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Where are the Manuals? Mitsubishi LT-46131 and LT-37131: Mitsubishi.com or CarltonBale.com Mitsubishi LT-46231 and LT-37132: Mitsubishi.com or CarltonBale.com What are the differences between the two sets LT-46131 and the LT-46231? The LT-46-231 has the following features that the LT-46131 does not have: Piano Black (shiny black) front bezel and speaker grill (instead of silver) PerfectTint (additional tint control) an extra component input (3 instead of 2) TV Guide Onscreen NetCommand unified learning remote Fully- (instead of partially-) illuminated main remote Second remote (simplified–17 buttons instead of 45) IR output jacks for hooking IR repeaters up to external (hidden) components What are the Settings for BestRead More →

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How and why a “plasma purist” wound-up falling in love with a Flat Panel LCD. Overview: The Super Bowl is a little over a week away and question many people are asking themselves is “which HDTV should I buy for the game?” The answer is not simple and represents a significant monetary investment. Sure, a bunch of future displays were just announced at CES, but there is always something better on the horizon, those displays are months away, and the Super Bowl is upon us – it’s time to pull the trigger! Due to my price and space considerations, I focused on HDTV displays rangingRead More →

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Just as resolution continues to increase on HDTV sets, so it seems does contrast ratio. I few years ago, digital displays were exclaiming how impressive a 1,000:1 contrast ratio was. Now 10,000:1 is not that uncommon. And since contrast ratio is more important to resolution in the production of a great picture, it sounds like these new displays should be amazingly fantastic. Unfortunately, these extremely high contrast ratios have little to do with real world performance and are, to a great extent, marketing hype. First of all, it’s necessary to understand the difference between the two types of contrast ratio measurements. The one used byRead More →

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Earlier this week, Damon Darlin of the New York Times conducted a phone interview with me. The article (It’s O.K. to Fall Behind the Technology Curve) was published today. For those finding my site because of his article, here are links to some relevant pages on my site: 1080p Does Matter – Here’s When (Screen Size vs. Viewing Distance vs. Resolution) Home Theater Seatings Distances: Field-of-View vs. Resolution Visual Acuity Viewing Distance: Test It for YourselfRead More →

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This is a follow-up to my article on HDTV screen resolution vs a persons ability to perceive any advantage. Before the link to the test pattern, I want to make it clear that the results vary greatly with the content. With an anti-aliased image (i.e. a photograph of a person with many color gradients), it would be much more difficult to detect a single pixel. With a non-anti-aliased image (solid single-color lines), pixels become much more apparent. To allow everyone to conduct a simple test for themselves, I created a sample a page that is half-way in between the scenarios described above. It is aRead More →

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Late Saturday night I started noticing a few more comments than usual on my site. On Sunday, I received even more. Wondering what was going on, I logged into my Google Analytis account and found that the largest referrer to my site was engadgethd.com. Hmmm, now that’s something now. I figured I must have written something to warrant a post from them and found out I did. They’ve referenced that same post in a couple of other articles as well. Thanks to EngadgetHD for the link and for sharing info on when high def screen resolutions are important (and when they’re not). Edit: My articleRead More →

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There are two different factors to determine how close a viewer should sit to the screen of their home theater (field-of-view and picture resolution). To choose a proper distance, it is necessary to understand the impacts of both, and understand when trade-offs occur. There are multiple ideal seating distances depending on the equipment and the preferences of the viewer. Here the details of these two separate factors: Field-of-View based viewing distances: The THX and SMPTE specifications are based on a field-of-view being a certain width or wider, meaning that all seats must be closer than a certain distance to the screen. In general, the widerRead More →

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Overview: ReplayGain [Add explanation of lossless ReplayGain, how it does not modify the original music data, only writes a metadata tag, usually uses Ogg Vorbis tags instead of mp3 tags, etc.] WaveGain is an application of gain algorithms to standard PCM wave files. Where it differs from the other applications of this principle is that the gain adjustments are applied directly to adjusting the scaling of the samples. In other words, the option to write tags that can be read by other applications to apply the gain adjustment does not exist, so the adjustments are made directly to the data on-file. Therefore, in the strictestRead More →

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Recommended Seating Distances and Resolution benefits (small)I’ve read various articles debating the importance of the 1080p. I want to set the record straight once and for all: if you are serious about properly setting-up your viewing room, you will definitely benefit from 1080p (and even 1440p.) Why? Because the 1080p resolution is the first to deliver enough detail to your eyeball when you are seated at the proper distance from the screen. But don’t just take my word for it, read on for the proof.

There are a few obvious factors to being able to detect resolution differences: the resolution of the screen, the size of the screen, and the viewing distance. To be able to detect differences between resolutions, the screen must be large enough and you must sit close enough. So the question becomes “How do I know if need a higher resolution or not?”. Here is your answer.

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