Transcript
Scott Wilkinson (0:00)
In this special episode of Home Theater Geeks, I answer questions from the chat room, so stick around.
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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.