showing the same
image for a long time, you might have a remnant
of that image that can stick around even after when
you're watching other stuff, So it affects the quality of
your experience, but the major TV company has pretty much
(34:22):
stopped making plasma televisions back in two thousand fourteen, so
it's kind of a moot point. And before I move on,
I should also talk about projectors too. So far I've
been focusing on TV sets, but one way you can
trick out a home theater is to get a really
nice projector, which can give you a big screen experience
at a much lower price point, depending on you know
(34:44):
which model you're looking at, and I do mean depending,
because there's some projectors out there for high end markets.
They're in the tens of thousands of dollars range. That
is way outside of my budget. But you can find
others that are, you know, around five d two thousand dollars.
There's still expensive, but they are less expensive per inch
(35:04):
than your flat screen televisions typically are. Like you can
get screens that are a hundred twenty inches or larger,
and if you have a really big home theater set up,
that means that you could have a effectively a one
or two hundred forty inch TV, but for a fraction
of the cost of some of these other flat panel
(35:27):
display styles. You can also find a range of resolutions
with projectors as well, including ultra high definition projectors, so
you can find four K projectors no problem, uh, and
you can really create that kind of theater experience. But
one thing that matters a lot with this particular setup
is ambient light. You want as little light in your
(35:47):
environment as possible. You want that room to be dark
if you're going to be using a projector, So that
usually means that projectors are best in spaces that have
few or no windows, or you have treated those windows
with like blackout curtains or blackout shades so that you
can have a really dark movie Dungeon. Um televisions can
(36:09):
give you a good experience at other light levels, so
they you know, they're not as dependent upon this. So
really this comes down to your setup, like what room
you're planning on using as a home theater. If your
home theater is going to be out in a sun room,
well you're probably not going to have a good experience
with a projector unless you're only watching things in the
(36:30):
dead of night. Oh and what's more, you can also
find projectors that have built in WiFi receivers and even
ones that have apps included to let you access popular
streaming services. So you don't have to hook the projector
up to some other computer or set top box in
order to get those functions. Those projectors do exist, and
that's pretty darn cool too that they're kind of neat.
(36:50):
Now it's time to chat about another confusing factor in
image quality, and that is HDR. And this one's really
irritating because while there is a standard HDR, there are
other flavors of HDR, and that means there's lots of
competing technologies all trying to accomplish the same goal, but
(37:10):
they're not necessarily compatible with each other. That means you
could end up buying an HDR TV and HDR set up,
and that the two don't necessarily work together. Like if
you're set up is working on one set and your
TV is meant for a different set, you've got some issues.
So let's get into that. So HDR, in case you're
(37:32):
not familiar, stands for high dynamic range. This became the
buzzword of modern TVs and it tends to be one
of those features that gets positioned as a main selling point.
So when resolution used to be the big differentiator, now
it's does it have high dynamic range? Well? And it
centers around this representation of color and brightness, So dynamics
(37:54):
references extremes, right, So like in a in sound, let's
say you're talking about music, you would say a song
was really dynamic if there were was a lot of
variation between the loud parts and the soft parts of
the song, if there were a lot of levels there,
volume levels. That's a lot of dynamics as opposed to
a piece that maintains more or less the same level
(38:16):
of volume throughout the whole piece. With televisions, these dynamics
are in the shades and brightness of the colors on
the screen, which ideally manifests as really vibrant on screen displays,
so the colors really pop out at you, and there
could be much more subtle shifts with light and shadow
(38:36):
when you're working with a system that has really good HDR.
In fact, a superior television with high resolution and HDR
could even give you the feeling that you're looking through
a window almost rather than a screen, because HDR, if
it's implemented well, can even convey a sense of depth.
And this is true even if the television isn't a
(38:58):
three D TV. And let me tell you, I'm so
glad we are past the three D television fad because
that man I didn't have to talk about three D
in this episode. But there are some caveats when it
comes to HDR, and one is that every component in
your system that deals with video has to be HDR
compatible in order for you to get the benefit. So
(39:19):
let's say that you have a game console and it
supports hd R, and you've got a television that supports HDR,
but the cable you're using to connect your console to
your TV isn't HDR compatible, Well, you would not be
able to take advantage of HDR. Or let's say that
your TV and your cable are both HDR ready, but
(39:41):
your video source isn't the same problem, every single component
has to be hd R ready in order to take
advantage of HDR. Moreover, HDR is kind of it's more
of what you call guidelines. As Barbosa would say, it's
like a defined goal. It's a system it has to
achieve a certain benchmark in uh in in color representation
(40:05):
in order to be considered HDR. But how it goes
about achieving that benchmark, which is technically, you know, a
resolution of at least four K and a certain contrast
ratio that isn't standardized. So in other words, you're saying,
here's your destination, but how you get there is up
to you. So that means there are different flavors of HDR.
(40:25):
There's HDR ten that's your baseline version. Most other versions
support HDR ten, so hopefully if you have a setup,
you can use that. But then you have other more
you know, uh, feature filled versions. There's Advanced HDR, which
was a product from Technicolor. There's Dolby Vision, which is
(40:46):
kind of like hd R plus, and there are more
besides that. So to take advantage of those versions, you
would have to have your television and all your other
components be compatible with that specific version of HDR for
you to be able to experience riens it. So you
could end up with an HDR system that can't really
play certain HDR media, at least not with the HDR
(41:08):
effects you were expecting, because the media was built for
a different version of HDR, And yeah, that kind of stinks,
but when it all does work together, it's pretty phenomenal.
So your display should have a great contrast ratio, it
should have great resolution, it should have HDR. What else well,
you might consider the refresh rate. I don't see this
(41:30):
touted as much as it was a few years ago,
right around the time when Peter Jackson was releasing the
Hobbit films. That's really when refresh rate became a big thing.
It kind of got a bad name at the time too. Technically,
refresh rate describes the number of times the television refreshes
the image on the screen each second, and we measure
(41:50):
this and hurts or cycles per second, and it's somewhat
similar to the frame rate of a film. You know,
we typically playback film at a speed of twenty four
frames per second. That means the film is really a
series of still photographs, but when we play it at
a fast enough speed, it creates the illusion of movement.
Video is a little bit different. We do still have
a way of changing the image super fast, and typically
(42:13):
we're talking around like thirty to sixty times per second,
sixty times being way more common these days, so that's
like sixty hurts. Higher in televisions can have higher refresh rates,
or at least higher advertised refresh rates. Hurts is not uncommon.
But what does this mean as far as your viewing experience?
Goes well for fast moving stuff, like stuff that's moving
(42:36):
quickly across the screen as you're watching it, you would
typically see a blurring of that image, and the image
kind of looks a little bit softer as a result
with televisions that have lower refresh rates. When you have
faster refresh rates, those same images appear to be more
sharp and more clear, more solid. So this is really
(42:57):
great for certain things like sports, where the effect is
almost like you're there in person because you're not getting
motion blur and stuff like that. In addition to refresh rate,
TVs typically have some other anti blurring technologies built into them.
This can boost the perceived effect. So a lot of
companies will actually describe this by just saying the TV
(43:17):
has an even higher refresh rate than the television actually does,
Like it might really refresh the screen a hundred twenty
times a second, but I might be advertised at to
forty or even higher. Because the technical detail of how
many times it refreshes the screen isn't as important as
saying this is the effect you will perceive when you watch, right, Like,
(43:41):
those numbers don't really matter if they don't relate to
what it's like to watch something on that television screen.
They're just numbers. It means nothing, you know. It's the
experience that actually means something. So if the image seems
more sharp and clear, even when you're looking at stuff
that's moving fast, that's all that really matters, not which
(44:02):
collection of technologies made it possible or what numbers we
associate with them. However, these technologies can also create some
weird effects that you might not like, so some folks
complain that these faster refresh rates make stuff look artificial
or fake. The phrase that you will frequently here to
describe this is it makes everything look like a Mexican
(44:24):
soap opera. Which don't get me wrong, I am not
disparaging Mexican soap operas, but they do have a particular
look to them, and you don't necessarily want everything to
look that way. A lot of theater buffs I know
would actually turn these refresh rates off. That usually there
was a setting somewhere in the television where you could
just turn it to like sixty hurts or one twenty
(44:45):
anything beyond that, a lot of people just kind of
shied away from and they would opt for that lower
refresh rate and retain that motion blur for stuff like
TV shows and movies, maybe activating the higher refresh rate
for stuff like sporting events and that kind of thing.
And as with many of the things I mentioned in
this episode, a lot of this falls to marketing strategies, right,
Like having a bigger number to point to is a
(45:08):
way of saying, this is how we differentiate our product
from our competitors. So knowing that being savvy as a
consumer is really important, right, Being able to see through
the marketing speak in order to understand what's actually being
sold to you. That is critical, especially when you're talking
about something like the centerpiece of a home theater, which
(45:29):
is going to presumably be a fairly expensive technology, whether
it's a television or a projector so it behooves you
to do this kind of research, understand what these components do.
Also think about the other things you want to have
as part of your home theater and make sure they're
all compatible before you go all in, because there's nothing
worse than getting a whole bunch of pieces of technology together,
(45:52):
hooking them up and then realizing there's a compatibility issue.
I've had that happened to me in different aspects numerous times.
It is incredibly frustrating and disheartening because you're so excited
going into it. So it's good to know this stuff
before you really start making purchases. Well, I'm gonna wrap
this up now for the televisions, but we will do
(46:13):
a couple more episodes. I want to talk about sound.
We need to talk about sound systems for home theaters
and what all those mean, because that's another confusing technological
mind field to walk through, right because there's so many
different variations on surround sound and which ones are right
for you. I also want to talk about some of
the other components that you would find, like what are
(46:36):
the differences in the different resolution video streaming devices and
video playing devices you can find? Does it make sense
to buy an eight K television right now? How much
eight K content is out there? What are the limiting factors?
So we're gonna talk about more of those things in
our our next episode, but this episode we're going to
wrap up. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have
(46:57):
suggestions for topics I should cover in future EPISO, it's
a tech stuff, please reach out to me and let
me know. The best way is on Twitter. Um you
can tell me about things I messed up in old articles.
I can't change them. I don't work for Health Stuff
Works anymore. But um, you know, we can always write
to the editor and say, hey, we should really change
(47:17):
this or you should really change this, because I can't.
I can't do it because um, I would like to
see that happen. I you know, I I'll own up
to when I goof and using a gender now at
the very beginning of an article that should be universally
you know, applicable. That was a That was a bad
(47:39):
That was a bad call on my part. So yeah,
glad that I was called out for that. Uh. I
mean it stinks that had happened, but that's my fault,
not not not the person who told me. If you
have any other suggestions, like I said, hit me up
on Twitter Tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to
you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
(48:04):
Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and a
lot of all things tech. And first of all, if
I sound a little different, it's because I'm actually in
the office in a studio, though I am recording on
(00:27):
my normal at home equipment, so there might be some
slight differences in the quality of sound. But just hang
with me, guys. And recently, someone on Twitter called me
out for an article that I wrote many years ago
for how stuff Works dot com and it was about
home theater systems. The article and the person called me
(00:48):
out because I used the term man cave right at
the very beginning of the article, and the criticism was
that that I had fired off a gendered down right
at the beginning of a piece. And I want to
be clear, that was a crappy thing for me to
have done. It was crappy back then. It's definitely crappy now.
I would never right it that way today. I'd like
(01:11):
to think that over the following year is from writing
that article, I've grown a little bit as a person,
and I certainly tried to do that. But all of
this is my interest to say we're gonna do an
updated episode about home theater systems, actually a couple of episodes,
because there's a lot to talk about. Now. Maybe you
want to put together a home theater, or maybe you're
just thinking about upgrading your setup, or maybe you just
(01:34):
want to know what's the deal with all the latest
options out there and to figure out which one might
be best for you, and you know your situation. So
we're gonna try and build the perfect person cave together.
And this episode is really gonna focus on, uh, the
TV or the screen, depending on what you want to do.
(01:58):
And here's a tricky thing. So there are a lot
of terms and numbers and metrics when it comes to
home theater systems, and these are not always the easiest
to understand or parse. Also, there's this tendency to think
that bigger numbers are better. They're not necessarily better, and
(02:18):
that might shock some of my fellow Americans because we
typically go with more please when it comes to metrics.
So I'm gonna try and do my best to demystify
some of these different features and explain what it actually means.
So at a minimum, a good home theater system needs
a screen, whether a projection screen or a TV screen,
(02:39):
and a sound system. So we're gonna really focus on
the screen part for this episode, and let's start with
talking about you know, UM resolutions, because when I first
started writing about home theaters, the top of the line
TV screens at that time, when I was first writing
about them, they max doubt in the h D t
(03:01):
V range that stands for high definition television, which is
almost obsolete at this point as far as new televisions
are concerned. So it's a good idea to kind of
go down the path of those you know, definitions and
resolutions to talk about what that means and what the
state of the art is today now. Mostly it does
(03:23):
come down to resolution, or how many distinct components called
pixels ake a little points of light makeup and image
on the screen. So when we look at a television,
the images we see are made up of thousands of
points of light of various colors. We'll get to color
representation in a little bit in this episode. So there's
(03:46):
this analogy that I typically use when I talk about resolution.
Let's say that you've got yourself a wooden frame and
it's on the ground. It's you know, it's edges are
a couple of inches high, and the frame itself is
about thirty five inches wide and twenty inches tall. Uh.
That is roughly the dimensions of a forty inch television,
(04:08):
because we actually measure TVs on the diagonal across the screen,
so from an upper corner to a lower corner, uh,
diagonally across rather than just vertically or horizontally. So if
you've ever wondered, hey, the said it was a you know,
forty two inch television, but it's not for you two
inches wide. That's why it's on the diagonal. And let's
(04:29):
say that I give you a bucket that's filled with
little wooden blocks, and each of these blocks are you know,
a various a specific color, so each block is a
solid color, and they're all just one inch cubes, so
you get one inch per side on these cubes. And
I ask you to make a picture using those blocks
(04:50):
inside this frame. And I want the picture to be
a cat because I work on the Internet, and that
means there's like a chance that any photo I'm talking
about is gonna least have a cat in it. Well,
because each block is a solid color. You would have
to do your best to make a cat image within
the confines of this frame I've given you. And those
(05:11):
blocks are one inch you know, cubes, so you would
end up with some pretty jagged edges for any curves
that you wanted to represent in this cat picture. So
this would be a pretty low resolution image. Now let's
say we dumped out all those blocks after you made
your picture of a cat, and I gave you another
bucket filled with blocks. But these cubes are half an
(05:35):
inch per side, so you can fit twice as many
across the horizontal and vertical lines. So with the one
inch cube, if you were to actually fill the entire
frame from corner to corner, you would be able to
fit seven hundred cubes total in that frame. Because we
multiply twenty times thirty five bytes, we get seven hundred
(06:00):
and that, you know, because the cubes are one inch,
that tells you seven cubes could fit within that frame. Well,
now we're using half inch cubes. With half inch cubes,
you could fit two thousand, eight hundred cubes in the frame.
So you've half the size and you've quadrupled the number
of blocks you can use. So your cat picture that
(06:22):
you use with these half inch blocks is going to
be better than the first one because the blocks are
using allow you to approach fine detail a little more effectively.
So as we decrease the size of the blocks, but
we're keeping the same shape of the frame, we increase
the number of blocks that can fit in that frame,
(06:42):
and our picture starts to look more sharp and clear
as we do this. That is resolution to a point anyway.
So by the time resolutions were standardized during the history
of television, you really had two broad standards. You had
the europe and pal and SCAM systems, which used a
(07:02):
resolution that we referred to as five hundred seventy six.
That meant there were five hundred seventy six rows of pixels.
Uh So, if you isolated one vertical line of pixels
from top to bottom on the screen and you counted
them all, you would count up to five d seventy
six across the screen from side to side, you had
seven hundred four columns of pixels. So seven hundred four
(07:26):
pixels from left to right, five hundred seventy six from
top to bottom. Multiply those together, that gives us a
total of more than four hundred thousand pixels to play
with to make our pictures. In the US, it was
a slightly different story. Standard definition was four hundred eighty
pixels vertically so from top to bottom, and seven hundred
(07:48):
four horizontally left to right. That gave us a slightly
lower resolution of than Europe had of around three hundred
thirty eight thousand pixels on the screen, a little less
than that actually, And I should also add that most
screens had an aspect ratio of four to three. This
refers to the ratio of the television's width compared to
(08:08):
its height. Now, in the example I gave earlier, the
frame that I mentioned that would actually be more the
modern standard of aspect ratios for televisions, which is sixteen
by nine. That's what we used to call the wide
screen format back when those TVs were first hitting the market,
and not everyone was sold on them back in those days,
(08:28):
because we are also used to the four by three ratio.
But in the old days, most TVs looked a little
more boxy than the ones we have today, and this
is why when you watch older television shows, you frequently
see that the image doesn't really extend all the way
to the edges. Of your television screen unless someone has
you know, like digitally punched in, which is awful because
(08:51):
that means you lose the details that are otherwise at
the edges. The Simpsons did this and it was terrible
because a lot of visual gags got cut off because
the image was punched in, and um, I want to
say Fox and then Disney kind of relented and gave
people the option of being able to view those episodes
in their original four by three aspect ratio. And that's
(09:14):
kind of how things were for decades, with you know,
some exceptions, but that's all in the past, so we're
gonna leave them for now because we don't really need
to go into detail. But then we get up to
the era of h D t V and things started
getting really confusing because there were different flavors of h
D t V more so than you found was standard definition.
(09:34):
So the three big ones were seven ten A d
I and ten A DP in most parts of the world.
So let's go with the numbers first, then I'll explain
what that I M P mean. So seven twenty referred
to a resolution of seven D twenty pixels tall by
one thousand, two hundred eighty pixels wide. That gives us
(09:58):
a total of nine one thousand, six hundred pixels. This
one often was called HD ready as opposed to full H.
D t V ten eighty refers to one thousand eighty
pixels tall by one thousand nine d twenty pixels wide.
And you might say, all right, but when I multiply
those two together, I get two point zero seven million pixels.
(10:22):
And that's true. But here's where we got to talk
about the P versus the eye. So the P stands
for progressive scan, and the eye stands for interlaced. So
with an interlaced display, the screen shows alternating horizontal lines
of pixels and paints the image across the screen and
then down the screen. So if we were to number
(10:44):
the rows of pixels on the screen, going from row
one and then working our way down until we had
labeled all the way down to row one thousand eighty,
and if we were slow things way way way down,
like super super super low, we would see that the
screen would display the odd rows first, so rose one, three, five, seven,
(11:08):
and so on all the way down to one thousand
seventy nine would display first. Then you would get the
even rows two, four, six, eight, etcetera. Now this happens
at a speed that is so fast our eyes can't
detect it, so to us it just looks like a
solid image. We don't see that it's really alternating these
(11:30):
lines at all. We're getting the experience as if it's
all happening at once. But it does mean that effectively,
it's only showing half the number of pixels UH in
a given moment. Now we say this means an interlaced
screen uses two fields. One field has all the odd
(11:50):
horizontal lines of pixels, and the second field has all
the even ones, and these are necessary to create a
single frame of videos. So each frame is made up
a two fields with an interlaced screen. A progressive scan
screen draws every line of a frame in sequence, so
(12:10):
there's no reason to talk about video fields because field
and frame are essentially the same thing. Here. Now, generally speaking,
the edge would go to progressive scan TVs among home
theater aficionados. They these screens were just better at showing
fast moving sequences in particular, so people who were serious
(12:30):
about home theater in the h D t V era
often would gravitate toward progressive scan screens. These days, you'll
find higher in televisions in the U h D or
Ultra high Definition ranges. In fact, four K is pretty
much the standard now um, but you can also find
eight K. So now we've moved away from the convention
(12:53):
that we used to use to describe resolution in the
in the s D and h D eras, and it
doesn't help that there's some screpancies here as well. Like
one of the issues that you often run into with
home theater is that there's a lack of universal standards
for a lot of stuff, and that can cause issues
down the line. In televisions, we generally say it's a
(13:16):
four K TV when it refers to a resolution of
three thousand, eight hundred forty pixels wide by two thousand,
one hundred sixty pixels tall and um. First of all,
you notice that neither of those numbers is four thousand, right,
three thousand, eight hundred forty is close, like you could
round up to four thousand, but neither of those are
(13:36):
four thousands. So that makes the four K thing a
little confusing. Also, uh, we see that in previous resolution descriptions,
the number that we used to refer to how many
pixels tall and image was was the dominant one right,
ten eighty means that you have one thousand eighty pixels
from the top of the screen to the bottom of
(13:58):
the screen. But with four K without three thousand, eight
hundred forty pixels, we're actually looking at the width of
the screen from left to right, not the height of
the screen from top to bottom. So those three thousand,
eight hundred forty pixels go across the screen. And if
you're saying, you know, three thousand hundred forty isn't the
same as four K, like I said, you're right. And
(14:18):
if you're wondering, well, why don't we call it twenty
one sixty because that would still be in the same
line as ten eight, Right, we called it ten eight
Why don't we call four K six? Well, that's because
I don't know. For some reason, we decided to switch
things up and talk about width rather than height as
far as pixel density goes. Now, if we're talking about
(14:41):
movie projection instead of television screens, four K usually has
a different resolution of four thousand, nineties six pixels across
and two thousand, one hundred sixty pixels up and down.
So at least there we get to our four K bit, right,
But for TVs, it's really more four K ish, and
in fact, there are several different resolutions that are in
(15:03):
that neighborhood that are lumped together in the four K designation.
There even some TVs that you could argue are five K,
but they get lumped down with four K, and it
gets even more confusing when you start talking about cameras
and stuff. But we're gonna leave all that here. It's
mostly to say that it's a higher resolution than the
(15:25):
h D t V market. I imagine the switch to
four K nomenclature is mostly for the convenience of marketing,
plus to cover the fact that there were so many
slight variations on resolution that it kind of helped cut
down on confusion because the differences didn't really translate to
a massive difference in viewing experience. So, in other words,
(15:45):
if one TVs four K resolution was technically slightly less
than another four K TVs resolution, typically you couldn't really
tell because it was at a level of resolution that's
so high that our human i is aren't able to
pick up on the differences. So, in other words, you
could have two of these televisions right next to each other,
(16:06):
they have slightly different resolutions and not be able to
see a difference. Then we've got eight K resolution. And
this is where the numbers get even bigger, and like
four K, this is more about eight K ish than
actually having eight thousand pixels across the width of a screen.
That number is really seven thousand, six hundred eighty. And
(16:26):
as for up and down the screen, well that's four thousand,
three twenty. That is the maximum resolution allowed by the
u h D or Ultra High Definition standards set down
by the i TU DASH our recommendation bt DOT twenty twenty.
I t U in this case stands for International Telecommunication Union,
(16:47):
and we're gonna touch on tech standards a lot throughout
this episode, because boy, but at least this one is
one that is well and truly set and standardized. It's saying,
this is the up end. This is where eight K
ends right here at this resolution. So yeah, eight K
TVs that maximum resolution. Have a screen filled with more
(17:08):
than thirty three million pixels. If you were to have
every pixel light up and you were to number each
one of them, you would come up with more than
thirty three million of those suckers. So you've got thirty
three million and change teeny little blocks of light which
you can use to make your images. And right now,
(17:29):
that's the top of the resolution charts that you can
find for home theater television screens. So does that mean
that more resolution means a better picture. Not quite. It's
actually way more complicated than that. Resolution is important, but
it's just one component of making a good picture. Also,
(17:53):
there's a limit to the amount of detail that our
human eyes can see, and that limit depends upon each
person's vision. So it's not like I could give you
a specific resolution and say this and no further. If
you go any higher than this, it's a fool's errand
because you'll never tell the difference. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
But there are some other factors that that tie in
(18:13):
with resolution when it comes to your viewing experience and
how clear or sharp an image is. One of those
is the size of the television screen. So let's say
we have three television's, all of them are at hd
TV resolution just to make this easy, And one of
those televisions is forty two inches, another one is fifty
five inches, and the third is sixty inches, but they
(18:36):
all are ten a DP resolution. Well, that means that
if you were to count up all the pixels on
each of those screens. Each screen would have the same
number of pixels, but that means that the pixels for
the six screen have to be a little bit larger
than the ones that you would find on the forty
two inch screen, and then the fifty in screen would
(18:58):
be right in the middle, right, because the same number
of pixels are on all three screens, but the screens
are different sizes, So it's possible that you would spot
a difference in resolution if you were to view the
same video source on that forty two inch screen as
the sixty inch screen at the same time. You put
those next to each other, and you might say, oh,
the picture looks more sharp on thet in screen than
(19:20):
the sixty because you have greater pixel density per area there, right,
So screen size does matter, and if you want to
go really big, like obnoxiously big with your television screen,
then you're gonna want to hire resolution to make up
for all that real estate that you're gonna be using
(19:42):
to view your stuff. Now, another factor is how close
you are sitting to the screen, and this matters for
a couple of reasons. The closer you are, the more
likely you're gonna see issues with resolution up to a point. Um, So,
if you have a really big screen and you happen
to sit really close to it and it's all an
h D t V resolution, you could end up saying
(20:03):
this doesn't look high definition to me. Now, there are
various sources that give out formulas for how far you
should sit away from your television depending upon your television size,
and I'll cover more of that in just a moment,
but first let's take a quick break. Okay, so I
(20:26):
mentioned before the break that we needed to talk about
viewing distances. See now, in the old days, you know,
the h D t V days, how close you sat
was dependent on a few things, not just the television size,
but also the resolution of the TV and how good
your vision was, because limitations and resolution would become apparent
if the TV were particularly large or if you were
(20:47):
sitting fairly close to it. So in other words, you
would say, like, it doesn't look that great. But in
the u h D era of four K and beyond,
it's getting really super hard to spot those resolution issue
unless you're talking about, you know, a gargantuan television like
one of those that sharp would show off at c
e s on some years something that's like a hundred
(21:08):
inches or something. So now the main thing is how
your vision. You know, how much of your vision should
the television actually fill, or rather, how much of your
field of view should be taken up by the TV.
So let's say that you've got typical vision for a
human being. And just for the record, I actually don't
have typical vision. I have less than what is typical.
(21:31):
So if you don't have typical vision, please don't feel
badly about it. I'm just using it as a way
of setting, uh, you know, a framework. So typically humans
have a field of view of an arc of around
two degrees or between two ten and two twenty in
front of them, and that is, if you were to
draw straight lines out from the very edges of your
(21:54):
vision while you're looking straight ahead, then the angle between
those lines would be somewhere around degrees. Now, not all
of that vision is equal, right, The stuff closer to
the edges of your vision, well, that's in your peripheral
and you won't see as much sharp detail there. You're
aware of things that happen in the periphery, but you're
(22:17):
not focusing on that. In fact, when you get beyond
about thirty degrees arc. You're really talking about the mid
peripheral part of your vision. So generally speaking, you want
your TV to take up no more than say, thirty
to forty degrees of your field a few and this
should guide your decision when it comes to figuring out
where you need to put, say your chair or your
(22:39):
couch or bean bag or whatever it is. But I
don't know about you. I don't have like a handy
dandy protractor to help me figure out that kind of stuff,
like what degree arc am I looking at when I've
got something in front of me. So we go to
a more basic formula to kind of rough it out.
And that formula is to multiply the size of your
(23:01):
television's screen and inches by the number one point six.
That's our constant, and that will give us the number
of inches that we should sit away from that TV
to get that thirty degree view in our field of view.
Or let's say that you are starting from the other
side right like you already know how far away you
plan to be sitting from where your TV is going
(23:23):
to go, Well, you can take that distance and inches
and then divide that by one point six, and that
would give you a rough idea of how large a
television you should go and shop. Four all right, so
let's use an example. Let's say that I have just
gone out and I've purchased a fifty five inch television,
and I want to know how far from this television
(23:44):
I should have my couch so that I can get
that optimal viewing experience and have that thirty degree field
of view view of the screen. So I take the
size of the screen fifty I multiply that by one
point six. That gives me eighty eight inches. So when
I convert that into feat that's seven point three feet
(24:05):
or so, so a little more than seven feet away,
and that will give me that thirty degree view of
the television. And it doesn't have to be exact. It's
kind of the ballpark figure. It tells you, all right,
somewhere around seven ft you should have a pretty good
viewing experience. But what if instead, I've got a room
and I've got set up so I know where the
couch is gonna go, I know where the TV is
(24:26):
going to go, but I haven't bought the television yet,
but I know the couch has to be this distance
from the TV, and I happen to know that it's
eight feet away from where the television is going to be, Well,
then we convert our eight ft two inches, that's inches.
We divide ninety six by one point six. That gives
us sixty So that means we would want something close
(24:48):
to us sixty inch television to go in that space.
It's a good general rule to follow, assuming that you're
talking about uh D televisions, which again, those resolute sans
are high enough where you're not likely to have any
issues when it comes to resolution quality. Also, you don't
have to be right on the dot for any of
these measurements. Thirty degrees is your target, but really just
(25:11):
you know, if you're a little bit closer, a little
bit further away, it's not going to ruin the experience,
all right. So that's resolution. And I should also add
you should really get the benefits of resolution if the
source of the video you're watching matches the resolution of
your display, or to put it in another way, what
(25:31):
you see on screen is limited by the weakest component
in your system, and sometimes you might not even be
able to view it, Like if your TV is an
hd TV and you're trying to watch a four K
video on it. That just ain't gonna work. Period. But
let's say that your TV is the highest point in
your system. Well, you're still limited about whatever the lowest
(25:53):
point is. So if you're watching an old VHS tape
and you're using your eight K U h D t V,
it's not gonna look like eight K video. It's going
to be limited to VHS levels of resolution, which is
close to standard definition. So the quality of what you
see depends on what that video source is coming from.
(26:14):
If you don't have a source that can create outputs
of four K, let alone eight K video, then you're
not really going to get the benefit of that higher resolution. Well,
there is one thing these higher definition televisions can do
to compensate for lower resolution video sources. This is called upscaling,
(26:36):
which is really a necessity. It's not like it makes
it sound like it magically makes video better. That's not
really what upscaling is doing. But let's say that you
wanted to watch a lower resolution video on your high
resolution screen and there was no way to adjust for
this difference. Okay, so there's no system in place to
(26:57):
have this video somehow expand to fill the number of
pixels that are on your uh D television screen. Well,
that video just contains information for an image that takes
up a specific number of pixels horizontally and vertically. So
what you could do is have that video play on
your screen, but it only takes up those pixels, so
(27:18):
it would be like a little thumbnail video. It would
be like maybe in the corner, maybe playing in just
the very center of your screen, with lots of black
space around it, because it only takes up that subset
of pixels and your television is way more pixels than
the video source does. This would be kind of like
those thumbnail videos you occasionally see on websites, and it's
(27:40):
not a very satisfying experience. Or you could build in
an upscale function, and this is a process in which
the television essentially starts to fill in pixels to make
up for the fact that the video source is a
lower resolution than the screen can display, and it's a
way of boosting the pixel count of the original video source. Now,
(28:03):
typically this means that the television is is using light
that's of a similar quality in neighboring pixels to fill
in for missing ones. So let's say that we've got
a video and it happens to be showing a green
meadow and a blue sky. Well, the television would essentially
be inserting pixels that would be shades of green similar
(28:24):
to the green and the meadow over in the meadow
side of it, or shades a blue similar to the
blue of the sky and the sky part of it,
and try to match the brightness to neighboring pixels to
kind of fill out and even out this image. So
you're adding information to something that was being fed to
the screen. This process does not add detail, however, so
(28:45):
it doesn't make those images more clear or more sharp.
So the bigger gap you have in resolution between your
display and the video source, the less good it's gonna look.
So an eight K TV up scaling a VHS video
would not just magically like eight K television. It would
it looked pretty jankie. All that being said, resolution is
(29:10):
really just one factor to consider when you're looking at television's.
There are tons of uh D TVs on the market,
and they are not all equal. Some are just playing
better when it comes to picture quality, even if they
happen to have the same number of pixels as a
competing brand. Now, anyone who remembers the days when we
(29:30):
used to buy digital cameras, you know, before all of
our phones came with one, you'll remember how the megapixel
number was a really big selling point for cameras. You know,
the general marketing point was that more megapixels means better pictures,
except it didn't, at least not necessarily. Megapixels, which just
(29:54):
refers to the resolution output of a camera, is really
just one part of what can make a picture good.
But it is way easier to sell a camera to
the public by saying this one goes to eleven, then
it would be to try and describe all the different
factors that go into the quality of a photo. So
(30:15):
the same thing is true with television's But another really
important thing besides resolution is a television's contrast ratio, and
that refers to the ratio that describes the difference between
the luminance or the brightness. If you prefer of the
darkest shade that the display can produce and the brightest
shade that it can produce, and you want a really
(30:38):
high contrast ratio which indicates a wide spectrum of luminance,
and that can really impact image quality. I'll explain a
bit more, but first let's take another quick break. Okay,
we were talking about contrast a shio. Now, some televisions
(31:01):
naturally just have better contrast ratios, especially when it comes
to showing off the darker colors. And this comes down
to the technologies that actually power the TVs. Televisions that
have a back light, uh, that is, the image is
generated on screen, it's coming courtesy a little tiny lamps
that are behind each pixel. UH, those can have trouble
(31:23):
with darker colors. And that's because that lamp is essentially
it's always on, even during the dark scenes, and the
liquid crystals that are meant to block the light, sometimes
they allow a little bit of light to bleed through,
and sometimes that means that dark stuff that should be
say pitch black, might actually come out looking more like
(31:44):
their charcoal gray when they're on your screen. And if
you're trying to watch something in which a character in
really dark clothing is moving around in a dark building,
it might just look like you're looking at a big, dark,
gray screen with nothing going on. In fact, that's what
a lot of Batman movies might look like on one
of these screens. And this is particularly noticeable if your
room is really dark as well, in bright rooms it's
(32:07):
not quite as bad. Some television's have what's called dynamic contrast,
which puts the backlight into a low power mode to
reduce that kind of bleed through, and that helps a bit.
And of course not all televisions rely on the same technology.
So l e ED television's have little l e ED
you know, light emitting diodes as lamps behind a liquid
(32:29):
crystal display or l c D panel, and this type
is the kind that can have that light bleed through.
The l c D crystals act kind of like window shades.
They control how much light can pass through to the screen,
but they aren't necessarily perfect at blacking everything out. There
are actually a couple of different LED panels that can
have different effects. So a vertical alignment panel, those tend
(32:52):
to be more efficient in blocking light, they have better
contrast as a result. Uh then you have in plane
switching panel. These tend to let a little bit more
light through. So this is where you might get some
of that bleed through. But you rarely see these bits
of information about what kind of l e ED display
the television has on the TV box, right so it's
(33:14):
hard to kind of shop for that, But then you
could also use an oh LAD screen. Oh lads are
organic light emitting diodes. They don't need those little backlights.
They can sort of think of these as little bitty
points that act as a light source and a pixel
all in one go, and they can actually turn on
or off, you know, dynamically, and thus they tend to
(33:37):
be much better when it comes to contrast. They can
show darker colors with more accuracy, and I would finally
be able to tell what the heck Batman was actually doing.
Several years ago. I would also be talking about plasma televisions,
which could also provide pretty amazing contrast, although at the
expense of brightness. They couldn't get as bright as L
E D t vs could typically, but plas the TVs
(34:00):
were really expensive, they never really caught on the same
way that L E ED t vs did. Plus, there
was this potential issue of burning, meaning that if you
had a plasma screen and you were showing the same
image for a long time, you might have a remnant
of that image that can stick around even after when
you're watching other stuff, So it affects the quality of
your experience, but the major TV company has pretty much
(34:22):
stopped making plasma televisions back in two thousand fourteen, so
it's kind of a moot point. And before I move on,
I should also talk about projectors too. So far I've
been focusing on TV sets, but one way you can
trick out a home theater is to get a really
nice projector, which can give you a big screen experience
at a much lower price point, depending on you know
(34:44):
which model you're looking at, and I do mean depending,
because there's some projectors out there for high end markets.
They're in the tens of thousands of dollars range. That
is way outside of my budget. But you can find
others that are, you know, around five d two thousand dollars.
There's still expensive, but they are less expensive per inch
(35:04):
than your flat screen televisions typically are. Like you can
get screens that are a hundred twenty inches or larger,
and if you have a really big home theater set up,
that means that you could have a effectively a one
or two hundred forty inch TV, but for a fraction
of the cost of some of these other flat panel
(35:27):
display styles. You can also find a range of resolutions
with projectors as well, including ultra high definition projectors, so
you can find four K projectors no problem, uh, and
you can really create that kind of theater experience. But
one thing that matters a lot with this particular setup
is ambient light. You want as little light in your
(35:47):
environment as possible. You want that room to be dark
if you're going to be using a projector, So that
usually means that projectors are best in spaces that have
few or no windows, or you have treated those windows
with like blackout curtains or blackout shades so that you
can have a really dark movie Dungeon. Um televisions can
(36:09):
give you a good experience at other light levels, so
they you know, they're not as dependent upon this. So
really this comes down to your setup, like what room
you're planning on using as a home theater. If your
home theater is going to be out in a sun room,
well you're probably not going to have a good experience
with a projector unless you're only watching things in the
(36:30):
dead of night. Oh and what's more, you can also
find projectors that have built in WiFi receivers and even
ones that have apps included to let you access popular
streaming services. So you don't have to hook the projector
up to some other computer or set top box in
order to get those functions. Those projectors do exist, and
that's pretty darn cool too that they're kind of neat.
(36:50):
Now it's time to chat about another confusing factor in
image quality, and that is HDR. And this one's really
irritating because while there is a standard HDR, there are
other flavors of HDR, and that means there's lots of
competing technologies all trying to accomplish the same goal, but
(37:10):
they're not necessarily compatible with each other. That means you
could end up buying an HDR TV and HDR set up,
and that the two don't necessarily work together. Like if
you're set up is working on one set and your
TV is meant for a different set, you've got some issues.
So let's get into that. So HDR, in case you're
(37:32):
not familiar, stands for high dynamic range. This became the
buzzword of modern TVs and it tends to be one
of those features that gets positioned as a main selling point.
So when resolution used to be the big differentiator, now
it's does it have high dynamic range? Well? And it
centers around this representation of color and brightness, So dynamics
(37:54):
references extremes, right, So like in a in sound, let's
say you're talking about music, you would say a song
was really dynamic if there were was a lot of
variation between the loud parts and the soft parts of
the song, if there were a lot of levels there,
volume levels. That's a lot of dynamics as opposed to
a piece that maintains more or less the same level
(38:16):
of volume throughout the whole piece. With televisions, these dynamics
are in the shades and brightness of the colors on
the screen, which ideally manifests as really vibrant on screen displays,
so the colors really pop out at you, and there
could be much more subtle shifts with light and shadow
(38:36):
when you're working with a system that has really good HDR.
In fact, a superior television with high resolution and HDR
could even give you the feeling that you're looking through
a window almost rather than a screen, because HDR, if
it's implemented well, can even convey a sense of depth.
And this is true even if the television isn't a
(38:58):
three D TV. And let me tell you, I'm so
glad we are past the three D television fad because
that man I didn't have to talk about three D
in this episode. But there are some caveats when it
comes to HDR, and one is that every component in
your system that deals with video has to be HDR
compatible in order for you to get the benefit. So
(39:19):
let's say that you have a game console and it
supports hd R, and you've got a television that supports HDR,
but the cable you're using to connect your console to
your TV isn't HDR compatible, Well, you would not be
able to take advantage of HDR. Or let's say that
your TV and your cable are both HDR ready, but
(39:41):
your video source isn't the same problem, every single component
has to be hd R ready in order to take
advantage of HDR. Moreover, HDR is kind of it's more
of what you call guidelines. As Barbosa would say, it's
like a defined goal. It's a system it has to
achieve a certain benchmark in uh in in color representation
(40:05):
in order to be considered HDR. But how it goes
about achieving that benchmark, which is technically, you know, a
resolution of at least four K and a certain contrast
ratio that isn't standardized. So in other words, you're saying,
here's your destination, but how you get there is up
to you. So that means there are different flavors of HDR.
(40:25):
There's HDR ten that's your baseline version. Most other versions
support HDR ten, so hopefully if you have a setup,
you can use that. But then you have other more
you know, uh, feature filled versions. There's Advanced HDR, which
was a product from Technicolor. There's Dolby Vision, which is
(40:46):
kind of like hd R plus, and there are more
besides that. So to take advantage of those versions, you
would have to have your television and all your other
components be compatible with that specific version of HDR for
you to be able to experience riens it. So you
could end up with an HDR system that can't really
play certain HDR media, at least not with the HDR
(41:08):
effects you were expecting, because the media was built for
a different version of HDR, And yeah, that kind of stinks,
but when it all does work together, it's pretty phenomenal.
So your display should have a great contrast ratio, it
should have great resolution, it should have HDR. What else well,
you might consider the refresh rate. I don't see this
(41:30):
touted as much as it was a few years ago,
right around the time when Peter Jackson was releasing the
Hobbit films. That's really when refresh rate became a big thing.
It kind of got a bad name at the time too. Technically,
refresh rate describes the number of times the television refreshes
the image on the screen each second, and we measure
(41:50):
this and hurts or cycles per second, and it's somewhat
similar to the frame rate of a film. You know,
we typically playback film at a speed of twenty four
frames per second. That means the film is really a
series of still photographs, but when we play it at
a fast enough speed, it creates the illusion of movement.
Video is a little bit different. We do still have
a way of changing the image super fast, and typically
(42:13):
we're talking around like thirty to sixty times per second,
sixty times being way more common these days, so that's
like sixty hurts. Higher in televisions can have higher refresh rates,
or at least higher advertised refresh rates. Hurts is not uncommon.
But what does this mean as far as your viewing experience?
Goes well for fast moving stuff, like stuff that's moving
(42:36):
quickly across the screen as you're watching it, you would
typically see a blurring of that image, and the image
kind of looks a little bit softer as a result
with televisions that have lower refresh rates. When you have
faster refresh rates, those same images appear to be more
sharp and more clear, more solid. So this is really
(42:57):
great for certain things like sports, where the effect is
almost like you're there in person because you're not getting
motion blur and stuff like that. In addition to refresh rate,
TVs typically have some other anti blurring technologies built into them.
This can boost the perceived effect. So a lot of
companies will actually describe this by just saying the TV
(43:17):
has an even higher refresh rate than the television actually does,
Like it might really refresh the screen a hundred twenty
times a second, but I might be advertised at to
forty or even higher. Because the technical detail of how
many times it refreshes the screen isn't as important as
saying this is the effect you will perceive when you watch, right, Like,
(43:41):
those numbers don't really matter if they don't relate to
what it's like to watch something on that television screen.
They're just numbers. It means nothing, you know. It's the
experience that actually means something. So if the image seems
more sharp and clear, even when you're looking at stuff
that's moving fast, that's all that really matters, not which
(44:02):
collection of technologies made it possible or what numbers we
associate with them. However, these technologies can also create some
weird effects that you might not like, so some folks
complain that these faster refresh rates make stuff look artificial
or fake. The phrase that you will frequently here to
describe this is it makes everything look like a Mexican
(44:24):
soap opera. Which don't get me wrong, I am not
disparaging Mexican soap operas, but they do have a particular
look to them, and you don't necessarily want everything to
look that way. A lot of theater buffs I know
would actually turn these refresh rates off. That usually there
was a setting somewhere in the television where you could
just turn it to like sixty hurts or one twenty
(44:45):
anything beyond that, a lot of people just kind of
shied away from and they would opt for that lower
refresh rate and retain that motion blur for stuff like
TV shows and movies, maybe activating the higher refresh rate
for stuff like sporting events and that kind of thing.
And as with many of the things I mentioned in
this episode, a lot of this falls to marketing strategies, right,
Like having a bigger number to point to is a
(45:08):
way of saying, this is how we differentiate our product
from our competitors. So knowing that being savvy as a
consumer is really important, right, Being able to see through
the marketing speak in order to understand what's actually being
sold to you. That is critical, especially when you're talking
about something like the centerpiece of a home theater, which
(45:29):
is going to presumably be a fairly expensive technology, whether
it's a television or a projector so it behooves you
to do this kind of research, understand what these components do.
Also think about the other things you want to have
as part of your home theater and make sure they're
all compatible before you go all in, because there's nothing
worse than getting a whole bunch of pieces of technology together,
(45:52):
hooking them up and then realizing there's a compatibility issue.
I've had that happened to me in different aspects numerous times.
It is incredibly frustrating and disheartening because you're so excited
going into it. So it's good to know this stuff
before you really start making purchases. Well, I'm gonna wrap
this up now for the televisions, but we will do
(46:13):
a couple more episodes. I want to talk about sound.
We need to talk about sound systems for home theaters
and what all those mean, because that's another confusing technological
mind field to walk through, right because there's so many
different variations on surround sound and which ones are right
for you. I also want to talk about some of
the other components that you would find, like what are
(46:36):
the differences in the different resolution video streaming devices and
video playing devices you can find? Does it make sense
to buy an eight K television right now? How much
eight K content is out there? What are the limiting factors?
So we're gonna talk about more of those things in
our our next episode, but this episode we're going to
wrap up. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have
(46:57):
suggestions for topics I should cover in future EPISO, it's
a tech stuff, please reach out to me and let
me know. The best way is on Twitter. Um you
can tell me about things I messed up in old articles.
I can't change them. I don't work for Health Stuff
Works anymore. But um, you know, we can always write
to the editor and say, hey, we should really change
(47:17):
this or you should really change this, because I can't.
I can't do it because um, I would like to
see that happen. I you know, I I'll own up
to when I goof and using a gender now at
the very beginning of an article that should be universally
you know, applicable. That was a That was a bad
(47:39):
That was a bad call on my part. So yeah,
glad that I was called out for that. Uh. I
mean it stinks that had happened, but that's my fault,
not not not the person who told me. If you
have any other suggestions, like I said, hit me up
on Twitter Tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to
you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
(48:04):
Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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