If you’re just now considering bringing high-definition entertainment into your home, the decision of which high definition DVD format to go with has already been made for you.

Yes. There was a recent battle of formats to rival that of the VHS and Betamax war back in the early 80’s. This time, however, the battle was between Toshiba’s HD DVD format and Sony’s Blu-Ray disc.

Battle Of The Formats

In this war, Sony’s Blu-Ray disc emerged victorious when Toshiba announced that they would no longer pursue the high definition market in February 2008. Consumer sales were all but stopped by the end of March.

Much like VHS and Betamax, major film producers like Warner Brothers ultimately determined the outcome of the war.

While there didn’t appear to be any real discernible differences in the audio or video quality of either format to the consumer, studios preferred the greater storage capacity and data transfer rate that the Blu-Ray disc offered.

When Warner Brothers made the decision to only release their high definition productions on Blu-Ray in January 2008, retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart threw the weight of their support solely in Blu-Ray’s direction as well, marking the end of the road for Toshiba’s HD DVD. Support by major film studios meant a lot more availability of Blu-Ray movie titles to the consumers.

Prior to Toshiba’s announcement to pull their HD DVD from the market, sales of either high definition format were soft. Consumers who were around for the VHS vs. Betamax war, well remember the pain of spending good money on a Beta machine and Beta tapes, only to have the format become extinct before their eyes.

Blu-Ray Emerges Victorious

With Blu-Ray disc firmly established as the king of the high definition format, sales have still remained soft. This, of course, came as a surprise to the industry.

Analysts suggest that this is due to a couple of reasons…

• The state of the economy is limiting the amount of money consumers are willing to spend on upgrading their video equipment. The purchase of a Blu-Ray disc player would require an upgrade to a high definition television, high quality cables, and possibly a surround sound system in order to get the full benefit of the high definition experience.
• While high definition is a beautiful thing to behold, consumers seem to be satisfied with the results that they are getting from their standard DVD players, and upconverting DVD players.

Overall cost is obviously a significant factor in consumer’s buying decisions. Currently, Blu-Ray movies are considerably more expensive than the average DVD movie. The good news is that the cost of the Blu-Ray disc players themselves are on the decline.

Using Standard DVDs In A High Def Format

Many consumers who have built up their collection of standard DVDs may be concerned that they will be unable to continue to use that format in a Blu-Ray disc player. Fortunately, that’s not the case.

If you have a high definition television, then standard DVDs will not only play in a Blu-Ray disc player, the quality of the playback is likely to be near high definition quality.

And likewise, if you wish to start building your Blu-Ray disc movie collection– since they are intended to replace standard DVDs in the future – Blu-Ray movies will play in standard DVD players as well. This is called backwards compatibility.

High Definition DVD Upconverters

High definition DVD upconverters are another option to purchasing a Blu-Ray disc player. They were actually a pretty attractive option several months ago when the cost of Blu-Ray disc players were more expensive.

And, upconverters were an even more attractive option when the battle of the formats were raging and people wanted the high definition experience without the risk of buying into a soon to be defunct format

Back then a smart consumer could pick up an upconverter for about half the cost of a Blu-Ray disc player. Today, however, the cost gap between the high definition upconverter and Blu-Ray disc player is rapidly closing.

So, what are the differences between an upconverter and a Blu-Ray disc player?

Standard DVD players take the digital information from a DVD, convert it to an analog signal, which gets reconverted back to digital once it arrives at to your television set. This process can negatively affect the overall quality of sound and video.

Upconverters, on the other hand, send the digital information from a standard DVD directly to your television without ever converting it to an analog signal. This means that the integrity of the audio and video are maintained.

Upconverters essentially “scale” a standard DVD at 480 pixels up to accommodate the pixels of your high definition television that is either 720, 1080i or 1080p resolution. Thus, “simulating” a high definition quality picture.

Some say, that unless you’re a true audiophile, you probably won’t realize the difference between the “simulated” high definition of a good quality upconverter and the “true” high definition of the Blu-Ray disc player.

Blu-Ray disc players, however, present not just a crisper, cleaner image commensurate with high definition, they also provide increased audio quality by using lossless technology. This is something that an upconverter is unable to do.

Lossless data compression technology essentially means that the sound you hear will most closely resemble the original soundtrack recording. This is different from Lossy compression that only approximates the original soundtrack. This difference may be of particular importance if you are using a home theater surround sound system.

High Definition Internet Television

Finally, high definition Internet television is coming up in the ranks as a potential contender in high definition format. As of September 2008, Apple iTunes online TV store, for instance, started offering viewers the ability to purchase high definition programming from the four major networks.

While it is reported that the quality doesn’t come close to Blu-Ray’s, it is definitely a technology worth keeping your eye on.

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When it comes to understanding what in the world the differences are between the many different kinds of consumer electronics products on the market, some people have a harder time than they would pinning jelly to the wall. The consumer electronics industry hasn’t exactly helped out in this regard, but rather has hidden itself behind a web of many confusing terms, some of which are redundant, others of which are misleading, and even more of which are perfectly legitimate but totally confusing! For example, when it comes to understanding what is so special about HD TV and what all the different varieties are all about, there are too many acronyms and technical terms for the average person to really have the faintest notion of what distinguishes such sets from the two-decade-old tube they’ve got at home already.

Unfortunately, asking the salesman at your local electronics store is not going to help you out in this regard: you will either be fed a bunch of misleading information (so that the salesman can make some commission this month) or you will simply get nothing, as many people working in these stores don’t have an inkling of what they are selling, and may even be less informed than you are, the person in search of answers. The internet has done a much better job than the industry itself or its salesmen in elucidating the distinctions and properties of HD TV, and what it is that makes this technology different than traditional TV.

The biggest and most notable difference between traditional sets and HD TVs is, quite obviously, the superior image resolution of the latter. But why is this so? This difference is in fact the result of multiple differences all neatly rolled up into one. Though many early HD TV products were designed to use analog signals for broadcasting, virtually all HD TVs now operate strictly with digital signal. That is an important difference, and one that doesn’t necessarily have to do with picture quality per se. Remember, however, that even traditional televisions can read and project a digital signal, so it is not exactly something unique to HD TV—rather, the fact that it uses practically exclusively digital signal is unique.

What HD TV does that is different than traditional TV is that it

1) raises the amount of scan lines being interpreted and projected onto your screen, and

2) widens the aspect ratio being projected onto your screen from the common 4:3 that we all have been using for the last 50 years to 16:9.

This significantly wider aspect of HD TV is very notable and doesn’t have to do with image resolution but rather with the presentation of the image, in this case reminding viewers of a more cinematic, theatrical appearance (hence the association of widescreen with the movies). Let’s study these two basic differences of HD TV in a little more depth, so that people can understand where the differences really lie, and what they mean.

The evolution of television in its early years was largely a story of the improvement and increase in the number of scan lines that devices were using. Basically, more scan lines mean a richer, more defined image. If an image is displayed using fewer scan lines, the detail will be negatively affected, and vice versa. Image scanning is the basic technology that makes television possible, and is known technically as rasterization. When a television set receives an electric signal, the signal is captured by a device (usually a rotating mirror-drum scanner or vibrating scanner) and then the scanned image is projected onto a screen. Traditional TVs use a cathode ray tube to then project the image, whereas HD TVs use a video line system.

In old, traditional TVs, the number of lines was set at 480, with the lines being “interlaced,” meaning the odd lines were projected at one moment and the even lines immediately afterwards—a process that takes so little time it is imperceptible to the naked eye. HD TV has taken things to entirely new levels, with 1080 being the current pinnacle and 720 also being available. Truly excellent image quality can be had by eliminating the “interlacing” of the scan lines, showing them on the screen in one fell swoop. When this is the case, instead of an “i” (for “interlaced”) after the number of scan lines—for example, 480i—a “p” (for “progressive”) is put afterwards, such as 720p. The visual effect of the horizontal lines on the screen, which is exacerbated by interlacing the scan lines, is significantly reduced if not altogether eliminated by using progressive scan lines. Hence, when shopping for a television, look for 480p or 720p, or better yet, 1080p.

The “progressive” scan line innovation has added a third category of TV sets, known as Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV), obviously in addition to traditional (or tube) TVs and HD TVs. EDTVs are incredibly crisp and are frequently confused for high definition televisions, even though they have absolutely no high definition technology built into them.

As far as the widening of the image is concerned, this is one of the more highlighted properties of HD TVs that many consumers have found incredibly attractive. The wider viewing really gives a sense of being in the cinema, and in fact helps contribute to the higher definition of the images. HD TVs usually have a wider possible viewing angle than traditional TVs, and are more versatile when it comes to room lighting (aka you can see well in a wider variety of lighting conditions). Furthermore, given their higher resolution, HD TVs reduce the amount and severity of image blur, a truly unpleasant phenomenon that is particularly prevalent when watching sports games and other programs with lots of movement. So, to recap, it is important to understand that there are a variety of technical properties to HD TVs that make them able to provide a higher quality image—not to mention the fact that most HD TVs allow you to connect a wider variety of media, including digital files.

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Before it is really possible to understand how speakers work, it is first necessary to understand how sound works.

How Sound Works

Humans are able to pick up sound due to a very thin piece of tissue in their ear that is commonly known as the eardrum. When the sound waves reach the eardrum, it vibrates and sends signals to the brain, from there the brain can then interpret the vibration as sound.

Although sound vibrations can travel through liquid and solid objects, it most often travels through air, which is how people experience sound from speakers. The way this works is that the sound waves vibrate air particles; at this point the air particles move particle disturbance through the air. The vibrating air particles send a fluctuating wave of pressure through the atmosphere until it reaches your eardrum. As the eardrum vibrates, it sends the sound signals to your brain.

How Speakers Work

When sound is recorded with a microphone or other recording device, is works much like the eardrum; it picks up the sound vibrations and converts them into electrical signals, and then either records it as data, or sends it to the speaker.

When electrical signals are sent to a speaker, what is happening is that the speaker is converting those electrical signals back into physical vibrations that will create sound waves. If the system is working correctly, the sound that comes out of the speakers will be nearly identical to the sound that went into the microphone or recording.

The speaker translates the electrical signal when it rapidly vibrates a flexible cone, and a signal is sent through the voice coil. To amplify the sound, it is constantly fluctuating the electrical current between a positive and negative charge. This moves the voice coil back and forth, which then vibrates the cone to recreate the sound waves that reach your ears.

Because the different speakers create difference sound frequencies, to recreate high quality sound it is necessary to have different types of speakers; this is why you will find that most good speakers have a woofer and a tweeter, all within the same compartment.

When looking for high quality speakers, it is important to pay attention to the design of the speaker enclosure. The design of the speaker enclosure will influence the final output; you will want an enclosure that provides good quality sound reproduction.

The most popular is the sealed enclosure, which is completely sealed and forces the sound out from the speakers into the room. The disadvantage of the sealed speaker enclosure is that it is not as efficient as some of the other designs, and requires a boost in the electrical signal to produce good sound, as there is no method of equalizing the air pressure.

Other speaker enclosures, such as the bass reflex enclosure, or the passive radiator enclosure are designed to overcome the air pressure by redirecting it out of a small port that is built into the speaker.

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