Found this article in tech2.com, written by Siddharth Bhatia
Tech2.com India > Home Theater Myths: Part One > Features > HiFi & TV > Home Theater Systems
As technology zooms ahead, we tend to get left behind. I was talking to some middle-aged relatives who were deciding on some new TVs for their house. They were confused, and I don't blame them. Each year, at places like CES, we get newer, bigger, better products in the brilliant realm of Audio Video entertainment - but not without new sets of confusing jargon. New upgrades/features are always interesting, but we have to understand them first before we can have fun. This article is dedicated to dispelling some new and also very old myths about HDTVs, Speaker systems
, surround sound etc. It covers a lot of basics, and is more directed at the new consumer than the tech veterans.
Myth: Upscaling
Upscaling is always done by the HDTV. LCDs and plasmas are fixed pixel displays, meaning the panels are made of a fixed number of pixels. Generally it is 1920 x 1080 pixels for Full HDTVs and 1366 x 768 for HD ready TVs. This is how the market has coined the terminology, so this is what you will be seeing, regardless of the signal. Thus you should not give too much thought to your DVD player's upscaling claims, especially if it is a budget model. Having said that, there are debates going on for years on whether upscaling actually makes any difference, as its finally stretched to the native resolution of the TV. Thus if you have what they call an HD ready TV (generally 32- or 37-inchers with 1366 x 768), then there is no need to upscale to 1080p on your DVD player. It's redundant.
Myth: Buying an HDTV will improve our cable TVs quality
It won't. Our cable in India is in standard def, thus on our LCDs and plasmas they will be displayed the way they are - stretched to fit of course. Abroad, there are over the air broadcasts available in HD, plus subscribing to HD channels is picking up. It is not yet in our country, so we still have MPEG2 broadcasts, of standard PAL definition. This is also true about the new Set top boxes out by Airtel, Hathway, Tata etc. The HDTV obviously will 'upscale' (read previous myth) to its native display, but that will not be some magic. It looks ordinary most of the time, sometimes worse than it would on a non-HDTV, good old CRT set.
Myth: The more expensive the speaker, the better it will sound
This is one of the most hilarious ones ever, and if you truly love audio, you'll know. The PC industry is more accurate as we can test and benchmark all the specs easily with software. But Audio speakers and home theater systems come with so much claim that it gets hazy, and expensive for sure. The niche of floor standing speakers, bookshelves, amplifiers etc. is brimming with too many brands, most of them great no doubt, but many a time you are paying for a feature or specification that is completely baseless. Unbiased reviews must be read thoroughly. Don't just flip through the specs.
Myth: You need fancy speaker cables to get better sound
This is going to make all the vendors cringe, but spending tens of thousands on fancy teflon coated, silver stranded, and other BS that is marketed by reputed manufacturers is not really of any use. We hear frequencies only from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, so stuff like skin effect etc. does not even matter at such relatively low frequencies. The only thing that matters practically is resistance per foot, which is controlled by the gauge we choose, and the length of cable used. Even capacitance and inductance can be neglected at our audible spectrum of sound. Just do not buy the cheapest speaker cable, as the quality of copper in the wire is important. This too does not vary so much, so just getting a medium priced branded cable, but one with a thick gauge, will do.
Myth: DVDs cannot have HD video.
They can. This is actually a simple one. Studio produced DVDs have been made with MPEG2 compression, which has video in 480p( NTSC) or 576p( PAL). But the story does not end there. A regular DVD has about 4.7 GB of space, and a dual layered DVD can double that. Thus DVD-RWs can be recorded with HD video, but what matters is the codec. So downloaded and recorded HD content can use MPEG4 compression techniques which can be stored on DVD. Now here is the catch, not all players support the codecs, but newer ones do, and of course you can watch it on your laptop or PC.
Tech2.com India > Home Theater Myths: Part One > Features > HiFi & TV > Home Theater Systems
As technology zooms ahead, we tend to get left behind. I was talking to some middle-aged relatives who were deciding on some new TVs for their house. They were confused, and I don't blame them. Each year, at places like CES, we get newer, bigger, better products in the brilliant realm of Audio Video entertainment - but not without new sets of confusing jargon. New upgrades/features are always interesting, but we have to understand them first before we can have fun. This article is dedicated to dispelling some new and also very old myths about HDTVs, Speaker systems
, surround sound etc. It covers a lot of basics, and is more directed at the new consumer than the tech veterans.
Myth: Upscaling
Upscaling is always done by the HDTV. LCDs and plasmas are fixed pixel displays, meaning the panels are made of a fixed number of pixels. Generally it is 1920 x 1080 pixels for Full HDTVs and 1366 x 768 for HD ready TVs. This is how the market has coined the terminology, so this is what you will be seeing, regardless of the signal. Thus you should not give too much thought to your DVD player's upscaling claims, especially if it is a budget model. Having said that, there are debates going on for years on whether upscaling actually makes any difference, as its finally stretched to the native resolution of the TV. Thus if you have what they call an HD ready TV (generally 32- or 37-inchers with 1366 x 768), then there is no need to upscale to 1080p on your DVD player. It's redundant.
Myth: Buying an HDTV will improve our cable TVs quality
It won't. Our cable in India is in standard def, thus on our LCDs and plasmas they will be displayed the way they are - stretched to fit of course. Abroad, there are over the air broadcasts available in HD, plus subscribing to HD channels is picking up. It is not yet in our country, so we still have MPEG2 broadcasts, of standard PAL definition. This is also true about the new Set top boxes out by Airtel, Hathway, Tata etc. The HDTV obviously will 'upscale' (read previous myth) to its native display, but that will not be some magic. It looks ordinary most of the time, sometimes worse than it would on a non-HDTV, good old CRT set.
Myth: The more expensive the speaker, the better it will sound
This is one of the most hilarious ones ever, and if you truly love audio, you'll know. The PC industry is more accurate as we can test and benchmark all the specs easily with software. But Audio speakers and home theater systems come with so much claim that it gets hazy, and expensive for sure. The niche of floor standing speakers, bookshelves, amplifiers etc. is brimming with too many brands, most of them great no doubt, but many a time you are paying for a feature or specification that is completely baseless. Unbiased reviews must be read thoroughly. Don't just flip through the specs.
Myth: You need fancy speaker cables to get better sound
This is going to make all the vendors cringe, but spending tens of thousands on fancy teflon coated, silver stranded, and other BS that is marketed by reputed manufacturers is not really of any use. We hear frequencies only from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, so stuff like skin effect etc. does not even matter at such relatively low frequencies. The only thing that matters practically is resistance per foot, which is controlled by the gauge we choose, and the length of cable used. Even capacitance and inductance can be neglected at our audible spectrum of sound. Just do not buy the cheapest speaker cable, as the quality of copper in the wire is important. This too does not vary so much, so just getting a medium priced branded cable, but one with a thick gauge, will do.
Myth: DVDs cannot have HD video.
They can. This is actually a simple one. Studio produced DVDs have been made with MPEG2 compression, which has video in 480p( NTSC) or 576p( PAL). But the story does not end there. A regular DVD has about 4.7 GB of space, and a dual layered DVD can double that. Thus DVD-RWs can be recorded with HD video, but what matters is the codec. So downloaded and recorded HD content can use MPEG4 compression techniques which can be stored on DVD. Now here is the catch, not all players support the codecs, but newer ones do, and of course you can watch it on your laptop or PC.