Report: 69% of TV Watchers Demand Wide-Angle Picture Quality

Julie,
Were you aware that most people use HDMI cables today instead of composite?

Holy Sh*t is this industry doomed if this is news!

Dave

Off-axis viewing, black levels and freedom from motion artifacts are why I still recommend plasma to most of my clients and friends, particularly those who are sports fans.

@ Dave S
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

THAT. was. funny!

600 people make a sample group? I think not. Another slow news day….

BREAKING NEWS!!!

If you turn off/disengage the Dolby B button on cassette decks during tape playback, you will hear higher frequencies of the original recording. (This also applies if you turn off the Chromium Dioxide playback toggle switch.) However, you may also hear additional background, “hiss,” in the background.

Of course, that’s providing that you own high-end speakers and a receiver or amplifier of audiophile quality.

If you don’t own at least a Pioneer SX-650 stereo receiver matched with a pair of Acoustic Research 3a’s or the Large Advents, you may not hear the difference.

For you 8-Track fans, the same goes for your Akai 8833D Dolby 8-Track player. Yet, there is no Chromium Dioxide setting on that player.

Remember kids, for optimum performance, keep your tape heads clean by using any of the ALLSOP wet or dry head cleaners every 30 days. It’s also not a bad idea to de-magnetize the heads on a regular basis with the Maxell Wand De-Magnetizer for only $19.99.

And 4 out 5 dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum…haha what a fun Friday!

ANOTHER IMPORTANT UPDATE!

When connecting a VCR to your system, (Betamax or VHS), it is imperative that you understand that the Yellow, Red, and White color coded RCA cables, (that come in the plastic bag along with the remote, AA batteries, owner’s manual, and warranty card/stop-watch), will only deliver top performance when hooked up correctly.

The YELLOW cable is specifically designed for 75 ohm composite video, and the RED & WHITE cables are 300 ohm for left & right channel pure stereo 50hz-12khz audio.

If you accidentally use the Yellow cable for an audio output/input, it will still work, but you’ll lose out on the 420i high resolution video that the machine was designed to deliver.

Lastly, when you rent video tapes, after viewing, “Please be kind and rewind,” all tapes before returning them to your local video rental store so as not inconvenience the next viewer/renter.

Stay tuned for additional controversial industry articles and updates such as, “VPI Magic Brick- Fact Or Fiction?,” “Can “Come Back Dots” make a come back?, and, “Can a Tice Clock keep up with the times?”

Remember, CE Pro is your source for cutting edge technology once you click off the, “Home Depot,” advertisement.

Ball busters, the lot of you.
Not everyone is as smart as you guys and Julie was just trying to help raise the bar.
Dave, laid up in front of a keyboard makes you a dangerous man.

Yes, 600 is a statistically significant sample size for a study like this.

But it shouldn’t really matter. This is just a reminder to sell off-axis viewing quality as a feature.

Putting ball busting aside for a moment and trying to stay on topic, for starters, I think it’s also important to inform the public that there’s no such thing as an LED TV.

Manufacturers themselves print, “LED TV,” on their outer cartons/boxes knowing that the general public just knows that they’ve, “heard,” that LED is better than LCD. Whether the info came from a friend or some uninformed, (and non-trained), salesperson, doesn’t matter. The mfgs realize the ignorance and take advantage of it.

We went through this same crap with refresh rates of 60, 120, and the 240hz specs listed in LCD TV advertisements. The uninformed public feels the higher the number, the better the set… What the GP doesn’t know is how the MFG arrived at those specs because we have not done our job to educate them! 

That’s what happens when our hungry industry mfgs sell products to Wallmart, Target, Sam’s Club, and Costco, (as an example), instead of depending on the support of specialized A/V retailers & stores. And we all wondered what happened to our profit margins on such items… 

The GP, (general public) should be aware that LED sets are nothing more than LCD TV’s that incorporate LED back lighting in order to improve off axis viewing, as opposed to a single florescent lamp that’s used for the entire panel in, “Non LED,” back-lit sets.

Refresh rate specs are just as reliable and accurate as THD, (Total Harmonic Distortion), specs in amplifiers when left up to the manufacturer to state/list them.

Sure, you can get a rating of .0001 THD, but how much negative feedback loop was used to achieve that number? Why is it that a 100 WPC Krell or a Levinson piece will list a true spec of 1% THD, (costing tens of thousands of dollars), whereas I can buy a Sony piece with the same wattage with a much lower THD for $399.00? It should matter, but again, it’s our fault for not educating them and allowing idiots to sell them.

Thus, does the GP care or know anything about how a refresh rate is achieved? No! And that’s our fault as an A/V community to allow mfgs to sell to anyone with a check book.

Guys, if you don’t see it, I’m telling you we’re doomed when we have to take up space in this, (or any other professional forum), to advise/teach salespeople the advantages/disadvantages between Plasma vs. LCD. The technology is a decade old and if you don’t know the differences by now, do us all a favor and find another occupation.

Call me an old fart, but most of the majority of this new generation of, “alleged,” A/V professionals wants to do and learn, is to be able to program the sh*t out of a remote controlled whole house system and make it work with an iPod or iPhone. No one wants to take the time to teach anyone the basics any longer of how or why something works under the hood.

IMO, us veterans are all guilty to some extent, and the manufacturer’s share more of the guilt because they care less than we do.

Lastly, I also agree with Julie that 600 is a significant enough sample size for this type of study. IMO, 100 would have been enough.

Now let’s get back to ball busting and have some fun…

Fact or Fiction?
If you hold a magnet up to a black & white CRT TV screen, can you make it turn colors?

Thus, if true, why spend the extra hundreds of dollars to purchase a color TV when all you need is a $2.00 magnet?

NEXT WEEKS’ CONTROVERSIAL TOPICS :

*Rabbit Ears vs. outdoor antennas… Why spend the extra time & money to install an outdoor antenna when all you need is some Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil for all of your indoor needs?

*Amar Bose: (You fill in the blank.)

@Dave S - you hit the proverbial nail squarely on the head! I’m amazed at how much push and/or confusion I get every time I give my little “there’s no such thing as an LED television” schpiel or try to explain the differences and tradeoffs between edge-lit and local dimming. We can blame manufacturers for much of this confusion as they exacerbate the situation every time they blatantly and knowingly mislabel their products, packaging and advertising or engage in publishing misleading specifications. One of my favorite examples is how often a client tells me they chose a particular display because of its superior contrast! 

Thank you Rob for, “getting it,” as others turn their heads and, “accept it.”

I for one will now be concentrating on the theory that the US drone that crashed and was captured on Iranian soil was due to the faults of, “Virtually Invisible & Direct Reflecting Technology.” 

It doesn’t matter if LED-backlit was designed to ameliorate the off-axis viewing problems - it doesn’t do it! We have several installs with multiple PDPs per room and there is no apparent difference in brightness/contrast/color/saturation/hue among them. Contrast with our latest install of two 80” Sharp LED-LCD panels: if you sit/stand directly in front of one, you’ll notice a large degradation in all of the above-listed parameters in the display on the other side. Only when you are evenly between the two displays do you not notice a difference, but from the head-on “reference point”, you KNOW you’re getting a sub-par image. (The displays replaced two projectors with screens. Although off-axis viewing was not a problem with the projection, the building’s HVAC system caused no end of undue vibration in the projectors, despite isolation mounting, that made the images practically unviewable.)

Dan,
While I agree with the points you bring up, I think you’re missing the point that there are basically 3 forms/versions of LED Back Lighting;

1. White Edge Lit LED’s that are only back lit around the edge/rim of the screen that uses a diffusion panel to spread the light evenly behind the screen.

2. Full Array LED’s which covers the entire panel, but the brightness is not individually controlled.

3. Local Dimming LED’s which are controlled individually in clusters behind the screen which is the best you can buy… EX: Sharp/Elite TV’s. Off axis viewing on this puppy works!

The Sharp 80 inchers don’t have local dimming, thus, what you are complaining about is absolutely true.

Lastly, when you start speaking of an image that large and a front projection system is not possible, may I suggest you check out any of the MITSU DLP RPTV sets. I personally own a 73” and only sit 6.5’ away and the picture is awesome, (once you calibrate it).

Now let’s get back to de-magging 8-Track players…

Don’t know about the current crop of DLP displays from Mitsubishi but I calibrated one of their 75” LaserVue displays for a client last Fall and was amazed at the great pictures it made. Crisp, clean and with stunning colors. Possibly even better than the final generation Sony SXRD rear projector I can’t seem to give up. Quite possibly the best dollar-per-inch displays out there over 60” IMHO.