Home Theater Gear

HDMI – The letters are enough to send many installers straight to the medicine cabinet. Why? Well, HDMI has allowed for unprecedented audio and video quality in consumer electronics products, but it has also created a plethora of headaches for the technicians who get to install all this wonderful gear and make it work more or less seamlessly. From the 10 – 15 second switching intervals to the “Where the hell is my video?” phone calls at 9:00pm on a Friday, HDMI has generated more than its share of headaches for those in the trenches.

Surprisingly, the origin of many HDMI problems is man made, and also labeled with a 4 letter acronym starting with an “H”; HDCP. Yes, most of the problems with HDMI are of our own making. Unlike good, old analog video, consumer electronics devices connected with HDMI must actually communicate with each other to ensure that each is authorized to either send or receive HD content. If there is any glitch in the works, you'll get nothing. Actually to clarify, you may get a white or black screen, but Monday Night Football on ESPN or Star Trek on Blu-Ray, no way.

While that may be great for protecting the content, it is tough for installers to explain to their clients why this stuff just flat fails to work sometimes. Many clients have a hard time believing that something could be purposely engineered not to work perfectly every time. The truth is that, not only is HDMI far more sensitive to cabling, especially at longer distances, but sometimes different pieces of gear just didn't want to play nicely together.

To be fair, these problems occur far less frequently now than they did a couple of years ago, when they were an almost weekly occurrence. Typically, there would be much finger pointing by the manufacturers of the equipment involved, and eventually the problems would be solved by a firmware update or an equipment change.

Another problem with HDMI that have some customers shaking their heads is the inability of some equipment with HDMI to support an unlimited number of devices. “What do you mean I can't connect this Comcast cable box to more than one TV?” Having to explain to a customer that each source has tokens that must be authorized by the display or they'll get no video can be an exercise in frustration.

Some devices will support upwards of 30 connections, while others, only 1. The trick is that you don't know until you either analyze the unit, or connect it and see. If you are centrally locating your source pieces and distributing them throughout your home or office, you may have a situation where you could easily have more TVs or other display devices than your sources have tokens.

Sure, you say, but I don't have a 6,000 sq ft home with 7 different TVs. You may not, but some far simpler combinations have caused problems, such as connecting your cable box to your A/V receiver and then connecting your A/V receiver to your TV. There have been cases where the cable box counts this as two devices connected to it, and it only has one authorized token, so it gets mad, and shuts down the video.

Now we have the latest HDMI variation, HDMI 1.4. Wasn't 1.3a good enough? Maybe so but 1.4 is here now and we have to be ready for it and the problems that may come with it. Surely, there have to some good things that will  come from HDMI 1.4, don't there? Yes, HDMI 1.4 has some very attractive, new features, although much of them will not be implemented immediately.

HDMI 1.4 feature set -

HDMI Ethernet channel
Audio return channel
4k and 2k pixel resolution support
3D support
More color spaces

and yes there will be new connectors, including mini HDMI connectors for mobile devices.

The new HDMI features will enable a host of new functionality such as device to device content distribution and Internet connection sharing. Much as some devices like HD TiVOs can share content  now with other Ethernet connected HD TiVOs, in the future many different devices will be able to do this, and it will happen over the single HDMI cable plugged into the back. They will even be able to share a single Internet connection. No more boxes full of different cables laying behind the rack.

For years some people have been saying the 3D will be the next big thing in home theater, and HDMI 1.4 is ready for that too, supporting no fewer than 7 different 3D structures. Whether or not 3D is ever the “killer app” for home theater remains to be seen, but it will doubtlessly see some serious support from the gaming community.

While 1080p is the hot resolution now, in the future it will seem as quaint as 480p does today. 4K (4,096 x 2,160) may not be right around the corner for home use, but it is coming, and at least we won't have to see yet another HDMI variation to support it.

Hopefully we'll get to enjoy all that HDMI 1.4 has to offer without the problems that plagued earlier versions. Each passing year has brought us significant progress in this area, to the point where many custom installers happily install HDMI with almost no thought as to their past headaches. As manufacturers improve things, people understand the intricacies of HDMI, and new HDMI repeaters successfully deal with the distance issue, the future looks bright indeed.

Posted by 1touch at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you have a projector for your home theater, one day the bulb will go out. It doesn't mean your projector is a piece of crap (although there have been cases where a firmware problem has caused premature bulb failure), it is just the nature of the beast. Typically projector bulbs last from 2,000 to 4,000 hours.

The thing many people forget about when they buy their projectors is that a replacement bulb is no cheap fix. Projector bulbs cost an average of $300 - $500. If you factor that price along with their propensity to fail the day of your Superbowl party or monthly movie night extravaganza, you can see how many people get a bit up in arms over the whole thing.

It's human nature to try and get the best deal for everything, but shopping for projector bulbs based purely on price can be  big no-no. Many of the inexpensive bulbs are cheap, Chinese imports , or only include the bulb, not the entire assembly you need to make an easy replacement.

To make matters worse, trying to save money by sourcing a cheap bulb often results in not only premature bulb failure, but very often damage to your projector. If that happens, the only cure is a trip to the factory for repair often lasting 2 - 6 weeks, and involving considerable expense.

Yes, the correct, factory replace projector lamp assembly can be expensive, but in most cases, it is money well spent. Even if you only spent $1,000 for your projector, and it is tough to spend 40% of that for a new lamp, bite the bullet and do it or you could easily buy buying more than just a new bulb.It's not crying wolf, projector manufacturers are reporting a near epidemic of service issues related to consumers trying to go the cheap bulb replacement route. Once again, think twice, or it could be your projector's warranty that goes out next time.

Posted by 1touch at 06:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, you're standing there, looking at your almost new Blu-Ray player, as it refuses to play your new disc. Why won't it play? After all, the thing is almost brand new? Welcome to the brave, new world of cutting edge technology, combined with a bit of copy protection, and bonus features thrown in for good measure. The truth is that there are several reasons why a given disc may or may not play, but as Frank Drebbin would say, that's really not important right now. What is important is how you can get your new disc to play so that you can back to your movie night. There are a few things to check, brought to you by the Home Theater Gear blog at http://1touchmovie.com/home-theater-gear.

Dirty or damaged disc - Blu Ray discs are built with very fine rows of pits, like a CD or DVD. The difference is that those on a Blu Ray are much finer and more closely packed, that's partly how they are able to cram so much more data on a single disc. That means that they are much more suseptable to damage, dirt and fingerprints than a CD or DVD would be. So the first thing you should do is make sure your new Blu Ray is clean. As with a DVD or CD, you should wipe it from the center to the outside edge, to avoid making scratches that follow the data groves.

Firmware update - As with so many other consumer electronics and appliances in your house and car today, a Blu Ray player is basically a computer. It has a set of instructions hard coded in it's little electronic brain on what the heck it's supposed to do when you insert a particular disc. The set of electronic instructions inside is called firmware. The great thing about firmware is that it can be easily (more or less) updated to deal with changing conditions, so that your player's functionality can change for years to come. Having a Blu Ray disc that won't play is a much more common occurance than many people would have believed when they bought one. That's the price you pay in this case for the spectacular picture and sound you get with Blu Ray. Some things are dreadfully slow, and sometimes titles just won't play.

If your player has an Ethernet port on the back (the one that looks like a phone jack on steroids), simply plug it into your network router. Make sure you keep the player plugged into your TV while you do this, you'll need the on screen menu tyo complete the process. After it's plugged into your home's network, remove the disc, go to the menu, and find the section that deals with updating the firmware. Then follow the on screen instructions to update the player's firmware. The files will be automatically downloaded from the Internet, and installed into your player. The process can take between 3 and 20 minutes depending upon the size of the update, the speed of your network and Internet connection.If you don't have a player with an Ethernet jack on the back, you'll have to go to the manufacturer's website and download the firmware from them. Then you'll have to burn the firmware onto a DVD and load the new firmware into your Blu Ray player that way.

There is now doubt that a Blu Ray player can deliver truly spectacular picture and stupendous audio quality, especially if you have a high end surround sound system and the disc has DTS Master Audio or Dolby Digital Tru HD. For all that performance however, you may have to pay a price beyond what showed up on your credit card statement, and discs not playing once in a while is part of it.

Posted by 1touch at 05:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)