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Home Theater Geeks 501: Chatroom Q&A Special 2!
00:34:46
Meta's Display Glasses, Movie Soundtracks, Bluetooth v5.4, & more
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Scott Wilkinson
In this special episode of Home Theater Geeks, I answer questions from the chat room, so stick around.
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Scott Wilkinson
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Scott Wilkinson
Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here, the Home Theater geek. In this special episode, I'm going to be answering questions live from the chat room now. We are recording this right after the big meta announcement of their newest model of glasses, which are, I guess, AR glasses. They can put images up on the screen as you're looking through them. They have cameras on them, they have microphones on them and little speakers, I guess, that go into your ears. So you get wrapped up in a cocoon of AR of extra stuff around your actual reality. And in the second half of this big presentation, they brought out James Cameron, of all people, to talk about avatar and 3D and how this technology is going to improve that experience. I'm not sure I agree with that. I myself have no interest in watching a movie in my glasses or on a. Certainly not on a VR headset for two hours or even an hour and a half. Glasses may be a little better. Except I would assume that, that the image would be somewhat translucent. That the nature of these AR glasses, as opposed to VR glasses, is that you're supposed to be able to see the real as well as the image that's being shown to you. And watching a movie that way would be just terrible, in my opinion. So no thanks. Somebody in the chat room said something about maps would be good, and in a sense I agree with that. Although if I'm driving and I'm looking at these maps, even if they're right in front of me in my glasses, I'm not looking at the road. So that's. That's a bit of a problem. Translation, language translation that I can see, that could be really, really useful. Instead of having a device or your phone with a translation app and you say something to somebody and they say something back and you have to look down at your device to see what they said it's right in your glasses. That I think might be a reasonable application. But this other stuff for me, not so much now as Leo and. And Anthony said during this thing, you know. Well, you know, I don't watch movies on my phone. This is something the kids do. Okay, well, that may be true and, and that may be more like what it's for, but I would never watch a movie on my phone either. I mean, come on, it's. It. Movies are meant to be immersive. And yes, when you put a movie in your glasses or your VR headset, it would be immersive. But it's plenty immersive enough for me on a big screen in front of me with speakers all around. So that's what I prefer. And I also like going to the movies I still do once in a while. Unfortunately, the one bummer of the place I moved to, which is wonderful in every other respect, is that they don't have an IMAX or a Dolby Cinema. So to get to one of those, I have to go over the hill to San Jose, which is close to an hour's drive now. I went just the other night. I went and saw Spinal Tap 2 the end continues, which was hilarious. I highly recommend it. And I went to one of the local theaters and the, you know, the image wasn't great, but who cares? I didn't care. I was there to see the movie. Now when Tron aries comes out October 10th, I think I will go over the hill to Dolby Cinema, probably maybe an IMAX to see. To see that one, because the visual imagery is going to be so important and I'm really going to want to see it in the best possible presentation. So I highly recommend Spinal Tap to. It's. It's hilarious. And you can. I find. I'm fine seeing it anywhere. But for Tron Aries or any of these kind of tent pole type movies, I'm going to want to go see it at a. At the highest level I can. So anyway, I just wanted to chat about that a little bit before I answer chat room questions, which is. Now let's see, what do we got here from IM lost in. I'm lost in Phoenix. Okay, I have a collection of older inputs like laserdisc players and tape decks. Is there a media switcher that all these analog inputs to a single HDMI output. That's a good question. I assume you mean like older video inputs, like component or composite. Hopefully not composite or S video. So the three analog inputs that used to be common are composite, which is the worst. S video, which is somewhat better. And component, which was the best. That separated out red, green, and blue into separate connectors and you needed three cables to carry it. Can and can those be connect? Can those be converted to hdmi? This would be a really great thing if it could, and I'm sorry to say I don't know the answer to that. I'll have to do some research to figure that out. I do know that when the last generation, or the last couple of generations of AV receivers that had h. That had component and S video inputs, I believe were able to. To convert to hdmi. But let me just take a quick look here. Component video to HDMI conversion. Let's just see if there's anything I can find off the top of my hat. Oh, here we go. Yeah, there. There do seem to be such things. There's a component to HDMI converter on Amazon for 18 bucks. There's an HDMI to component converter, which you don't want. But let's just take a quick look on Amazon here and. Yep, look at that. It's a. It's only one. There aren't. There aren't several inputs here, but you can get this for component video, which also includes stereo audio analog for $18.75, and it converts it to HDMI. So I mean, at that price, you could get a few of them. Your laserdisc player, I don't know whether it would have a component output. I would hope so. If it has S video, then let's just see if there's an S video to. To HDMI converter. Looks like there might be. Let's see. RCAS video to HDMI converter. Yep, there. There's one for 20 bucks. There's another one for 32 bucks. So yeah, there are some things and they aren't that expensive. So I would say at this point that would be the way to do it. Because AV receivers don't have those kinds of inputs anymore, or very few of them do. If you could find one that did, you'd want to check and make sure that it could do that conversion. It might be able to. And that way that's a little nicer than using these individual devices for each of your. For each of your source devices. So there's the answer to that. Let's see. Speaking of Tron, this is Horizon Brave. Speaking of Tron, what movie do you feel has a soundtrack that outperforms the movie or does a lot of heavy lifting for the movie? Well, that's A good question, certainly. I would say Blade Runner 2049 is one example. The soundtrack on that is awesome. Really, really good. Does it outperform the movie? I'm not even sure how to answer that because the sound is such an integral part of the movie. Can you say that the sound is better than the movie because the sound is part of the movie? So I can tell you, you know, there are some soundtracks that are really, really great. Tron 40, Tron 20. I'm not Tron. Blade Runner 2049, you know. Do you think that was as good as the original Blade Runner? That's a subjective opinion. I'll leave that to you. All I can tell you is that the soundtrack is awesome and it has great bass. So if you're wanting to show off your subwoofer, that's a really good one to use one movie to use to show off your Atmos system. If you have an Atmos system is Gravity, which is a great movie in its own right, I think. I don't think the soundtrack outshines it, but it certainly enhances it because it's a wonderfully effective use of Atmos with sounds coming from all around. So that's. That. That's a really, really good example. I use that often to test and demo Atmos systems. Foreign. Let's see. Jim Abraham's asking what TV is very good out there? You know what, there are many good TVs out there. Many. I will say, as I always do, that my first preference of current technology is OLED OLED for flat panel TVs. And at the top of that heap is QD OLED Quantum dot OLED which is made by Sony and Samsung. Samsung makes the panels for both. But I prefer the Sony one. I have one myself, that's my main tv and I prefer the Sony because they support Dolby Vision. Samsung does not support Dolby Vision. So they're both excellent TVs. LG OLEDs are excellent. Good friend of mine just bought one on my recommendation and loves it. Less expensive than the QD OLED certainly. But the thing I really like about OLED is a it goes down to infinite black to zero black. LCD TVs of any stripe don't typically. And the off axis performance, you look at the picture straight on axis and then you walk off axis off to one side. It still looks great. LCD TVs mostly don't. Now LCD TVs get brighter than OLED, no question about it. So if you're in a really bright room and you want to combat that or have the TV stand up to that, then an LCD TV, what's now called LED TVs or QLED TVs because they use quantum dots might be a better choice. And they're also typically less expensive than OLEDs, so you got to take that into account as well. But, and they're also very good too. They, they, they make a great picture, primarily for the most part. Except for that if you go far off axis, then it might not be so great. But there are many great choices out there. More good ones than bad ones, I would say.
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Scott Wilkinson
PWOG asks Is Bluetooth 5.4 lossless? It features the latest Bluetooth 5.4 supporting the new APTX Lossless, the only Bluetooth codec capable of streaming lossless CD quality audio without sacrifice. I haven't, I haven't tested it myself, but if it says it's lossless, then I would have to assume it is. Now that isn't to say that some marketing people lie to you now and again, but until proven otherwise, I'm going to take them at their word and say, okay, it's lossless. What that means for those who don't know, is that the audio, the digital audio, is not compressed, not data compressed, so that it removes some of the audio information. The classic example of that is MP3, which you can stream and you can download. That removes up to 90% of the audio information from the signal and it does it in a way that they claim you can't hear. But if you do enough of it, if you do it strongly enough, you can hear it. I certainly prefer to Listen to lossless which is why I listen. My streaming service that I use is called Qobuz Q O B U Z and they do lossless streaming. You can data compress audio losslessly. That is when you uncompress it you don't lose any information. And that's typically done with a codec coder decoder called Flac. Flac I think full lossless audio codec. Apple has one too. A lack. So those are what you want to look for for lossless. And if Bluetooth 5.4 can, can transmit CD quality losslessly then that's a great thing. I would be all for that. Let's see, Bang3 is asking. I'm looking to get a 42 inch TV to use as a monitor. Was thinking about getting an oled but what would you. What would be the next best image quality wise? Well, there aren't very many 42 inch OLEDs that's for sure. LG makes one, I'm pretty sure. Sony I think does as well and that would certainly be your best bet picture wise. Next best would be, you know, an LED TV qled. I don't, I don't spend a lot of time looking at that. TV's that small to tell you the truth because I'm more interested in home theater. But getting a QLED or an LED TV at 42 inches from one of the major manufacturers I would say which would be Sony, Samsung, TCL, Hisense. I have never been really happy with LGs LED TVs they're sometimes called QNED. I forget what that stands for but I've generally not been happy with LG. LCD TVs called LED TVs because of the backlight. I really like their OLEDs. I don't know if they make a 42 inch. If I would, I'd look at that one first. If they did, I would look at that one first. Because they make a range that goes down in price, you know, more than Sony certainly. I don't think Hisense or TCL make OLEDs at all. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think so. So if you. But, but they're low cost so they may might be a way to go if you're needing to save money. And they make great TVs no question about it there. I would say, you know they are now part of the top tier. Hisense and TCO along with Sony and Samsung and lg. They used not to be but they've really improved. Let's see, Bang3 said anything John Williams scored well. Sure, he's wonderful. Wonderful. John Riker asks, what do you think about the Sonos equipment nowadays? Well, I haven't really listened to them or investigated them lately. They really took over the whole home audio market. And I'm sure they're still very good. But they've my impression, my recollection is that they're very expensive. So you know, you kind of get what you pay for there. But I'm sure they're, they're quite good. Let's see. Carlo S says, I have a 20 year old Onkyo AV receiver 7.1. Do you think I should buy an audio extractor to get full 7.1, 7.1 experience? I'm not sure I know what you mean by that. The PS5 can do 7.1, but I would need to connect directly to the Onkyo. Well, yeah, you would. PS5 will send 7.1 over HDMI to the Onkyo and you'll get 7.1. So I'm not sure what. I'm not sure I know what you mean. If you can elaborate a little bit on that, why would you want to use an extractor for that? PWOG says allowing for CD quality streaming of up to 24bit 44.1khz, that's more than CD quality. CD quality is 16bit 44.1khz. Using the flat codec lower end lossless. I would say 16 bit 44.1 is kind of your baseline lossless. That is CD quality. With 24 bits you're getting greater dynamic range, which is a good thing. I think 44.1 kilohertz is a perfectly fine sampling rate. Audio files often talk about 24 bit 96 kilohertz sampling rate or 88.2, which is twice 44.1. 96 is twice 48. And they say, well, you know, with 96 kilohertz you get a high more frequency response, which is true. You get up above 20 kilohertz. But can your audio system reproduce above 20 kilohertz? Not all of them can. Not many of them can. In fact, you have to spend a lot of money to get a system that will reproduce above 20 kilohertz. So for most people, CD quality is perfectly fine. It'll get you to 20 kilohertz, no problem. And if you're an adult, you can't even hear 20 kilohertz. So what's the point of, of spending all that money on a system that'll go up to up to 48kHz of. Of audio frequencies when you're never going to hear it. There are those who say that those ultrasonic harmonics combine in certain ways to create what are called difference tones down in the audible range. And that's a valid argument. But they're going to be so low level that I'm not at all sure. I don't know of any studies that have been done, double blind studies that have been done to, to see if it makes any difference. So, you know, I think CD quality is totally fine and if Bluetooth 5.4 can stream it losslessly, that's great. What John Riker is asking, what's the worst experience you've ever had installing or testing something? Hmm, that's an interesting question. What, what was the worst experience I ever had? Probably, probably trying to calibrate a TV that just wouldn't cooperate. That I've had a couple of those and they are so frustrating. Normally, believe it or not, for me, calibration is actually a kind of a meditative process and I get kind of mellowed out by doing it. But when the TV's not cooperating, like for example, the, the controls are too coarse and so you set it one way and it's wrong in one direction and you click it once in the. In one direction and it's wrong in the other direction, the measurement, that gets pretty frustrating. There have been a couple of audio products that I've tested that just sounded terrible. And that as a reviewer, that brings up a really difficult situation because now as a reviewer I've always been. I have not been biased by. Are they going to buy ads for the com. For the company or the magazine? I'm working for the website. I've always said I'm going to listen to a product or watch a product and report on what I like and report on what I don't like and tell you whether or not I think it's worth the price that they're charging. But when something is just hideously terrible, horrible distortion, you know, really, the highs are completely missing or it's really boomy in the base or something like that. I hate writing those reviews. I did it because that was my job. But man, I just hated writing those reviews of. Of things that, that really sucked. So those were kind of bad.
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Scott Wilkinson
Oh, here's a question, Newman. What's your opinion on high frame rate content? I thought Will Smith's Gemini man was a feast for the eyes. I'd love to see 60 frames per second become more prevalent, at least the you in the YouTube content creator world. This is a great question and I am in a minority that really likes 60 frames per second high frame rate content. I saw Gemini man that way. I saw Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk that way. Both of them were by Ang Lee, filmmaker Ang Lee, and he shot them at, I believe, 120 frames per second and they were showed shown in certain theaters that had the capability at 60 frames per second. I actually went to for Billy Lynn. I went to the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood and they actually had a projector there that showed it at 120 frames per second at the rate it was shot. I have to say I loved it and it sounds like you did too, that it was a feast for the eyes and it was beautiful detail, gorgeous. No judder, no motion blur. I mean, I thought it was great. Most people don't. Most people that I've talked to and heard from say that no, I didn't like it. It didn't look like a movie. It didn't look cinematic. And this is a word that you're going to hear a lot about this particular topic. It's it didn't look cinematic. Well, it only looks cinematic because that's the way cinema has looked for the Last hundred years. 24 frames per second was chosen for a number of reasons, one of which is that they wanted to minimize the amount of film they were using because film was expensive. And so they had to. They wanted to minimize the use of film. So what's the slowest we can go and still maintain the illusion of motion? That's why it's 24 frames per second. And now that is so entrenched after a hundred years that people can't tolerate, oh, faster frame. It. It looks like tv. It looks like video, kinda. Yeah, it looks better, in my opinion, as long as that's the way it was shot. Now, here's the thing. On TVs, most TVs these days that have 120Hz refresh rate will have a function called frame interpolation or motion interpolation or motion smoothing. It's called different things by different. Different manufacturers. And what that does is it takes 24 frames per second and inserts synthetic frames between those actual frames. And it synthesizes, if something's in motion between frame 383 and 384, it's going to insert several frames between them. And if something's in motion between them, the processor puts that thing in motion where it should be if there was a real frame there. It certainly cleans up motion blur. But it also creates what's called the soap opera effect. It looks very synthetic because it is. It's synthetic. It's their synthetic frames. And people really object to that. Most people just hate it. I'm not a big fan either, to tell you the truth. I mean, I. I'm always advocating experience, content as the content creator intended. This is very important to me, and I really think it should be important to every aficionado. But when Ang Lee or somebody else shoots a movie at 60 frames or 120 frames per second, I want to see it at that frame rate. And I really think it looks great. I love it. I loved it in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and I loved it in Gemini Man. I thought Gemini man was a pretty horrible movie. I thought Billy Lynn was a great movie. And I'm also in the minority there too. I actually watched it with my wife once and. And she's got her master's degree in acting from CalArts. And I said, what'd you think of this movie? She thought it was great. Most of the people that I talked to about it say, oh, it was terrible acting. It was horrible. Isis, I believe. Just my opinion that they might have been put off by the fact that they didn't like 60 frames per second. So they thought the rest of the Movie was horrible too. I liked 60 frames per second and I thought the movie was great. Gemini man on the other hand, I didn't like the movie. I thought it was a pretty stupid movie. But it looked great. Fantastic. And boy, I could be on a soapbox about that for a long time. But we're getting close to the end of our time here, so I'm going to take one more question. Oh, except I'll have to say that Horizon Phoenix Warp 1 can't do it. 60 frames per second for gaming is great in movies. It's just so weird and off putting. See, I'm in the minority and I admit that. But great for live sports. I would agree that too. Oh, out of Sync Hobbit at 48 frames. Yes, I saw that at 48 frames too. That's another, another example. Thank you. I'd forgotten about that one. And I liked the way that looked too. I did. Sorry. Oh, Carlos. Okay, we got a little little follow up on Carlos S PS5 is connected to his non smart 4K TV. But the TV can only do 5.1 audio so I'm considering, considering getting an audio converter to get the full 7.1 directly to the Onkyo. Well, my question to you then is why not connect the PS5 to the Onkyo by HDMI and then from the Onkyo to the TV by HDMI and the TV doesn't have to worry about audio at all? That would be my recommendation based on what I know. Okay, last question. Can I recommend an AV receiver under $2,000? Not specifically. I'd have to do some more research on that. But generally speaking, I really like Denon and Marantz. Receivers are made by the same company and they make plenty of receivers under 2000 DOL. No question about it. Onkyo is still in the game. We. We saw them at Cedia just a couple weeks ago so. And I'm sure they make receivers under two grand. Pioneer I'm sure does as well. But I would stick with Denon and Marantz. I really like those brands a lot. Yamaha too. Let me say that if you can find a Yamaha receiver under two grand, which I'm sure you can, that would also be an excellent choice. So Denon, Morantz or Yamaha would be my first choices. Kevin WW along those lines, talking about the watching it as the creator, content creator intended, are you committed like me to watching all of James Cameron's avatar films in 3D as he supposedly wants us to? Yes, I am. Absolutely. No question about it. I am. I have enjoyed 3D more than a lot of people. Some people really just hate it. And it's it's not true 3D. It's stereoscopic. But as long as the filmmaker is careful about where they place things in the Z dimension, in the third dimension, it can be, it can be comfortable or it can be uncomfortable if they put things too close. James Cameron knows what he's doing, so yes, I will absolutely go do that. So I think that's it for now. Anyway, I hope to do these on a semi regular basis, you know, once every couple months or something. So I look forward to doing it again because I always have a great time in the chat room and you guys are all really great and ask really great questions and I really appreciate it. So thanks so much. Now I also answer questions on home theater geeks that get emailed to me, so please do send them on to htgwit TV and I'll answer as many as I can right here on the show. And as you know, all of Twitch shows are available for free on YouTube but with ads. If you want to go ad free, join the club. Go to TWiT TV club TWiT to join today. Until next time, geek out.
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