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In: Home Theater
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My wife and I had a group of friends over last Monday night to watch the latest episode of Heroes in our HD home theater. We were all looking forward to watching the newest episode of our favorite show. But it was cold that evening and many of the local schools were on a two hour delay the next morning. The local NBC affiliate decided that a cancellation crawl at the bottom of the screen was necessary to communicate this information. But they can’t overlay a HD broadcast, so the showed a letterboxed standard def version on the HD channel. Our guests were disappointed andRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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With the Super Bowl just hours away, I finished mounting my new Mitsubishi LT-46131 Flat Panel LCD TV. I’m only watching off-the-air HD right now as I have yet order a second HD satellite receiver. As is my history for all things related to home theater, I couldn’t simply sit it on the table or even mount it flat against the wall — I went all-out with a Chief PNR articulating arm mount with an in-wall PAC500 housing. Since those model numbers mean nothing to pretty much everyone (including myself a week ago) here are some pictures. Please note: I still have some drywall workRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 70 Comments

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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In: Home Theater
With: 7 Comments

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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In: Home Theater
With: 21 Comments

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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In: Home Theater
With: 4 Comments

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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In: Tech
With: 6 Comments

This has been a month of Linux for me. I’ve worked with Linux and Unix for years (webservers, TiVo) but never on a daily basis. I just now made the switch on my main desktop PC (which is also my file server for music and movies). So far, Ubuntu Desktop 6.10 has been somewhat frustrating but tolerable. I dislike how it’s not as easy or familiar as Windows. My biggest complaint is that many of my media programs don’t have suitable equivalents (such as a CD ripper with AccurateRip support or an easy-to-use Video editing program for TiVo files.) But those problems aside, the fileRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 34 Comments

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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In: Home Theater
With: 1 Comment

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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In: Home Theater
With: 11 Comments

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 →