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James Electronics LLC
Owner: Larry James

 

News

9-2011

The world of 3-D television is here and here to stay. I can tell you that if you asked me a year ago I would have just been changing my mind about the overall effectiveness of the picture and whether people would actually sit around the family or theater room wearing these glasses. Now wouldn't it been nice if the manufacturers would have all built fully compatible electronic glasses? This did not happen- so you do have to have glasses either built for or by the 3D TV manufacturer. Recently I saw a LG 3 DTV monitoring a LG 3D camcorder ( I believe it was LG) and wearing cheap non- active glasses, the picture and depth of field was amazing. If you want to see the best 3D take a look at a Panasonic G series or even better V series on good video. It will surprise you.

Brand names have not changed. The good ones in order in my opinion are:
Panasonic Sony Samsung LG Sharp Toshiba Also top in reliability.
Why so many people are buying unknown names for the same price as the afore mentioned great brands?
I tell a lot of my clients to by their TV's from Costco Excellent brand, price, and warranty. I will even meet you and pickup and deliver/ install for my customers.
But they do sell a lot of unknown brands -

Does your Surround Sound system tell you that you are receiving Dolby Digital?
Most of the new clients' systems I see are not in the proper operating mode and are probably missing the Digital Audio connection to make them work correctly.
All these things are solved with an HDMI switching Surround Sound Receiver. There are many different cases involving non working Dolby Digital- some very easily solved.

That's it for today will return with more!



Speakers, Sound bars and Subwoofers. 10-2011

Often times people will ask about the differences in speaker types and wonder what makes some speakers better that others. In my experience, the most simple method of judging speaker quality is observing the crossover network. The crossover network is the part of the speaker which makes the appropriate sound frequencies go to the correct component: woofer, midrange, or tweeter. Most good speakers which are less than $2000 a pair will be of a two way design having a woofer/midrange and a tweeter. Poorly made speakers usually have only one or two of the parts which make up the crossover. Good speakers will have around 6-8 parts mounted on a printed circuit board and not simply hanging on the driver components like lesser quality speakers. This component is very easy to inspect on “in wall” or ceiling speakers prior to installation or while shopping. It is much more difficult on box speakers (bookshelf, micro speakers or floor standing) as generally the entire woofer element must be removed to see inside the box for evaluation of the number of components being used.

In general, you can classify good quality speakers in 3 different sound groups. First, there is the extremely forward live sounding speakers which will play very loud due to the horns. This happens because unlike a normal dynamic speaker, it uses a horn in front of the diaphragm to direct the sound to the listener or in a certain pattern, often times pro speakers model numbers will reflect the pattern in degrees of dispersion both horizontal and vertical. The best of these kinds of speakers is the JBL Pro Speaker from the Portable Sound Series. Poor quality speakers like this will bite your head off with their piercing hot spots in the frequencies we hear.

On the other end of the spectrum are the very soft speakers most notable are the English speakers brands and most notable amongst them are KEF and B&W, these speakers have fabulous detail and will present the sound in a very 3 dimensional sound stage allowing the sound to “step out of the box.” Many people listen to these speakers and think they are boring because they do not have that live sort of sound. However if you want to be a true listener, these type are very easy to listen too and played at very low volumes will sound the best.

Now for the third type. Harder to put your finger or ear on- as they will be in the middle of the two types mentioned above. These speakers will portray sound in a half dynamic half dimensional sort of fashion. Most speaker brands we know will fit into this category.

Klipsh which had built its reputation on the live, loud, loudspeakers which where all horn loaded in the early days has now decided that the bulk of there speakers will be more reserved and fit into this category.

I hate to throw any one brand under the bus but here it goes. Bose, which many people think build high quality speakers, is a very poorly built product with very dry sounding speakers which will neither excite or delight the listener. These over priced speakers are best left on the retailers shelves.

Soundbars are a neat new way to get a better sound from your TV. There are generally two types- passive meaning that a external amp or surround receiver powers them or active which means they have a built in amp. Those with built in amps are generally what you see when you go out looking for sound bars. The manufactures have set the gain on these soundbars generally where you can run them at full volume and not be very loud. This can be a problem if you want to use them to augment the sound for a conference room or in a loud environment as they simply will not play even play moderately load.

Here is the last word on soundbars, on new TV’s and Surround receivers, most all new products employ a feature called ARC- which stands for Audio Return Channel. This feature, which is universal amongst all manufactures (all brands work together) allows for two great features. If you have a simple TV with soundbar and you have plugged in your cable/Sat and or Blu-ray/DVD or any other play device directly into TV inputs the sound will be exported threw the ARC to the sound bar and the TV’s volume control will run the soundbar’s level or volume. If you have a surround sound system the ARC will control the volume of the Surround receiver even if the receiver is located out of site.

Now a word or two on equalization, thankfully equalizers have all but disappeared from good quality consumer equipment. In the old days people would have there equalizers set with a big smiley face, the level controls adding a lot of bass and a lot of treble and effectively muting the midrange. If you have a equalizer and it looks like Jim Carey’s mouth do yourself a favor and press the “bypass button.”

Imagine if you took a pair of concert speakers and you used them in your home-

Now imagine a pair of English high detail speakers and attempted to use them for a concert.

Now you know all there is to know about speakers!

 

Let's talk about LCD, LED and Edge Lit Panel TV. 12-1-2011


Lets talk about LCD, LED and Edge Lit Panel TV. As you may know today's HD televisions are not perfect. In fact if you look at most of the new sets on the market, the greatest portion being from the aforementioned grouping, here is what they are talking about:
Blur Reduction: Yes you heard me correct, what the manufacturers are doing to reduce the amount of blur, i.e. out of focus content which will be presented to you the watcher.
I am a fairly large fan of Consumer Reports magazine and their ability to tell it like it is. So please do not take my word for this, study up, read what CR magazine wrote once again about these televisions. Here is a blurb out of CR addressing blur:

120Hz, 240Hz, and 480Hz technology (LCD TVs)
"This spec refers to the refresh rate or frame rate of the display--how often it updates the images onscreen. LCD TVs have typically had a refresh rate of 60Hz, meaning they update the image 60 times a second. At that relatively slow rate, there's a tendency to blur images during scenes with fast motion, such as sports programs. Since motion is fleeting, however, many viewers don't really notice the blur all that much. If you are sensitive to the problem, you should consider a TV with a higher refresh rate. To address the issue of blur on LCD displays, many new models double the number of frames displayed per second to 120 by inserting additional video frames (or black frames). Others use 240 or 480Hz technology, and 960Hz sets have started to appear. With all of these, blur can be minimized because there is less time between frames. In some cases, a model combines a 120Hz refresh rate with a scanning, or flashing, backlight to achieve a "240Hz like" effect. For most consumers, effective 120Hz technology should do the job. Many companies are giving anti-blur technology proprietary names; Sony, for example, calls it Motionflow and JVC's is dubbed Clear Motion Drive."-Consumer Reports

Here is the problem. They use the higher rates of scanning as a method to pretend they are fixing this most annoying problem. Problem is that by asking the electronics of the TV to re-evaluate the picture this many times only leads to more blur not less. But what the heck, if it has a bigger number it is better right? Also looking at TV's in the showroom is a real crap shoot. Most Video being shown is made to avoid these problems, and the mis-adjustments which can be made to any set to either make it look extra bright or dull is simply misleading. So look at TV in the stores with great caution, what looks best at first may be the worst of the litter.
This is not a new problem. In the early days of 1080p LCD televisions, just about the time they started to build really quite good sets with very little problems with motion this is when the manufactures get into a number war and want to print on the box all of these fascinating numbers in multiples of 60. I am here to tell you that when 1080p first came out the very nice Sony LCD TV's turned to junk and so did Samsungs and the other big player sets as well. Then they learned how to build 1080p LCD sets which worked quite well back about 2-3 years ago. Next came LED and Edge Lite and 240hz and so on.. sets we currently have on the market. I have yet to see one I would want in my home, yet I am putting them up for people on a daily basis. Turn on ESPN and wait for the blur… it only takes a few seconds, up comes the sports clip and what happened? Did a fog enter the room and obscure my vision? Or does this TV just simply crap out when it comes to quick motion? This is not limited to sports; any and all fast action suffers. I would like to say this is only a problem on a couple sets. However the truth be told it is every manufacturers' sets, yes some are better that others. Apparently their Blur Reduction works indeed better.
Read CR between the lines and they will tell you the same thing. If you are buying a new TV to see the best Focus, proper screen brightness and color, and gray scale/ deep blacks, buy a Plasma.
Here is a summary from CR:


LCD or plasma TV?
Though flat-screen LCD and plasma TVs look very similar on the outside, they use different technologies. The best sets of both types are capable of excellent picture quality, though there are subtle differences in the nature of the picture. One point that needn't concern you is any difference in longevity between the two technologies. Despite reports you might have read about plasma's allegedly short life span, LCD and plasma sets should last a good 10 years or more in normal use. Neither technology is clearly better for all situations, but there are reasons to choose one over the other.

Why buy a plasma TV?
To get more bang for the buck
Plasma sets tend to cost a bit less than comparably sized LCD TVs, so the same budget could buy you a bigger screen. That's especially true of 720p plasmas, which are often exceptional bargains.

To enjoy a movie-theater experience
A good plasma TV's deep black levels and strong contrast can provide rich, natural-looking images with a more dimensional, cinematic look than an LCD offers. None of the LCD sets we've tested, including the LED-backlit models, have those same characteristics. And even LCDs that have strong blacks and contrast tend to lose them unless viewed from dead center. Also, on certain LCD sets, uneven brightness from the backlight can create cloudy areas in darker scenes that can be distracting.

For a wide viewing angle
With a plasma TV, as with a picture-tube set, the picture looks the same from almost any angle. That's a big plus if a TV will be watched by a number of people sitting around a room. Most LCD TVs still look their best only from a limited "sweet spot" in front of the screen. Generally, as you move off to the side, the picture quality of an LCD screen degrades. The image can dim, lose contrast, look washed out, or lose color accuracy as you angle away from the center of the screen. Vertical position also matters, for example if you're sitting on the floor or watching a set that's mounted above a mantel. Some new LCD TVs have a somewhat wider viewing angle than the typical set of this type, but few if any maintain off-angle picture quality as well as a plasma.

For blur-free motion
In general, plasma sets are better than LCD TVs at displaying fast motion with no blurring. That's not true of LCD displays. In our tests of LCDs with the typical 60Hz refresh rate, using special images designed to reveal this problem, we saw blurred edges, smeared details, and problems with detail on the worst performers. Most LCD sets with 120Hz or 240Hz did better than 60Hz sets, displaying less blur. Casual viewers might not notice any blur in TV programming with little motion, such as news and talk shows, but it might be apparent--though fleeting--in sports, movies, and video games. Note that the anti-blur feature on LCD sets is sometimes linked to motion smoothing, which can give film-based movies a video effect you might not like. The only way to restore the film look is to turn off the anti-blur feature.

Why buy an LCD TV?
For more choice among brands
Many major, and almost all secondary, brands now sell only LCD TVs, so you'll have a much wider choice of manufacturers and models. The only plasma brands now in stores are LG, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sanyo, plus Best Buy's Insignia store label. All those companies also sell LCD TVs.

For more choice in screen sizes
LCD TVs are available a wide range of screen sizes, from very small (below 20 inches) sets that can double as computer monitors, to extra-large screens (55 inches and larger) that can serve as the video centerpiece of a home-theater system. Plasma sets start at 42 inches and go up to 65 or more inches. If you're looking for a smaller TV you'll have to buy an LCD set.

For use in a very bright room
LCDs are generally brighter than plasma TVs, and thus hold their contrast better in bright lighting. Plasma TVs can look a bit dim in bright lighting when set to the Normal or Standard mode, which we generally recommend for home use. If you switch to the Vivid mode or raise the brightness control to compensate, the picture quality might suffer. Another difference: Many LCD sets have matte screens, which are less reflective than glossy screens, and better for daytime viewing in rooms with lots of windows or for nighttime use in rooms with bright lighting. With a plasma set, or an LCD TV with a glossy screen, you might see glare or mirror-like reflections if light falls directly on the screen, especially during dark scenes. (This is similar to what you might have experienced with the glass screen on a picture-tube TV; if that bothered you, this might too.)
For more convenient 3DPassive 3D LCD sets use polarized glasses that are much more comfortable to wear than active glasses, and much cheaper--often just $10 or $15, compared to as much as $150 for active glasses. They dim the image less than active glasses too, resulting in a brighter picture. Compared to LCD TVs using active 3D technology, they have less ghosting, though still more than plasma TVs using active 3D technology.

To reduce your electric bills
LCD sets with LED backlighting (especially edge-lit models) tend to use power more sparingly than LCDs with fluorescent backlighting and plasmas. So choose an LED model if you want to cut your bills and be kinder to the environment. A regular LCD with fluorescent backlights won't save you much, if anything, over a plasma set of comparable size. Thanks to new panel designs, today's plasmas typically use about the same amount of power as a conventional LCD.

To avoid any risk of burn-in
Both types of flat panels can do the job, but with an LCD, there's no chance static images will burn in. With a plasma TV, burn-in can be a concern with video games, computer programs, and other content that has fixed images onscreen for a long time. That includes station logos, news tickers, menus, and even the bars alongside standard-def pictures. Many plasma sets have screen-saver features to minimize the risk, which we consider to be very low. In our tests of newer sets, we've seen temporary image sticking that goes away in a day or so, but no evidence of permanent image retention. Recent anecdotal evidence from our staff and online forum participants hasn't turned up any burn-in issues in typical long-term use at home. If you're a video gamer, try to avoid leaving the game menu on screen for indefinite periods of time.

 

The Good The Bad The ARC. 1-1-2012

 

I have made note earlier in these news letters regarding what I think or thought was a great feature on new TV product and soundbars and home theater systems called ARC.
After having a few more months to use and contemplate how it works you will never guess what-but it also comes up as a mixed bag of good and bad features.

In the simplest of illustrations or systems of getting better sound from your TV, is where it seems to be best suited. If you take your new ARC TV and equip it with a new ARC soundbar and all you ever want to do is listen to improved sound from the Cable related box and or DVD Blu-ray unit ARC seems to be quite flawless. However you implement the ARC to a complete Home Theater system that also has a whole house music system attached and now the ARC is busy trying to do things against your own intentions. Here are a few examples of the settings which will interact and cause your system not to follow your instructions. Blu ray players and cable/ satellite boxes now have the ability to interface with arc. Power up your Blu-ray player and the input switches automatically to BD/DVD input- sounds great except what if you were only trying to retrieve a disk out of the player? Now you must reset the Surround Receiver back to the proper input. Close the tray and it once again will jump the SR back to BD input. Most units which are ARC equipped have a menu which will ask questions like Auto power On, Auto power off, Auto input select, ARC On, HDMI control On… the list goes on. My experience with these controls ( every manufacturer has their own list and fundamental differences in the way the controls will interact with there own equipment) now take those differences and compile them with mixed manufactures ie: Panasonic TV with Sony receiver with LG blu-ray player and Directv (use any combination you like) and you cannot predict the way the system will react and how best to set all the presets which exist and attempt to predict the way the end user will like how it all operates, or confuse them to no end.
Don't get me wrong this is generally a good feature. But now integrate a fancy do it all remote control and the end user will find themselves throwing the remote at the TV in disgust. The secret to ARC control is understanding how the different manufactures built in control mechanisms will interact with each other and what switches in which units set correctly will make there system work best for them. I have been at this for nearly 30 years and can generally read very well what a customer wants from there system. I am quickly learning that the combination of switch settings, different manufactures, and the different ways even quite simple systems can be wired leaves a near endless combination of end results.

The simple answer: Shut off all ARC and HDMI interfaces on all units.
Learn how to turn on your system manually.
Learn how to turn on your system with a remote, hopefully the remote which comes with either your cable system or Sat. system as these remotes are best suited to do what you do with your system over 95% of the time. (watch cable or Sat)
Learn how to switch your system manually from Cable/Sat to Bluray/DVD etc.
Learn how to turn on peripheral speakers in your whole house system and select the appropriate input. (most generally best done with simple stereo receiver)
If you can spend time learning a new computer program you can also spend time learning the basic operation of your Home Theater system. To think that a preprogrammed smart?? Remote is the answer is a headache ready to form.
Hold on that's a completely different topic which we will get to.

 

Understanding HDMI 2-14-2012

I have been around this HDMI- High Definition Multimedia Interface.now since it first converted from DVI- Digital Visual Interface. I was thinking I had it figured out a couple years ago… Now it seems as the equipment gets fancier and the applications get more advanced and the numbers of different wires and their design states change, it continues to cause me more issues. There is one thing you can count on and that is: "you cannot count on anything." HDMI, as I stated in a earlier news letter, is great when the system is simple, add to the equation HDMI distribution a variety of devices including switches and multiple generations of wires and soon you have a very complicated mixed bag of results. Here is an example:
I have been working on a Church video system which has 4 HDMI fed monitors a 1x4 HDMI active splitter with a consumer grade camcorder and 2 other pro PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) cameras, computer and Blu-ray switched by a Kramer 9 input scaling switch which has both HDMI and VGA outputs. I had the HDMI output of the consumer camera running through an HDMI cable which I had coupled to a longer cable for movement of the camera. When I plugged the camera in without the extension wire, the camera developed a noise in the picture which looked almost like tape dropout from the days of video tape. Also I notice that the active 1x2 splitter which is set up to allow monitoring of the camera prior to switching developed a power green LED without having its power port plugged in, and when power port was plugged in, the noise level from that camera was roughly 10 times worse. The long and short of it was that a specific HDMI wire was passing or cutting off the power leg (within the HDMI cable) and letting the system work fine when it was in series with the installation. When this wire was removed, the problem occurred. It took me over an hour to figure this out. It did not occur to me that a good HDMI wire was actually bad for the installation.
Not sure whether or not we will see more issues like this on a consumer type system but I can tell you that the interplay of HDMI wires, equipment splitters, settings, and play and receive signals act in ways which are almost impossible to predict. If having trouble with control and or logic operation of your system it is important to both turn on and or off HDMI related switches within all pieces of gear associated with the system, including ones hooked up to inputs which are not being used.
Let me give you an example:
Customer calls and says that the auto speaker switch on his Sony TV no longer works when the Sony surround receiver is turned on/off, as it did when I installed it. This was not the first time I had heard of this problem as my own system had quit working in the same way… (Insert plumber with leaky faucet). Customer had hooked up his PC via HDMI to a separate input on the TV. You would not think that this would cause a problem, however apparently HDMI signals are constantly looked at or listened to for control- command related items at all times on all inputs. I looked for the switch (in menu) of the pc monitor output on the computer too allow for the HDMI control portion to be shut off and could find no such switch. I also hooked the computer output to a open HDMI input on the Sony surround only to find the same problem reoccurring (auto speaker select) TV/Amp not working.

 

Lastly, here is a problem I discovered in Sony surround receivers not receiving Dolby Digital, no blue light on the front. I turns out that when you select in the HDMI control section TV+Amp as the configuration that it blocks the amp from working in Dolby Digital apparently because it figures the TV cannot work in Dolby Digital so neither can the amp?? I can only guess that because the play or source device cannot distinguish which piece is being used it can only export a non Dolby Digital signal.

If you have ever heard a Dolby Surround or especially a Dolby Digital surround playing without a center channel speaker the spoken word becomes almost impossible to hear and one complaint I often hear from people is the sound goes up and down, loud to quiet and the volume is never correct. This is caused by the same problem, a surround amp processing out the center channel out of the stereo signal or digital signal and then not routing that sound to a center channel speaker (often times because there is not one) or it has become disconnected, shorted or the amp has lost its center channel amp.

 

I am thinking that running HDMI adaptor to a DVI back to HDMI might help some of these problems.. this would work only in cases where you did not need the audio supplied by HDMI and the control was causing you problems.
I will get back to you on this!