HD Is Best When It's Free

On June 13, 2009, the government mandated that U.S. television stations switch from analog to digital broadcasting. If you're in the market for an HDTV, you may have heard of ATSC--Advanced Television Systems Committee, the new digital television standard replacing the analog NTSC system in the United States.

Connected to a properly adjusted antenna--even indoor "rabbit ears"--ATSC tuners let you watch over-the-air, local digital and HD programming for free. Nowadays these ATSC tuners are built into HDTVs, and they can also be found in select TiVo boxes and home theater PCs. Furthermore, satellite service providers, like DirecTV and Dish Network, may offer the option to add such a tuner to their receivers.

If you subscribe to cable or satellite TV, your provider may offer digital channels of the major networks (CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox), but they may not offer all the channels available in your area, and so you could be missing out on some digital TV programming.

In addition, by watching digital television via an antenna, you are assured that there is no signal degradation or further video compression being applied to the original TV signal.

Because it's digital, the one caveat about the ATSC system is that the terrestrial reception can be all or nothing, sometimes caused by radio waves bouncing off large structures and arriving at the receiving antenna at delayed intervals.


In the NTSC system, you may see "ghosting" or "noisy" video if a channel didn't come in clearly, but at least you got picture and sound. In contrast, with the digital TV system you may get nothing at all, or you may see the video occasionally pixelate and the audio cut in and out.

And regardless of the technology, distance and large structures between your TV and the broadcast antennae can always affect reception.

The good news is that ATSC tuners have improved substantially over the years so reception is much better in today's devices. Moreover, some of your local stations may have recently upgraded their antenna towers as part of the digital TV transition.

Here are two resources for helping you get the best reception with your TV antenna and to see what channels are available in your area:

AntennaWeb

FCC's DTV.gov - Get Help Locally

Of course, once you get that new HDTV, you want to get it calibrated to ensure you watch high definition video in all its glory. Please feel free to call Optimum Sound & Vision at (510) 943-5042, or E-mail us at info@optimumsav.com, to request a free quote for your TV, or if you have any questions.

Optimum Sound & Vision Now On Facebook

This is a quick note that Optimum Sound & Vision now has a Facebook® Page.

The Page will be updated regularly with helpful information, tips, articles, highlights about services, videos, and so forth. Please visit and bookmark the page, or better, become a Fan.


This blog will still be active, however, the Facebook® Page is the best place to keep up with Optimum Sound & Vision. Enjoy!

DVD to Blu-ray Upgrade Program (Warner Bros.)

A while back I posted about a Warner Bros. program called Red2Blu that lets you upgrade movies from the studio on HD-DVD to Blu-ray (www.Red2Blu.com).

They recently launched a similar program called DVD2Blu in which you can upgrade select movies from Warner Bros. on DVD to Blu-ray. Upgrade prices start at $7.95. (www.DVD2Blu.com)



It's not much of selection now, but hopefully they will add more as their Blu-ray library grows.

Horror Stories

The other day I saw this slogan on the side of a tow truck:

"If You Think A Professional Is Expensive, Try Hiring An Amateur"

I chuckled because it was so true. One of the things I find myself doing so often at Optimum Sound & Vision is fixing other people's work and installations.


I would like to share some audio/video installation and vendor blunders I discovered while working for clients. My intent here is not to disparage other A/V installers and companies, but I am so appalled at some of the things I have seen that I feel it is my civic duty to share.

And I'm not making these up, folks. Please refrain from giggling. This is serious business.

• I have seen some newly-constructed homes that were incorrectly pre-wired for home theater. Specifically, speaker wiring was installed for the powered subwoofer instead of coaxial audio cable. Although using speaker wire for a powered sub is not the end of the world, it practically defeats the purpose of having the Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel, the ".1" in a 5.1 or 7.1 system. Furthermore, it can severely complicate the set up for proper bass management. Clearly, the contractors didn't have basic knowledge of current home theater technology.
  

• At a dentist's office, I found a group of speakers that were improperly wired. Of the four pairs of speakers, only one pair was working. Another pair in a zone was wired with Category 5 Ethernet cable--a small gauge multi-conductor wire cable used for computer networking. Because higher amounts of electrical current have to be transmitted, larger two-conductor wire, typically 16- to 12-AWG, is used for loudspeaker systems (the smaller the American Wire Gauge number, the thicker the wire).

• Another customer complained he couldn't hear any bass in his home theater installed by another company. I discovered the cable for the powered subwoofer was plugged into the wrong jack on the A/V receiver. Doing a simple test tone check would have identified the cause of the problem. Apparently the installer just hooked up the cables and left without making sure everything was operational. This appears to be a very common vendor issue: Hook up the equipment and then just leave.
  

• An audio problem was found to be attributed to a loose connection that was caused by using the wrong tool for a wall jack. Instead of using the proper crimping tool, this individual, who turned out to be a relative trying to help, looked like he used a pair of pliers.

• Another installation used this fancy slide out rack for the equipment, which may look impressive to the client, but the rack had one major design flaw: It did not expose all of the equipment when it was fully pulled out. It was almost impossible to access the back of the equipment for cabling and servicing, adding to the time and therefore costs to the client.

• One customer had this plasma display mounted above their fireplace. The rest of the equipment was located about 20 feet away. Did the original installer use the best video connections, like component video or RGB? Nope. They used an S-video cable, probably because it was thinner and easier to run.

• In another house, an HD cable box was connected to an HDTV via an RF coaxial cable. This means the client was watching HD channels in Standard Definition, not High Definition. Nowadays, High Definition Multimedia Interface, or HDMI, is becoming the norm for connecting HD sources.
  

• Heat is any electronics' worst enemy. This is why thermal management is vital to any system employing electronics. One system I worked on placed the preamp/processor in a closed cabinet without observing proper ventilation recommendations by the manufacturer, or employing a cooling system. This component caused intermittent problems in the system that was finally attributed to the heat. The unreliable system frustrated many users, and resulted in hours of troubleshooting. The entire unit had to be replaced, adding to the overall costs for the system upgrade.

• In another home theater system, the original installer did not adjust the bass management (crossover) settings properly, and the woofer in one of the front channel speakers was discovered to be blown and permanently damaged.
  

As you can imagine, these can be very costly mistakes, some of which cannot be undone or fixed.

Surprisingly, the most common complaint I've heard from my customers is that when they try to get technical support from their original vendor, their calls did not get returned.

My philosophy is that the quality of your work is a direct reflection of you.

Do want quality service and support, or do you want things to be done as cheaply as possible? If you want things to be done right, you want someone who specializes in the field; is thorough and professional; and really cares about what he or she does.

That sounds like common sense, but all too often I see expensive mistakes (like those mentioned above) and the client must then bear the burden of someone else's incompetence and indifference.

In short, be wary of "handyman" services or places that try to be a one-stop shops. And for God's sake, don't always go for the lowest bidder!

This is not to say you cannot find someone who is competent and offers high value services. But when a vendor tries to please too many people by offering so many services under one company, the consequences may not benefit you in the long run.

I would ask any vendor what kind of support and service you can expect after the job is done. Get a second opinion from Optimum Sound & Vision if you like.

Would you hire an accountant to service your car? Would you have an electrician do your taxes? Would you want an engineer to perform surgery on you?

I think you get the point.

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, I gladly offer free, no-obligation evaluations for your home theater system. Why do I do this for free? Call me old-fashioned, but I just like helping people.

Most importantly, it has been my personal crusade to have everybody get the maximum enjoyment out of their audio/video investments. And believe me, it seems I always find something wrong, regardless of whether the audio/video system was professionally installed or not.

To schedule a appointment or if you have any questions about company's services, please call Optimum Sound & Vision at (510) 943-5042, or (866) 485-4641, or send an E-mail to info@optimumsav.com.

Ted

Upgrade Your Warner Bros. HD-DVD Movies to Blu-ray

There is a program called Red2Blu that lets you upgrade Warner Bros. movies on HD-DVD to the equivalent title on Blu-ray for only $4.95 plus S&H. (via HD Nation)

Red2Blu

Hopefully, other studios will follow suit.

Fight The Power

Recently our electrical service provider, PG&E, upgraded all the meters in our area. When they restored the power after replacing our meter, the electrical surge was so enormous it caused the television in my bedroom to come on by itself and erased all of the settings in the set. Because it was an old TV that used tick marks instead of numbers for the video settings, I had to redo the the video calibration for my TV.

Everybody knows to use surge protectors or uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) for their computers--I hope. Today's audio/video electronics need the same tender loving care to protect them from evil power surges, which may cause expensive damages in one swift stroke, or wear them down over time.

Cartoons by Andertoons

What some folks are not aware of is that surge protectors typically use metal oxide varistors (MOV) that eventually will fail at some point from electrical surges. Once this part fails completely, your equipment is no longer protected, and the surge protector essentially becomes an ordinary AC power strip.

Therefore, it is important to occasionally check the surge protection light indicator to ensure that your equipment is still being protected from surges. Additionally, a lighted switch on a power strip does not necessarily mean it provides surge protection.

APC and Tripp-Lite are two reputable manufacturers of surge protectors. I suggest getting ones that have the highest Joules (J) rating, at least 1,000 to 2,000 Joules.

Another electrical problem that is as harmful as a surge is a "brownout," a partial loss of electricity, or under voltage. These can be momentary or long lasting. We had a brownout the other night that lasted for hours. In such situations, I would recommend turning off the electrical circuits at the main panel in your home, or building, until the electricity is fully restored.

Power line conditioning, or simply power conditioning, adds voltage regulation and AC noise filtration that is supposed to improve the sound and picture quality in A/V systems. The effectiveness of power conditioners in doing so can vary from product to product. Some power conditioners can also protect your equipment from brownouts.

Panamax and Monster Cable are two popular makers of power conditioners. Furman Sound, which for decades have made power conditioners for professional applications, has also entered the consumer market with their home theater products.

Some components and appliances draw a lot of electrical current, for example, audio power amplifiers, A/V receivers, and TV's. Some power conditioners can actually choke some of this current, potentially degrading the overall performance of your audio/video system. When shopping for a power conditioner, look for AC outlets specifically designed for high current electronics.

Finally, here's a quick tip: After calibrating their home theater systems, I always advise my clients to record all of the audio and video settings for future reference, in case anything gets accidentally altered or erased.

In some cases, the quickest way is to simply use a digital camera, and take snapshots of the settings in the menu screens (e.g., color, contrast, brightness, etc.). Remember to record all audio and video settings, i.e., speaker sizes, crossover, color temperature, etc.

Surge protection should be an integral part of every audio/video system. With power conditioning, you may even notice an improvement in the performance, or at least have some assurance that your equipment is getting the cleanest electricity possible. Considering what you have invested in an entire system, the costs of these electrical accessories should be negligible.

Surround Sound

Many years ago while working in audio/video electronics sales, I overheard a co-worker tell a customer that the first movie in surround sound was Top Gun.

Doh!  No, people, Top Gun--and the bathroom fight scene in True Lies--may have been demoed to death in stores, but it is NOT the first movie in surround sound.

Experimentation with surround sound in movies goes as far back as Walt Disney's Fantasia in 1941. The first commercially released movie utilizing the matrix surround technology as we know it today is Star Wars in 1977 using Dolby Stereo.

Dolby Surround Pro Logic, or simply Dolby Pro Logic, is the consumer version of Dolby Stereo, a matrix surround technology with logic steering for directional enhancement. In this process, encoded two-channel audio is decoded to four channels: left, center, right, and mono surround.

The directional enhancement in Dolby Pro Logic is necessary to focus sounds coming from a particular channel. Without it, certain sounds would leak into other channels where they do not belong. A good example of needing logic steering is for dialogue coming from the center channel.

The theatrical release of Batman Returns in 1992 officially introduced Dolby Digital (formerly AC-3), a technology that employs digital audio compression, like MP3, and reproduces discrete multi-channel audio. Basically, in this format all channels are reproduced separately and there is no audible "bleeding" from one channel to another, which has always been a potential shortcoming of matrix surround sound.

The naming convention to describe a discrete multi-channel audio system is "x.y", where "x" represents the number of main channels--i.e., front left, front center, front right, etc.--and "y" indicates the number of Low Frequency Effects, or LFE, channels which carry audio from 20 Hz to 120 Hz. As we know, the ubiquitous discrete surround sound configuration is 5.1.

Despite the minor technical drawbacks of matrix surround sound, Dolby Pro Logic has served us well for decades, and the introduction of Dolby Pro Logic II--designed by surround sound guru, Jim Fosgate--pushes the matrix surround performance to near discrete surround quality. In addition, Pro Logic II decodes more channels, adding separate left and right surrounds, and works with encoded and non-encoded stereo material.

Digital Theater Systems, best known as DTS, introduced their competing discrete surround sound system with the movie Juarassic Park in 1993 and, like Dolby Digital, is widely available in consumer A/V equipment.

So question is: With so many surround modes to choose from in a typical A/V receiver or preamp/processor, how does one know which mode to use?

Here are the general guidelines I tell clients with systems capable of reproducing 5.1 surround sound:

1. If you are watching a program that has Dolby Digital or DTS audio, like an HD channel on satellite or cable TV, the receiver or preamp/processor should automatically detect the bitstream for decoding, and you should not have to do anything. Be sure the decoder is set for automatic surround mode selection if so equipped.
2. For material encoded in Dolby Surround, select Dolby Pro Logic II Movie, also known as Dolby Pro Logic II Cinema. You should see the "Dolby Surround" logo indicated somewhere on the video case packaging, or in the case of broadcast TV, usually indicated at the beginning of the program, like "Presented in Dolby Surround".

That's it.

When listening to music, if you find that the front channel sounds tend to "collapse" to the center channel, try using Dolby Pro Logic II Music, but the Cinema version should suffice for most program material.

Dolby Pro Logic IIx enhances the original Dolby Pro-Logic II by decoding a back center (or rear center) surround channel.

You can certainly try other colorfully named surround modes like "Unplugged," "Jazz Club," "Disco," but these typically add artificial reverberation and reflections that are not in the original recording and, therefore, some folks may find them tiring to listen to after awhile.

DTS Neo:6 is a competing format of Dolby Pro Logic IIx, and should not be confused with discrete 5.1 DTS surround decoding. Dolby Laboratories commissioned Jim Fosgate to design Pro Logic II, and many professionals in the industry seem to prefer the latter. I would recommend trying both and see which one you prefer.

On a side note, compared to the other next generation gaming consoles, Nintendo Wii is the only one that solely uses 2-channel analog audio for sound. Because it uses Pro Logic II for encoding, I would select Dolby Pro Logic II Movie, but you must set up the audio option in the Wii for "Surround" instead of "Stereo".

If you ever see Dolby Pro Logic Emulation mode, skip it. This is essentially the original Dolby Pro Logic decoding which decodes to only four channels, instead of five for Pro Logic II.

Another topic that often comes up with customers that really needs to be discussed . . .

Don't expect to hear surround sound all of the time.

What you hear from the surround speakers is entirely at the discretion of the filmmakers and content producers. The primary purpose of these channels is to envelop the audience with ambient sounds to create the sensation that you are in the scene (e.g., rain, wind, jungle sounds) and they can range in volume from very subtle to loud. Occasionally, you may hear directional effects, like flybys, or vehicles passing by.

If you're watching an action flick, you are practically guaranteed to hear a lot of surround sound. On the other hand, a drama may hardly have any activity in the surrounds. This is because directors and sound designers want it that way.

For non-encoded material, results may vary even more widely. For example, during the news you may just hear speech coming from the center speaker, but when you hear the lead-in music, you will probably hear sounds spread out throughout the room.

Incidentally, The Terminator was such a low budget movie, director James Cameron didn't even do a stereo mix for the movie soundtrack. Yes, the original movie soundtrack is in mono! That's right, if you watch The Terminator with the original soundtrack, and sounds will only come from the center speaker. (A few years ago, the movie was re-released on DVD featuring a new soundtrack remixed into 5.1 by award-winning sound designer, Gary Rydstrom.)

In short, don't try to "listen" for sounds from the surround channels. As long as your home theater system is properly calibrated, doing so will only detract you from enjoying and experiencing the movie, TV show, or whatever the case may be.

One Final Note: For some unknown reason, certain movies on DVD default to Dolby Surround or 2.0 soundtracks upon initial playback.  Some Disney/Pixar movies, like Cars, are notorious for this.

The first thing you should always do after loading a DVD or Blu-ray video is go to the disc menu, and select the audio soundtrack for the best audio reproduction for your system, i.e., 5.1 Dolby Digital, etc.

Surround sound has come a long way in the past few decades.  The information presented here serves as the foundation about surround sound, and even as the technology continues to evolve, having some basic knowledge and understanding of how to use the various surround modes will let you appreciate your home theater more.  Just remember that Top Gun was not the first movie in surround sound. ;-)