Home Theatre 103 - Components and Cables

Just when you thought it was safe to watch a Blu-ray. We look at more tech that's necessary for a great home theater system. From AV Receivers to the cables you'll need to hook everything together, we get to the bottom of what makes home theater work.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a 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 I love all things techno. And we are back
with our series about home theaters after a brief intermission.

(00:26):
But hey, that happens sometimes with theaters, right anyway, So far,
we have covered the basics of visuals with a breakdown
of stuff like resolution, high dynamic range or HDR, oh
LED versus l e D versus q LED, home projectors,
and more. We also talked about surround sound and the

(00:47):
basic variations that you can have with surround sound. But
then I ran out of time before I could get
to the next bit, which is sub waffers. And I
talked about them a little in the last episode in
this series, but I didn't really explain what it is
they do and why they're so important for home theater setups.
All right, let's talk about subwhiffers really quickly. Now, the

(01:08):
job of any speaker is to project out a certain
band of sound frequencies, which we you know, experience as
different pitches. Right. Higher frequencies are higher pitches. Lower frequencies
are much lower pitches. But how do speakers do this? Well,
if you remember our rabbit hole of what sound is
from earlier in this series, you know that sound is vibration,

(01:32):
and that typically we hear sound as it moves through
the air. The vibration in this case becomes a series
of fluctuating changes in air pressure which propagate outward from
the source of the sound. And when these fluctuations encounter
the ear drums inside our ears, they cause our ear
drums to vibrate. Those vibrations transferred to our inner ear

(01:53):
thanks to some very tiny bones, and then through a
couple of other steps that I'm not going to go
to hear because I've covered this before, our brains eventually
pick up signals from our inner ear and then interpret
that as sound. Now, the reason I even said any
of that is that a speaker creates sound kind of

(02:13):
in a reverse process from how our ears pick up sound.
So you've got an electric signal, and this is the
signal that carries the sound information in it. We've encoded
sound into an electric signal, and then we're gonna decode
the electric signal to recreate the sound. Typically, this signal
goes to an electro magnet, which is essentially a driver

(02:36):
that can pull and push depending on how or if
current is flowing through the electro magnet. This is inside
the speaker. It's usually attached to the speaker cone itself,
and there is a diaphragm covering the speaker cone the
end of the cone. This is the part that you
see when you look at the front of a speaker,

(02:56):
those big round things. That's the diaphragm on the end
of the own um. Then you've got this part of
the back of the speaker where there's a permanent magnet.
That's your typical way. You could have it the other way,
where the permanent magnet is on the cone and the
electro magnets in the back of the speaker. But more
frequently the voice coil as it's called, is attached to

(03:19):
the code itself. So when the polarity of the electro
magnet changes, it exerts a magnetic force that then interacts
with the magnetic field of the permanent magnet. So if
those polarities match right, if the electro magnets magnetic field
has a north pole pointed toward the permanent magnets north pole,

(03:41):
then they repel each other right, Because like magnetic charge repels,
So the cone gets pushed away from the permanent magnet
and it's pushed forward out from the speaker. If the
polarities are the opposite of each other, like one's north
pole and one south pole, the electro magnet is pulled
back toward the permanent magnet inside. Now the permanent magnet,

(04:03):
it's magnetic field is not going to change because it's permanent.
It's it's in a stationary position. But by reversing the
the flow of electricity through the coil, you can change
the direction of the magnetic field on the coil in
the electro magnet and thus have this interaction. So the
result is that the speaker's diaphragm gets moved in and out,

(04:25):
and this happens really really fast. Now, the diaphragm consequently
causes air to move, and it creates those fluctuations in
air pressure. As the diaphragm pushes outward, it compresses the
air directly in front of the speaker. If it moves inward,
it pulls on the air. So you get these little
fluctuations of air pressure that when they encounter our ears

(04:47):
we experience as sound. To me, is so cool that
we can take sound. We can transmit sound through a microphone,
which is, by the way, the exact same thing but
in reverse, and in be able to play it out
on a speaker this way and just have this material,
this diaphragm material. Just through that vibration, we can recreate

(05:08):
any sound that humans can hear. That still blows my
mind anyway. That's a really high level way of how
speakers work. So most speakers can replicate a fairly decent
range of frequencies, but the lower end stuff gets pretty
challenging because it requires a larger diaphragm in the speaker
to produce good, powerful low frequency effects and more power

(05:34):
to move that big diaphragm. So larger diaphragms will have
more mass. That means it takes more energy to get
them to move, particularly to move enough air to make
the effects you want to make. So it might need
so much energy that you could even require an extra
plug to plug the speaker into, say an external source
like a like a power outlet. In order to get

(05:56):
the power, you need to to actually run the sub offer.
So a good sound system needs a subworffer that is
specifically a type of speaker specifically dedicated to replicating the
lower frequency sounds, those really deep bass sounds that sometimes
you can actually feel more than you can hear. Now,
remember I said that sound is a vibration. Well, a

(06:19):
good subwoffer will create vibrations that you can physically feel.
They might be below the threshold for human hearing, which
is typically defined as anything between twenty hurts to twenty
thousand hurts in frequencies. They can also handle the lower
frequencies that, while not sternham shaking, are lower than what

(06:40):
your typical speaker can handle, and thus they fill out
the sound that you will hear. Otherwise you would be
missing all those low low ends. This is important not
just for movies and television, but also for music. If
you've ever listened to music on a cheap pair of
headphones and thought, wow, this doesn't sound really that good, well,

(07:00):
chances are one of the issues that that those cheap
headphones have is that they're not reproducing all the frequencies
that are actually present in the music, so it's like
you're getting a narrow slice of what the music is,
not the full audio experience. Now, subliffers don't need to
be as directional as other speakers, so you don't have

(07:20):
to have them sitting in a very specific spot in
your setup the way you do with like your front
left and front right and center speakers and all that
kind of stuff. However, depending upon the size and shape
of your home theater space, you might actually need more
than one sub wiffer to create the effects you want.
Otherwise you could find out that the base distribution in

(07:41):
your home theater set up isn't quite up to par
and that there are some maybe some dead spots in
that space. Now, I've looked at a lot of surround
sound speaker setups, and many of the higher end ones
have two sub wiffers. And I should add that these
are well outside my ice range and probably outside most

(08:02):
people's price range unless you got like ten or twelve grand,
just burning a hole in your very very large pockets.
But you can see things like you know, nine point
two point two, and you know, these crazy systems that
get to a point where you're thinking, how many speakers
do you actually need? Apparently for some home theater enthusiasts,

(08:23):
it's going to always be there will never be enough speakers.
Now I think of anything, this discussion really shows that
your physical space matters a lot when it comes to
building out your home theater. If you want surround sound,
you need the space to be able to do it,
and you need to set up speakers according to which
version of surround sound you're going with. That also means

(08:45):
figuring out stuff like cable management. Now there are wireless
home theater systems where you've got like wireless speakers. Some
of them are really really good. When they first came out,
wireless speakers were kind of looked down upon because the
thought was that if you didn't have a physical wire
connecting your components, it could not possibly deliver the same

(09:05):
level of experience. But we've gotten a lot better with
those over the years. However, you know some systems still
just use physical wires to connect everything like speakers back
to the mixer. Then you know, sub whiffers might need
their own power cable and everything. So whichever set up
you go with, you need to take all this into consideration.
Cable management becomes a real high priority as you don't

(09:27):
want to trip over cables or have unsightly wires all
over the place. So that you know, one more thing
for you to keep in mind. Now you might also
think that seven point one, where you've got seven speakers
plus a sub wiffer like Dolby Atmos, is one of
those kind of levels, although they sometimes call it five
point one point two, because you've got the five speakers

(09:50):
of your typical surround sound set up, you've got your subwhiffer,
that's the one, and then you've got to atmost speakers
that are projecting above you. That's the point to. Anyway,
you might think that a seven point one set up
is inherently superior to a five point one set up,
which is far more common, but that is not necessarily
the case. The quality of the tech, as in how

(10:12):
good your mixer and receiver are, how good the speakers are,
and to some degree the cables. All of that matters.
But that cables thing is a huge caveat because there
are companies out there that market high end cables that
really don't deliver any perceptible benefit to the experience. We'll
talk a lot more about it later on. In fact,
really when it comes to cables, the rule of thumb

(10:33):
is that super cheap cables aren't great. They tend to
have bad insulation, and we'll talk more about that a
bit later too, But anything else is pretty much okay,
unless you're just having to run miles of cable, in
which case you might need to think more carefully about
your options. Also, I should add that in the world
of audio, there's this obsessive pursuit among audio files about

(10:56):
going after the most pure or true replication of sound,
and I get that, but I also get that a
lot of that comes down to stuff that is beyond
human perception and comes down to personal preference and psychology.
It's subjective in other words, like if you walked into
a room and you were told that this room was

(11:16):
outfitted with a high end, extremely expensive system, and it
turned out that really, in the background it was just
a good system, but not like a super crazy one,
well you might walk away thinking it was a life
changing experience, like you might come away from it saying wow,
that really makes a difference. Likewise, if you were to
walk into a space that had a really super high

(11:38):
end audio system, but you were told that you were
going to be listening to a budget model, you might
just think it's just okay. So typically, double blind studies
where neither the person experiencing a test nor the person
administering the test actually knows what kind of system is
being used. A lot of those show that beyond a

(12:00):
certain level of quality, our ability to discern different distinctions
diminishes quickly. So while a system might at least by
you know, finally tuned measurements and specifications say it's better,
you might not ever notice it because of the limitations
of human perception. So, in other words, don't buy the malarkey,
is what I'm saying. I guess. Oh, and like stereo,

(12:24):
your ability to enjoy surround sound depends upon what you're consuming.
So let's say you've picked up a Blu ray of
your favorite film and you see it supports Dolby five
point one surround sound, and you've got a five point
one system that supports Dolby. Well, that should be a
pretty good experience. It should sound great. But what I
You've got a seven point one system, but the media

(12:45):
you're looking at doesn't support seven point one. It's five
point one. Well, through technologies like Dolby pro Logic too
X or digital sound processing, which a lot of these
systems have built into them, whether it's your receiver or
your media player or whatever, well, then your system can
expand five point one soundtracks to meet the seven point

(13:08):
one channels, and to go into how all that works
would probably require a full episode, and let me just
be straight with you guys, it would also require an
expert on the subject matter because it quickly goes beyond
my own understanding. But in a way, it's kind of
like how four K and eight K television's upscale video
sources that aren't natively in ultra high definition. Now, one

(13:32):
thing I have not covered is sound bars. So these
are those wide, horizontal speakers you find in a lot
of sound setups these days. Are usually pretty short, and
they can typically fit directly in front of and underneath
a TV screen. So if you've got your TV screen
on the stand, this is that bar that would sit
in front of the TV and and act as a

(13:55):
very large or very wide speaker. And it's it's an
attempt to replicate the experience of surround sound through one
array of speakers inside a bar, instead of having a
bunch of separate units mounted around a seating space. So
within a sound bar are multiple speaker drivers, and some
of these might be pointed so that they push sound

(14:16):
out at an angle from the viewers, So instead of
it just being like an array of speakers all pointed
directly at you. Some of them might be pointed off
at an angle, with the idea being that the sound
is supposed to bounce off the walls to either side
of you and then come at you from a different
direction to simulate surround sound that way, So instead of

(14:38):
mounting a speaker you know a certain number of degrees
off to your right and to your left, you're using
the sound bar to bounce sound off walls so that
it comes to you that way anyway, So the channel
that might be meant for the front left, for example,
can beam off to the left of the viewer, hit
a wall, bounce back, and hit you at the right angle.
Of course, we all know that the law of reflection

(15:00):
tells us that the angle the sound will take after
the bounce is equal to the incoming angle, which means
that the distance between the sound bar and your walls
will matter. So if your television happens to be closer
to one side of the room than the other, like
if it's a little closer to the right than it
is to the left, well, that means that the channels
from the left and right are going to be bouncing

(15:21):
off at slightly different points on their respective walls, so
you might not get a really immersive surround sound effect
like I have a sound bar in my setup, but
my setup also my living room's weird, y'all. It is
open to the dining room and kitchen on the left side,
and the right side ends at a wall with windows

(15:44):
on it, so that means that you know, stuff can
bounce off to the right and hit that wall, But
if it goes off to the left, it's going all
the way towards the dining room and kitchen, so there's
no there's no wall for it to bounce off off,
so I don't get that effect. In addition, some sound
bars even come with speakers that aim at an angle
up towards the ceiling to get you that Dollby Atmos effects,

(16:05):
so the sound reflects off your ceiling and back down
towards where you're sitting. And generally speaking, sound bars are
much easier to set up because I mean, there's usually
only two components to the system. There's the sound bar
and there's a subwhiffer. Some somewhoffers also serve as receivers,
which will talk more about in a bit, so like
my system is that way. My subwhiffer is also my receiver,

(16:29):
and so I just have two units and that makes
it really simple. They can provide much better sound than
just a television alone can by itself, and in the
right room, it can be a really immersive experience. Not
so much for mine, but you know it's okay. Um,
if you aren't lucky enough to have a symmetrical space
perfectly set up for a home theater, then they don't

(16:50):
deliver quite that surround sound experience you might be hoping for.
So again, the space you are in is going to
have a big impact on your experience, and it's really
worth taking a good look at what you're working with
before you go on a very expensive shopping spree. I
would recommend getting someone from a company that builds out
home theater systems to consult with you on it. However,

(17:12):
I hesitate to make that just a blanket recommendation because
I mean, you also need to do your own research,
because I'm not saying that everyone out there is going
to try and steer you toward the most expensive system
you could possibly buy because they happen to work on commission.
But it's a possibility and it's good to be aware

(17:34):
of it. Now. I think that's a pretty good stopping
point for audio in general, although we'll obviously touch on
it some more later. So we're gonna talk about receivers
after we come back from this quick break. So a
lot of home theater setups include at a V receiver

(17:57):
and audio video receiver, and the receiver really has a
couple of big jobs. One of those is that it
acts as an amplifier, So it takes audio signals from
various media sources and it boosts those signals. It amplifies
them before sending them onto the appropriate speakers. Uh, the
output of audio signals from a media source might not

(18:21):
be strong enough to really power the speakers sufficiently, so
that's why you need an amplifier. But there's another really
important job that the receiver does, and that's that it
acts kind of like a media switch. So if you
have a lot of components connecting to your home theater system,

(18:41):
Let's say you've got an antenna and maybe a cable connection,
and maybe video game console and perhaps a different type
of set top box that's providing content. Maybe it's a
Blu ray player or something um or maybe it's you know,
a streaming service box or something. Then this can act

(19:03):
as like the switch between all those different sources so
that you can have the right stuff being sent to
your television screen and to all your speakers. So the
a V receiver kind of acts like a nexus point
for all of that stuff. You would plug all the
inputs into the a V receiver and then you would
use a single connection to connect your a V receiver

(19:25):
to something like your television or a different one to
connect to your speakers. That way, when you want to
watch say a U h D Blu Ray, you switch
the a V receiver to that setting to whatever you
know input devices you're using to watch that Blue ray on,
and the receiver essentially makes all the proper connections between

(19:47):
your Blu ray player and your television and speakers. Or
let's say you want to watch cable TV, while you
would switch to that setting on your a V receiver,
and then the cable feed would be what's going to
your television and to your speakers. And one big benefit
to this, and it sounds small, but trust me, it's
really nice, is that the a V receiver will plug

(20:09):
into one port in your television, one input typically you
do this using an HDMI cable, which we will talk
about a little bit later. And so let's say you
plug your a V receiver into h d M I
port number one on your television, and everything else is
going through your a V receiver to your TV. That
means when you switch from Blu ray to cable on

(20:31):
your a V receiver, you don't also have to switch
the input on your television. Now, I know that sounds small,
but trust me, I have seen so many situations in
which someone was not using an a V receiver, so
they had all of their different components connecting to their
television directly, and then they have to fuss around with
a remote control and try to figure out which input

(20:53):
on their television they needed to select in order to
make something specific happen. Like let's say they switched from
playing a video game and now they want to connect
to like a Roku or something. They would have to
go through and choose the correct input setting in order
to do that. Because they had each of these things
connecting to their television's directly, that can get a little frustrating.

(21:16):
It gets a little clunky. So reducing the number of
times you have to switch inputs on your television is
a pretty nice thing. Also, receivers tend to have radio tuners.
I mean they are receivers, they have radio tuners in them,
and sometimes they have satellite radio tuners. So either way
you have an added benefit there. You've got a device
that can pick up radio signals and you can listen

(21:39):
to radio on your home theater, you know, in case
you ever want to do that. A V receivers also
decode the surround sound signal formats that are on various
forms of media, and then that's how they make sure
that the right speakers are playing the right sounds. That
way you're getting, you know, the front left channel is
going to the front left speaker and it's not like
suddenly going to the center's speaker or something. That's another

(22:01):
important job receivers do. Now, there are some folks who
do forego the a V receiver. Typically they don't have
surround sound setups. As a result, they might have, you know,
simple stereo speakers hooked up to their television. So it's
not like an a V receiver is an absolute requirement,
but for a lot of serious home theater enthusiasts, they
consider it a critical component of their setup. Now let's

(22:25):
switch over and talk about media sources. So you've got
your television or your projector and screen, you've got your
sound system, you've got your a V receiver ready to
connect to everything to you know those other components. So
what are you putting on this thing? Like, how are
you getting the actual media to consume? Well, the good

(22:45):
news is you have way more options today than you
did when ultra high definition was first becoming a thing. Um,
since four KTVs are now kind of the standard in
most most stores, Like if you look at their television's,
four K is by far the thing that takes up
the most shelf space. Well, the first four KTVs hit

(23:06):
store shelves back in two thousand twelve, but at that
point there really wasn't any content for four KTVs. Like
you can still watch HD content, High definition content, or
even standard definition, but you couldn't find much four K content.
Buying a four K TV was more like future proofing
your home theater because you couldn't really enjoy content on

(23:28):
it right out of the box. And this has happened
multiple times before, like when h D t V first
became a thing, there actually wasn't that much HD content
to watch on that either you could find like an
hd TV promotional channel that would just run stuff like
nature scenes and maybe a couple of clips from like

(23:51):
specific sporting events or a sunset or sunrise. Like. There
were a lot of these kind of standard things that
were meant to show off how beautiful the screens, but
for real content there was a distinct lack, so there
was a bit of a gap between having the capability
to see stuff in higher resolution and actually having any
higher resolution media to watch. The first pay TV provider

(24:14):
in the United States to offer a limited selection of
four K content was the satellite TV provider Direct TV.
That was in two thousand fourteen. The first uh D
Blu ray players went on sale in North America in
two thousand sixteen, and luckily there were some media companies
making four K Blu ray discs as well, because again,

(24:35):
you know, it drives home the fact you need all
the pieces in the puzzle to match up to get
the experience you want. You can have a four K
TV and nothing to watch on it, or you could
have a four K Blu ray player, But if no
one's making four K Blu ray disks, that doesn't do
you a whole lot of good. I mean, you could
still probably watch standard Blu rays. But you know the
same thing with stuff like HDR high dynamic range. If

(24:58):
any piece of the puzz doesn't support HDR, then you're
not going to be able to take advantage of that technology.
These days, a lot of the four K content comes
from streaming services. So this means that your home theater
will need a connection to the Internet, either wirelessly or hardwired.
And a lot of televisions these days can connect directly

(25:21):
to a range of streaming sources without any additional equipment.
You know, the so called smart TVs that have these
these uh these interfaces built into them. The television will
have a user interface that lets you select stuff like
HBO Max, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney Plus, Apple

(25:42):
TV YouTube. You know, these are the types of services,
and there are a few others that carry four K content. Now,
in some cases, in order to access that four K content,
you've got to actually pay a little bit more than
these standard subscription to those services. So, for Examp Apple
here in North America, if you wanted to watch four

(26:02):
K content on Netflix, you would need to shell out
the eighteen dollars a month for a premium subscription plan
in order to get that. Other services like Disney Plus
include four K content that even has hd R support
built into it right there at the basic subscription price.
But you do just have to have the system capable of,

(26:23):
you know, taking advantage of that. But you can, you
can do it right on the box. You don't, you
don't have to subscribe to a higher tier of service.
This also means that whatever device is connecting to the
service also needs to be compatible with that four K standard. Now,
if it's your television, then that's probably covered right. If
you bought a four K TV and it has these

(26:44):
uh these interfaces built in so that you can actually
directly access a Netflix through your television without any other
device needed, then you're good. But if it's an additional
set top box, like if it's a Roku, then that
device need to be four K compatible as well in
order to be able to watch this stuff. Most of
the more recent devices do meet that requirement, but if

(27:07):
you happen to be sitting on an older one, it's
always a good idea to take a quick look online
just to see what resolutions it supports. Um if it's
fairly recent you might be okay. For example, Roku started
offering devices with four K support back in October two
thousand fifteen, though not all devices Roku has made since
two thousand fifteen are four K compatible, so again, making

(27:30):
sure that everything meets the minimum standard that you're hoping
for is important. In addition to that, modern video game
consoles are four K compatible. This started with the PlayStation
four Pro and the Xbox one X and Xbox one
S models. Uh, the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation
five actually have eight K capability, so if you want

(27:53):
to really future proof your home theater and you want
a video game console to be part of it, you
could get one or both of those. Good luck, they
can still be pretty hard to find in most markets.
The PS five in particular, is tricky to find. Game
consoles like the PS five and Xbox Series X also
can serve as streaming devices, so if your TV doesn't

(28:16):
have that capability natively built into it and you don't
want to buy another set, top box consoles can pick
up that slack. All right, So let's recap for a second.
Your home theater is going to need media sources. You know,
something to watch you can get some four K material
through cable or satellite feeds, but it's a pretty limited amount.

(28:37):
So depending upon your provider, you'll have some stuff there
that will look and sound great on your system. Some
providers might only have on demand like pay videos that
you can access that that can take advantage of those
sort of systems. You can also stream content from the
Internet to your home theater, though I should add that

(28:59):
will require and least a pretty decent Internet connection of
at least megabits per second. You probably want to find
a plan that also has a really high data cap
or no data cap, because four K video can eat
up a lot of that data allowance. Um Netflix estimated
back in late that if you watched an hour of
four K video, it's equivalent to consuming about seven gigabytes

(29:23):
of data. That's just one hour of content. So if
you're someone who plans to use a home theater a lot,
and you're gonna lean heavily on streaming services to provide
four K content, you could be bumping up against some
data caps. Like Comcast has a data cap that seems
incredibly high. It's one point to terabytes. That's a huge

(29:45):
amount of data. But if you're a home theater fiend,
you can hit that after forty hours of watching uh
D content, So if you're gonna be doing it a lot,
that's something you could take into consideration. I think we
can now switch over to finally talk about cables, and
in a way, I think that cables has become a

(30:06):
little less confusing over time, maybe by a little bit.
So we'll do a quick recap on audio and video
cables to see where we came from, because I mean,
some home theater systems still use these legacy cables because
they still include legacy components. If you have like an
old VCR, for example, and you want to be able

(30:26):
to watch VCR cassettes, then you may need some of
these old cables. It also could probably mean that you're
gonna need some adapters in order to connect these older
devices to your newer television sets because a lot of
manufacturers stopped including those ports. Keep in mind, the the

(30:49):
like I said, the stuff I'm talking about right now
or the I'll start talking about, is really mostly obsolete. Um,
so this is more for completion sake than anything else.
First off, let's mention coaxial cables, because these are pretty common.
These are those cables with the copper connectors. They typically
have black cladding. They're fairly thick and not always super flexible. UH.

(31:14):
You usually use these to connect from your cable outlet
to a cable box or maybe a satellite connector, and
you might even use one to connect from the cable
box to your television. UH. These cable send audio and
video signals both. However, they're really only good at carrying
resolutions of up to ten eight on them, so they

(31:35):
can carry up to h D t V quality, but
not four K UH, and that's a problem. It means
that you have to have a different kind of connection
if you want to get four K quality video streaming
to your your system. But let's talk about some other
types of audio and video cables. So way back in

(31:58):
the day, when you've got something like, you know, a
game console, you would typically have a cable that would
end in three connectors. And I'm starting with our c
A connectors that could go even further back, but we
have to draw the line somewhere. So you would have
three connectors, one that was red, one that was white,
and one that was yellow, and they all had little

(32:19):
like copper plugs sticking out of them. These were r
c A connector cables, so called because the company r
c A developed them, and the red and white cables
were actually just for audio. The red cable carried the
audio channel for the right speaker, and the white cable
carried the audio channel for the left speaker. That left
the yellow cable to carry all the video signal all

(32:42):
bides lonesome, and we called it composite video. This yellow
cable only had the capability to carry video signals of
standard definition, so that meant it was either four eight
or five seventy six, depending on whether you were in
like the United States or you know, Europe. So using
the cable, even if the source somehow could put out

(33:04):
HD content, the cable would not be able to carry
that to a television. The best you can manage is
standard definition resolution. Then we get s video cables. These
were an improvement over a composite video. It was a
single again, a single cable, but it was not an
enormous leap in quality. They could still only carry standard

(33:26):
definition resolution signals, so still you're limited to four a
D or five sony six in resolution. But the composite
video cable would crunch all the video information into a
single signal across a single wire. S video cables actually
had two separate wires to carry information to the display,

(33:48):
and you would have one wire carrying the information that
relates to the color of the signal, and the other
wire would carry the information relating to the brightness of
the signal. And by separating this out, the S video
cable could deliver a higher quality set of signals to
a television. Now, the resolution wasn't like magically better, but

(34:11):
the quality of the colors and the subtle shifts and
brightness were better, so you did get a better picture,
just not necessarily a more detailed picture, at least not
detailed informs in the form of resolution. This is another
reminder that resolution isn't the end all bell. It's a
very important part, but it's just one component as to

(34:33):
you know, the quality of an image. S video cables
only carried video information, so you still needed separate cables
to carry audio to speakers, so those white and red
wires would stick around. Also, S video didn't get a
real good chance to take off because of a superior
technology that came out around the same time. And I'll
talk more about what that was after we take this

(34:56):
quick break. Okay. One other set of cables that had
a fair amount of popularity briefly at longer in the
home theater space for real enthusiasts were component video cables.

(35:18):
And I know this gets confusing. You've got composite video.
That's that our c A cable that had the yellow
into it that carried all the video. Then you had
component video cables. These in the United States anyway, came
in sets of three, similar to our c a composite
connector cables, but instead of red, white and yellow, these

(35:38):
were red, blue, and green. And unlike composite and S
video cables, these could carry high definition video signals, so
you could actually get up to ten eight resolution using
these cables, assuming again that all the other components in
your system were compatible, that you had HDTV source of media,

(35:59):
and you had an hd TV compatible television. They did
not carry audio signals, so again you needed to have
separate cables to carry audio if you wanted to listen
to something more than just out of the television speakers.
And I should add that this was the common form
factor here in North America. Now in other parts of

(36:19):
the world, component video used different kinds of ports and cables,
But to go through all of that would be way
too much, so we're just going to leave it for now. Now,
you might think that because video signals relate back to
r g B being red, green, and blue, and that
you use combinations of those colors to create all the
other colors with video, that that would mean these cables

(36:41):
were each carrying signals for red, green, and blue. Right,
not quite um. It was a little different than that.
It did not quite break it down to that level.
So instead you had one cable. They carried the brightness
information for the pictures, so the luminosity or looma and
it also carried some synchronization information, but we won't get

(37:04):
into all the technical details there. Another cable carried information
about the difference between the luma the luminosity or brightness
and the blue signal, and then the other cable would
do the same thing but for the red signals, so
the difference between red and luma. And combining all of
these together you could create signals that would result in

(37:24):
high definition video images that could reproduce all the colors,
which is pretty neat. But once again you would need
different cables to carry audio signals. Right, and while you
could go with the old left and right r c
A connectors for stereo. There were other options. Now, I
really liked component video cables back in the day, just

(37:45):
to stay on that for a second. They were great
for handling analog ten A signals to televisions. That is important.
They were for analog signals, not digital. But the industry
would get behind a totally different technology for a couple
of reasons. And um I'll go into all of that
in just a minute, but quick note on audio cables.

(38:06):
We talked about the r c A connector types with
the white and red for left and right channels, but
obviously that isn't sufficient if you want something like surround sounds.
So to get surround sound, you might use Coacts Digital
s SLASH p d I F cables, which can be
easy to confuse with our CIA cables because they look
kind of similar. I mean, they don't have the red
and white ends the way our CIA cables do, but

(38:29):
they the plug part looks really similar. However, these are
capable of handling signals for surround sound systems, so you
might use these to connect your receiver to your output devices.
Then you've got an optical TS link digital cable. So
these cables provide the same sort of you know, audio
quality as coax cables do, except they use fiber optics

(38:53):
rather than a copper or you know, gold or whatever connection.
These are good over short distances. UH. The by short,
I mean like ten feet or less. The longer the cable,
the less performance you tend to get out of it.
It might actually take you a bit of distance to
notice the difference, but you do have a decline in
signal performance as the length of the cable increases. At

(39:16):
one time, they were pretty much the height of audio
cables for home theater systems, and any serious home theater
enthusiast was probably using optical digital cables to connect to
their various devices so that they could get the best
audio output. There are also then speaker wires. These typically
come in twisted pairs. Each speaker has a negative port

(39:39):
and a positive port. Then you want to connect the
speaker wires accordingly, with your negative lead going to the
negative port and the positive lead going to the positive port.
This is called connecting speakers in phase. UH. If you
were to connect speakers out of phase, meaning that at
least one of the speakers would be wired wrong with
the wrong leads connected of the wrong ports, then your

(40:01):
system can end up eliminating certain frequencies of sound. Now
that might not be blatantly obvious to you in the
moment while you're listening to stuff, but it would affect
the overall experience. So it's good to take your time
and get that right if you're using wired speakers. All right, Now,
let's talk about h d M I. So HDMI stands

(40:22):
for High Definition Multimedia Interface, and this type of cable
can carry both audio and video signals, so you don't
have to split them up the way you do those
previous ones I was talking about. However, there are a
few different kinds of h d m I that have
come out over the years, and they aren't all equal. See,
the HDMI standard has evolved as our video capabilities have

(40:45):
also evolved, and so older cables don't necessarily support the
latest technologies. So there are four different sets of specifications
for HDMI cables as defined by the h d m
I Forum Technical Working Group, and I'm sure their parties
are spectacular, and those specifications are in order. You have

(41:07):
standard h d m I, which can carry up to
ten a d I video resolution. With a refresh rate
of thirty hurts. If you need a refresh on refresh rates,
you can listen to the first episode in this series
that published earlier. I go into it there. Then you
have high Speed h d M I, which up the
anti to four K resolution but with a refresh rate

(41:29):
of just around thirty hurts. Then you've got Premium high
Speed h d M I that's up to four K
resolution with support for high dynamic Range or h d
R and a refresh rate of around sixty hurts. And
finally you've got Ultra high Speed h d M I
that has support for resolutions of up to ten K
with HDR at add twenty hurts, or you could do

(41:53):
four K video with a refresh rate of up to
two forty hurts. This, by the way, is another reason
why it was in portant to pay attention to what
your television can do, because again, your TV might be
capable of doing certain things like having a two forty
hurts refresh rate, but the cable you use doesn't support
that at that specific resolution, you're never going to get it.

(42:16):
So another important thing to keep in mind. So in
that sense, the type of cable you buy absolutely does matter.
I mean, like, if your cable is older and it
doesn't support certain formats, you're not going to be able
to experience them. So if you have a four K setup,
really you probably want a premium high speed HDMI cable

(42:37):
or ultra high speed. You want one of those two.
If you're looking at the HDMI version designation, like you know,
if it says HDMI one point three or one point four,
what you want is HDM two point oh to cover
your basic needs for four K. That means that it
meets the specifications for premium high speed hd M I

(42:58):
because they happen to fall on line. If you get
hd M I two point one cables, then you're good
for ultra high speed HDM I. You have future proofd
your home theater for the foreseeable future, or at least
the near future. I shouldn't say foreseeable because things change
so fast. But again, remember the performance you get out
of your home theater is again going to depend upon

(43:19):
the weakest link. I know, I keep nailing that home.
I know, I'm like a broken record, but it is
the most important thing to keep in mind because if
you trick everything else out, you're still not going to
get the experience you want if that one component is
not matching everything else. So if your TV is a
four K television, then an h d M I two

(43:40):
point one cable could be overkill, unless again, you just
really want that super fast refresh rate, in which case
I don't. I don't understand you, unless unless you're watching
a lot of sports. If you're watching a lot of sports,
high refresh rate I get, But in all others I
can't stand it. Otherwise, maybe that's just my own bias.
All right, So why did the industry adopt h d

(44:03):
M I. I mentioned that, you know, they really got
behind that and component cables kind of got left behind. Well,
part of the reason was that there was this transition
from analog to digital, and HDMI supports digital which is
all zeros and ones, and component video supported analog, which
is a continuous signal sent through a wire. These are

(44:23):
two different things. But another big reason is that, you know,
HDMI cable is really versatile because it can carry all
sorts of information across it, not just you know, audio
or video signals. And it's also fully capable of covering
both video and audio transmission at the same time. So
that makes it way simpler to use. Then that set

(44:44):
ups that requires separate cables for audio and for video.
Cable management gets way easier if you're dealing with just
h d M I. But another really big reason why
the industry got behind h d M I is because
of a different technology called h d s EP that
stands for high bandwidth Digital Content Protection. And if you

(45:05):
think that name makes it sound like it's DRM or
digital rights management, you win a cookie. So the purpose
of this technology is to prevent unauthorized copying of protected material,
and the technology prevents media that has been h d
c P encrypted from being played on unauthorized devices, meaning

(45:26):
gadgets that could potentially copy h d c P content.
So here's kind of how it works. From a really
high level. Let's say you've got two devices connected via
hd M I and device number one is a media
streaming device, and device number two is a media capture device.
Maybe it saves stuff to a hard drive or burns

(45:46):
it to an optical disk or whatever, doesn't really matter.
Device number one, before sending any media to device number two,
does a quick check to see if device two is
equipped to copy HDCP material and if device number one
figures out that that is the case, then you end
up getting a fail message like content could not be
displayed on this device. And it's that built in DRM

(46:09):
that really got the industry behind it. And for that reason,
there were a lot of home theater enthusiasts in the
h D t V era who stuck with component video
cables for as long as possible because it meant that
you weren't limited in how you were consuming your media.
There's this constant battle between the consumer and the industry

(46:34):
where the consumer just wants to be able to enjoy
their media on their own terms. The industry wants to
control how the media can be consumed because obviously, if
the consumer is able to replicate the media and duplicate
the media and distribute it, then that could affect the

(46:56):
bottom line of the industry, you know, companies. So there's
this constant back and forth and for a lot of
home theater enthusiasts, they were saying, I want to be
able to enjoy the media I have purchased in any
way I like, and I don't like having companies create
DRM that could stand as a potential barrier. And to

(47:18):
be fair, DRM can sometimes affect legitimate users accessing their
their material that they have purchased like that can happen.
We've seen it happen multiple times where a bad DRM
implementation actually disproportionately has a native impact on legitimate consumers,

(47:39):
and so then that leads to pirates figuring out ways
to circumvent DRM protection, and ultimately it doesn't do anyone
any good. It just becomes a rule that only punishes
the people who are following the rules in the first place.
So that's why a lot of home theater enthusiasts, at
least a certain subset of them, we're really reluctant to

(48:02):
let go of component video cables because those analog signals
could not be uh subjected to the same sort of
DRM as the digital signals that we're going through h
D M I, And that meant that a lot of
those home theater enthusiasts had to rush out there to
start buying compatible equipment because a lot of manufacturers stopped making,

(48:28):
you know, televisions and media devices that supported component video cables.
So that meant that you might have to run out
and buy like a DVD player and maybe a Blu
ray player because they weren't always compatible with each other.
Maybe a television and like more stuff like that before
the component video cable capability just went away, So it

(48:52):
was pretty wild. Also means that a lot of like
home theater enthusiasts who have been doing this for a
while have a lot of legacy systems connected. Okay, I've
got a little bit more to say about cables and
home theaters before I get to that. Let's take one
last break. So before the break, I was telling you

(49:20):
about h d c P and how that's a form
of DRM, and how a lot of home theater enthusiasts
were kind of reluctant to go to h d M
I cables because of that. Um that whole technology came
out of Intel. And I should add that that h
d c P encryption has long since been cracked, Like
people were able to crack that encryption years ago. Intel

(49:45):
says they suspect it was done through brute force. So
in other words, someone just dedicated an enormous amount of
time working through all the different possible combinations to break
that encryption and eventually hit on the right one. Now,
hardly any one bothers with circumventing HDCP at this point,
because honestly, the way we consume media has fundamentally changed

(50:10):
over the past decade. When h d M I was
first coming out, like twenty years ago, we were firmly
in the realm of purchasing media like DVDs and blue
rays and that kind of thing. Maybe occasionally getting an
on demand video through our our provider, like a cable
provider or satellite provider, but mostly we were buying physical

(50:30):
media like or we were renting them from places like
you know, Blockbuster. Do you remember Blockbuster? If you want
a reminder of Blockbuster, actually have a a series on
Blockbuster in tech stuff, So go and search the archives.
That was a fun one to do. However, these days
we get more of our content on demand via streaming

(50:51):
services through various providers. And that might be a cable company,
it might be a content platform, it might be you
know whatever. Now there's a whole conversation we could have
about that about how the way we access media has
really shaped the business of media. Uh, it's like the

(51:12):
pandemic has done that even more so, right because you
have movie theater or movie studios rather like Warner Brothers
choosing to release films both in theaters and on streaming platforms.
At the same time through the necessity of conditions brought
about by the pandemic. But that again is going to

(51:33):
reinforce this new model of media distribution, and that in
turn has meant that a lot of people just don't
worry about hdc P anymore because are are The way
we access stuff has changed so much. However, even with
this approach, you might occasionally have some downsides, like, for example,

(51:55):
and this is from my own personal experience, you could
discover something that you really like that on a streaming service,
but then eventually the service or the studio behind the
content chooses not to renew the license to stream that content,
and so the content leaves the streaming service and you
no longer have access to it. Obviously, if you purchased

(52:16):
a DVD or a Blu ray, you would have access
to that content for as long as the disc was
readable and you had a compatible player that could access
the media. This, by the way, is a big problem
that goes well beyond just home theaters. There's this whole
issue of the way we record stuff and the way
we access it can limit and and create a limited

(52:41):
shelf life for content if we don't transfer that to
newer types of media. Anyway, this happened with me with
a British sketch show called that Mitchell and web Look.
Netflix had it available once upon a time. I absolutely
loved it. It became like my go to. Even after
I seen every episode, I would go back and watch them. Eventually, however, uh,

(53:04):
Netflix lost its license. Like the license expired, it was
not renewed, and so the program left Netflix's US service
and I found myself unable to watch it. At least
I was unable to watch it legally. There are illegal
ways to do it, but I don't really want to
do that. I'd rather like do it in a way

(53:24):
that supports the show. Now, the contents region locked, and
at least the last time I checked, there was no
way to access that content in the United States. Like
the DVDs and blue rays are all region locked, so
I can't get a US region version of that. There's
no US streaming version of it as far as I know.

(53:44):
I mean, it may have changed since the last time
I checked, but that gets into region locking. That's another
conversation that we should probably have in the future, but
I'll leave it for now, and let's conclude with a
quick word about cable quality. I touched on this earlier,
but I thought, I think it's really good to cover
in more detail. Now I don't see it as being

(54:07):
as big a discussion point these days in home theater
circles as it used to be. But at one time
there were numerous companies claiming that their high tech, super
expensive cables would provide a superior experience compared to cheaper
cables on the market, and for the most part, those
claims were rubbish. There were plenty of tests that showed

(54:30):
that the claimed benefits were either not present or were imperceptible.
But let's talk about why cable quality matters to a
point now. Apart from whether or not the cable is
carrying the specific type of signal you want to carry,
you do have some other things that you need to
know about. So when electricity flows through a conductor, as

(54:54):
we mentioned with electro magnets, it creates a magnetic field.
This is one of those basic features of a electromagnetism.
So if a cable carrying electricity has poor insulation or
shielding around that cable, that can mean a couple of things. One,
the cable could cause interference in other nearby cables because
you have induction, right, if you bring a conductor close

(55:17):
to a fluctuating magnetic field, that will induce electricity to
flow through that conductor. So if you've got a bunch
of cables saying next to each other, then it's possible
for that you to have interference between those cables, Like
signals traveling through one cable could interfere with the signals
traveling through a neighboring cable if the shielding and insulation

(55:39):
is not sufficient. Same thing can happen with speaker wires.
By the way, if you've ever had, like say, really
cheap desktop speakers, I noticed this all the time with
with those because they typically had very cheap wires. Then
maybe your phone goes off and you start hearing this
weird digital chatter through your desktop speakers. That's because they're

(56:01):
getting interference from the radio signal that's going to your
phone and it's playing out over the speakers like they're
they're interpreting that as signals that are being sent to
the speakers themselves. So you want to make sure you
have decent shielding on your cables to avoid interference. Now, obviously,
with home theaters, you're dealing with tons of cables, even

(56:21):
if you're just sticking primarily with H D M I
and speaker cables, So it means you do want to
have decent cables that have good shielding to prevent any
interference between the two, Otherwise it's going to affect your
viewing or listening experience. Most modern cables have adequate shielding.
You're fine, So you're usually okay unless you're buying the

(56:44):
super super duper cheap cables. But you know, you definitely
don't need to go with premium, high end gold cladded cables.
You're probably not going to see any benefit from that.
There are other elements that are important with cables as well,
such as electrical resistance that could be theoretically impact your

(57:05):
experience and make it slightly less ideal if you're set
up means that you're using really long cables because I
don't know, maybe you've got your entertainment nexus system set
up in one room and then all the way across
the house you've got the TV. I don't know why
you would ever do that, but if you do have
to run really long cables, then electrical resistance can actually

(57:28):
come into play. You might need a a thicker cable
in order to have less electrical resistance over that distance.
But most of the time it's not gonna have any
perceptible impact on your experience. For most of US, standard
cables will serve just fine because the loss due to
electrical resistance will be negligible. Uh. And if you're using

(57:50):
optical audio cables, then you don't even have to worry
about interference because those are using fiber optics and light,
they're not using electricity and conductors. However, they do become
less efficient over longer distances. So if you are having
your TV on the opposite side of the house from
your receiver and you're running optical cables between the two,

(58:11):
for some reason, it would be a less than ideal experience. Um.
Bottom line, if you're buying a reputable company's cables, and
if you're you know you're making sure that whichever cables
you're buying are ones that can actually carry the signals
that the rest of your system depends upon, you should
be fine. There are purists out there who will disagree

(58:32):
with me. They will say, no, no, no, you need
to get this specific brand and these specific components. But
usually we're talking about performance differences that are imperceptible to
anything other than super sensitive electronic equipment. And since as
far as I know, you are not sensitive electronic equipment,
you should be fine. Okay. That concludes our epic series

(58:57):
on the basics of home theater. I know clearly I
did not go through and start naming out specific brands
and specific models of of components and such, because I
think a lot of that comes down to personal taste,
like what features do you want what's already part of
your system. You know, maybe you want to have a
universal remote that works with stuff. You want to make

(59:19):
sure that your universal remote is going to support whichever
components you have. Otherwise there's no point in having it.
It's just gonna be an extra remote that you'll have
to have and in line with a ton of others.
So because of that, and because of the very subjective
nature of what one person thinks of as being a
superior experience, it didn't make much sense to go into that.

(59:40):
I mean, I did not talk about like the Xbox
and the PlayStation, but those are the two leading consoles
on the market, so that's why I talked about those.
There are other type supports, like video ports that I
didn't really talk about like d v I. But they
also are not really heavily used these days unless you're
doing something like connecting your computer to your television. Um,

(01:00:04):
but for like the basic stuff that we think of
for a home theater, I didn't think they were really important.
I hope you enjoyed the series. I hope you've learned something.
I hope you feel better about whatever purchasing choices you
might have made so far for your home theater system,
including you know, like, oh, should I have sprung more
money for super fancy cables. Probably not again unless you're

(01:00:27):
in one of those more extreme situations. And um, yeah,
this was a fun one to do, a fun series
to go down. And I'll probably do some more related stuff,
like I'll talk more about uh DRM, and I'll talk
more about the nature of how we access and consume
media and how that has changed and how that has
shaped technology, because that's a big part of it. But

(01:00:48):
in the meantime, if you have any suggestions for topics
I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, reach
out to me. The best way to do that is
over on Twitter, the handle we uses tech Stuff hs W.
This has been a very long episode and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Y Text Stuff is an

(01:01:11):
I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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