…good article of things to consider [...CK]
Make your special room as good as it can be
November 26, 2013 by Grant Clauser
Many home theater enthusiasts, especially DIYers (and I’m including myself here) tend to fuss all about the big picture and sound-in-the-round speaker approach, while neglecting many important details.
Sometimes installers are guilty of the same thing (though usually it’s the client’s taste or budget that’s to blame). A home theater is more than a room and more than a collection of electronics all tethered together. When done right, a home theater is a total experience.
To get to that sublime experience, you need to pay attention to all the details
The truth is that few rooms are perfect for a home theater before the gear arrives, and many still aren’t perfect after the gear’s been installed and connected. In fact, perfection is rarely achievable, but there are a number of features that any home theater enthusiast overlooks at their own peril.
1. Lights. Most of the time the lights in your home theater are going to be turned off. That doesn’t mean that the lights aren’t important. Placement and control of lights can impact how your theater looks and how convenient it is to enjoy. If you like to watch TV or movies with a little bit of light on, then controlling where the light is directed, how it’s reflected and even its color and intensity will all have an impact on picture quality. Lighting control—whether via a remote or an app, allows you to adjust the lights without having to get out of your seat. A lighting system that’s integrated with the theater controls can make these adjustments for you, based on how it was programmed.
More on home theater lighting can be found here and here.
2. Reflective Surfaces. Many people don’t realize how reflective the surfaces or accessories in their home theaters are until they’ve turned off the room lights and started to watch a bright movie scene. Ever shiny or light-colored surface in a room can reflect the screen’s light back into the room in unwanted ways. Be careful of glass surfaces (such as on art or poster frames—look for non-glare glass) and light colored walls and trim. Yes, something as simple as white trim can brighten up a whole room when the lights are turned off and the screen image is bright.
3. Seats. Sofas are fine for living rooms, especially when you plan to talk to the people sitting next to you, but in a home theater, the seating should direct your attention only to the screen. The best theater seats not only include all the built-in accessories (recline buttons, heat, snack table, cup holders… ) but also are designed to properly support your body from your head to your feet so you won’t feel fatigued or fidgety during the length of the movie.
Check out the extreme accessories on these seats.
Read a review of an Elite Home Theater seat here.
4. Accessories. A home theater is not an ordinary family room. Go a little crazy. Get that fancy marquee you saw online, the fiber-optic star ceiling, the vintage popcorn maker, the life-size replica of Spock. Whatever.
Check out these great home theater accessories here at the Cinema Shop.
5. Control. One of the most frustrating things of any complex home theater or media room is how complex it is. If you have to pick up more than one remote to operate your room, then you’re doing it wrong. Basic single-room control systems (like this one from Control4) or universal remotes can take the frustration out and leave the movie enjoyment in.
6. Acoustics. As I explained a while ago here, the way a home theater sounds is dependent on a lot more than just the speakers and amplifiers you bought. Sound comes in waves, and like the ocean, those waves keep moving, bouncing around off things, until they’ve worn themselves out, dispersed or are absorbed by a something else (such as an island). Without addressing the acoustic reflective, dispersive and absorptive properties of your room (including the walls, ceiling, floor and furniture/accessories) you home theater is only half done.
7. Bass and/or LFE. Subwoofers aren’t simply the bass speaker (bass can come from all your speakers) and all bass isn’t the same thing as LFE (low frequency effect). Those issues get mixed up a lot. Bass, subwoofer use and LFE can be confusing, but proper implementation can mean the difference between a ho-hum home theater and a system everyone you know is jealous of.
Read a lot more about subwoofers here and here.
8. Calibration. Just because the speakers are plugged in and the projector is pointed in the right direction, the job isn’t done. Both the video and audio needs to be calibrated. This insures both that the products are properly set up to perform well, and that they perform well in the unique space that is your room. Your screen, source components, throw-distance and wall color will all impact the picture, so don’t assume that the settings that work in one person’s room are going to work in your room. The same goes for audio.
Most receivers or surround processors come with auto room calibration features. These are safe to start with, but take a trust-but-verify approach by checking the settings manually with a sound meter and your own test tones. There are many good apps for this. I like the Ultimate Ears SPL app. JL Audio offers a nice SPL app too.
9. Noise. Have you ever been in a completely silent place? Probably not. Even if you plug your ears up from all outside noise you’ll still hear your heart beating and your stomach churning over your breakfast burrito. Your home theater is unlikely to be silent either. Your projector, receiver, Blu-ray player, HVAC system media servers… all make noise. However you shouldn’t have to sit back and just accept it. Try to design your theater from the start so that noise-emitting products are in cabinets or in a separate room. If your noise is coming from outside your theater room, try improving the insulation, and seal up any air gaps, especially around doors.
Some projectors are particularly noisy when their auto iris is functioning. The best thing you can do in that situation is to mount the projector as far away from your ears as possible. At normal view/listening levels, low ambient noise may not be very noticeable, but when a quiet scene comes onscreen, it’s very disturbing to hear the whir of your projector above the whispering of the actors.
Kozi Media Design #KoziInfo was honored to work on this year’s NYC Holiday House along side some of the country’s best designers, like Ally Coulter, who we worked closely with, and who allowed our product to shine through her incredible taste for art, design, sport and technology!
We also invited Savant Systems to be a part of this exceptional benefit! Within the room, an 84″ LG was used on a wall featuring our SmartVideo Tiling capabilities which allows 6 independent sources to be displayed and controlled. Architect Phil Cerrone assisted us by incorporating the “scoreboard look”. And it wouldn’t have come together smoothly without the on-site support from Woodmeister Master Builders. 
Thank you all for a wonderful and fulfilling experience!
Interesting article from http://www.technologyreview.com …[...CK]
The appearance of indium gallium zinc oxide transistors in iPads shows that the display industry is poised to begin churning out a new breed of high-performance screens.
- By Mike Orcutt on November 14, 2013
One of the most important innovations in Apple’s latest iPads lies behind the screen. In many of the tablets, the pixels in the display are controlled by transistors made of a material called indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO), a promising replacement for the conventional amorphous silicon.
Displays featuring “backplanes” of IGZO transistors should make it possible for tablets and TVs to have much higher-resolution displays while consuming significantly less power. The technology has already cropped up in low volumes of high-end smartphones and televisions, but its appearance in iPads suggests we can expect IGZO to improve several more popular products over the next year.
Display makers are racing to produce screens with ever-higher resolution, including ones based on organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which promise not only a better picture but also greater power efficiency and compatibility with flexible form factors. But the display makers have run up against the physical limits of amorphous silicon, because electrons don’t move through that material fast enough. If transistors can be made from a material with a higher degree of “electron mobility,” the transistors can be smaller, making it possible to pack more pixels into a given space.
The highest-resolution smartphone screens already feature an alternative material called low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS). But LTPS panels are relatively expensive to make, and the fabrication method has proved difficult to adapt to displays larger than those on phones. IGZO transistor arrays are cheaper to make, and the manufacturing method is more compatible with larger screens. Though electrons don’t move through IGZO as quickly as they do through LTPS, IGZO’s electron mobility is still 10 times better than amorphous silicon’s. This means IGZO can be used to efficiently run OLED pixels, which require more current than their LCD counterparts.
Not all of the latest iPads have IGZO displays; in fact, it’s not entirely clear how many of the tablets have the technology. Luke Koo, senior manager of a team in Seoul that tears down devices for the IHS research firm, says IGZO-based displays made by Sharp are in at least some iPad Minis. Jennifer Colgrove, the lead analyst at Touch Display Research, also says Sharp is supplying IGZO displays for Apple tablets, but she is unsure whether they are in the Mini, the larger iPad Air, or both. Another Apple supplier, LG Display, can now mass-produce IGZO panels and is making them for its 55-inch OLED TV, Colgrove says.
By analyzing the power consumption of the iPad Air, Raymond Soneira, the founder of DisplayMate Technologies, found something unusual: its display uses 57 percent less power than the previous generation of iPads. That tells him the display “simply can’t be amorphous silicon,” though it’s possible it uses LTPS and not IGZO.
Apple did not return messages seeking comment.
No matter how extensively the iPads are using IGZO, it’s clear the technology is finally gaining momentum after years of manufacturing challenges. Among other problems, it has been hard to produce transistors, which are made by depositing thin films of various materials, with the necessary uniformity.
Last month, however, semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials announced the release of new manufacturing tools that the company claims will address the uniformity problem and other challenges. It says it is working with several unnamed companies to ramp up manufacturing capacity. The technology is compatible with glass panel sizes used in both tablets and televisions, says John Busch, general manager of a display group at Applied Materials.
Crestron makes the Smart TV smarter
The Crestron family of control apps keeps growing. We’re now bringing our renowned AV and environmental control to Smart TVs, starting with the market leader, Samsung®.
Now available, the Crestron App for Samsung Smart TV® enables Crestron system owners to control AV, lighting, shades, and climate from an on-screen menu right on their TV.
Crestron family of Apps
- NEW! Crestron App for Samsung Smart TV
- NEW! Crestron App for iPhone® and iPod touch®
- NEW! Crestron App for iPad®
- Crestron Mobile Pro® for Android™
A smart opportunity for you
Samsung currently owns the largest market share of TVs sold in the U.S. and Smart TVs are poised to dominate the market. With the new Crestron app, each household with a Samsung Smart TV represents a potential new customer for you!
Widely compatible, discreetly powerful
Compatible with 2012 or later Samsung Smart TV models, the app can automatically launch when you turn on the TV and silently runs in the background. There’s no need to navigate and scroll through a maze of menus to get started. It supports individually customized apps on multiple TVs and delivers dynamic text messages for all types of events, such as security alerts, doorbells, and incoming phone calls.
The Crestron App for Samsung Smart TV isn’t just an overlay. A translucent control menu slides out on the display, resizing the viewing area, so there’s minimal distraction from the action. Even better, there’s no need to switch inputs, completely eliminating any viewing interruption.
Use the remote as a simple Crestron controller
The app can be customized to provide simple, intuitive, menu-driven control of virtually anything in any room. It’s simple using the familiar directional pad on the Samsung remote that accompanies the TV or Crestron remotes. For even more flexibility, Crestron touch screens or Crestron apps for mobile devices can be used to control the on-screen menu.
See it in action
Watch a video demo of the app now.
For a complete list of features and benefits, download the sell sheet.
Download it now
Once configured and connected to a programmed Crestron control system, Samsung Smart TV owners can simply download the paid Crestron app ($99.99) and they’re in control. (Available in U.S. only.) Also available is a free demo version of the Crestron app. Samsung Smart TV owners can download it directly to their TV from Samsung SMART Hub® to preview the many benefits they would enjoy by adding a Crestron control system to their home. It can also be used to demonstrate the concept to your customers without the need for programming.
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This is the end.
October 31, 2013 by EH Staff
This is an update to an earlier article, based on new information.
You thought Halloween was for treats. Not this time. Panasonic announced to its investors today that its plasma TV business would be over by the end of March 2014.
From the press release:
Panasonic Corporation today announced that in order to create a business structure that can respond to changes in the business environment and to accelerate the growth strategy of the company, the company will end the production of plasma display panels (PDP) in December 2013, and stop business operations at the Amagasaki P3 Factory (production currently stopped), the Amagasaki P5 Factory (production currently suspended), and the Amagasaki P4 Factory, which is currently operating, by the end of March 2014.
Home theater enthusiasts may have to start hoarding their favorite plasma TVs. Panasonic, makers of the popular VIERA plasma TVs, will reportedly stop making plasma TVs after March 2014, according to MarketWatch, citing the Japanese Nikkei index.
According to Panasonic public financial statements, the company has lost more than $15 billion in the plasma TV business over the past two years. According to MarketWatch, Panasonic is in talks to sell one of its three plasma display factory buildings in western Japan with the other two remaining facilities also earmarked for a possible sale.
The plasma TV marketshare has been steadily shrinking over the past few years. According to NPD DsplaySearch, plasma TVs accounted for 40 percent of flat panel sales in 2010. In 2013, they are expected to account for just 2.5 percent. Panasonic is the No. 5 most used TV brand among CE Pro 100 integrators.
The losses have occurred primarily due to eroding prices from the LCD competition combined with the strong Japanese yen currency that simply made it too expensive to make the products. According to the report, Panasonic plans to continue to sell plasmas until its inventory runs out.
Similar reports surfaced in the fall of 2011 and then again earlier this year.
Until now, due to the superiority of the picture, Panasonic’s PDPs have received high appraisal and there has been firm demand from customers worldwide. However, due to rapid, drastic changes in the business environment and a declining demand for PDP in the flat panel display market, it was judged that continuing the business would be difficult and a decision was made to stop production.
