Home Theater Geeks (Audio)

Personal-cinema architect John Bishop talks about movie aspect ratios and how to accurately reproduce them. Topics include the aspect ratios of different movies through history, how some movies (such as Dunkirk and The Dark Knight) use more than one aspect ratio, his experience seeing Dunkirk in several venues with different projection setups, optical-anamorphic versus electronic aspect-ratio control, how electronic scaling affects resolution and contrast, the constant image-height approach to multi-aspect-ratio setups, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: John Bishop

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Audio engineer Bob Schulein talks about his work combining immersive binaural audio with virtual reality. Topics include the difference between VR for gaming and music recordings, different techniques for capturing binaural sound, head tracking, combining immersive audio with 3D video, Bob's latest project recording a bluegrass band in binaural audio and 3D video, binaural recordings from the artist's perspective, binaural playback with speakers, answers to chat-room questions, and more. We also play several clips with binaural audio, which can only be heard in the video versions of the podcast; the audio-only MP3 is mono, so no binaural effects can be heard in that case.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Bob Schulein

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Audio legend Bob Carver talks about what he's been up to lately with his new company, Bob Carver Corporation. Topics include tube amps and why they continue to be so appealing, new approaches to tube-amp design, increasing tube longevity, amplifier topologies, the importance of the output transformer, the relationship between power amps and speakers, damping factor, Bob's latest power amps, line-array speakers, Bob's Amazing Line Source speaker, his thoughts on subwoofers, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Bob Carver

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Nanomaterial expert Peter Palomaki talks about quantum dots and microLEDs and how they apply to video displays. Topics include what quantum dots are, how they function, what they're made of, why cadmium-based quantum dots work best but are toxic, new materials used in the shells of quantum dots, the current and future ways they're used in TVs, replacing phosphors in LEDs with quantum dots, microLEDs and how they might be used in video displays, manufacturing microLEDs, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Peter Palomaki

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AVS Forum Associate Editor Mark Henninger and host Scott Wilkinson spend a pleasant hour answering questions from the chat room. Topics include why home projectors don't yet implement Dolby Vision, 4K/UHD projectors in the $2-3K price range, home-theater lighting control, whether we prefer the LG E7 or Sony A1E OLED TV, will there ever be a single HDR format, high-resolution audio, headphone virtualization, VR for movies, Dolby Atmos, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Mark Henninger

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Video technologists Joel Silver, Matt Murray, and Mark Henninger join host Scott Wilkinson to discuss the 2017 TV Shootout held during CE Week in New York City. Joel headed the event, Matt set up the entire system and was one of the judges, and Mark carefully observed the proceedings. Topics include the competing TVs, the addition of a Sony BVM-X300 4K HDR OLED broadcast-reference monitor, the move from audience voting to video-professional judges, the establishment of three performance categories (dark-room, bright room, and streaming), system setup, calibrating the TVs, the judging criteria, the comparative performance of the TVs, the winner, how closely the OLEDs performed, how the LCDs fared, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guests: Joel Silver, Matt Murray, and Mark Henninger

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Video specialists Joe Kane, Geoff Tully, and Ron Williams join host Scott Wilkinson to talk about the two-day Samsung QLED and HDR10 Summit we all recently attended. Topics include what quantum dots are, current use of QDs in video displays, replacing color filters with QDs, using QDs as direct emitters under electrical stimulation, LEDs, microLED displays, the variability of HDR compared with SDR, Joe Kane's vision for reducing that variability, HDR10+ dynamic metadata, Florian Friedrich's new HDR stability test patterns, answers to chat-room questions, and much more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guests: Joe Kane, Geoffrey Tully, and Ron Williams

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Composer John Keane talks about his latest project, a 5.1-channel album of electroacoustic music on Blu-ray. Topics include his background as a recording musician from the age of 10 or so, various recording projects, his current studio, conceiving the new album as 5.1 from the start, combining electronic and acoustic instruments, mixing the music in 5.1, creating a 2-channel mix, creating a binaural version that reproduces the 5.1 soundfield in headphones, the benefit of high-res audio, answers to chat-room questions, and more. Plus, we hear a bit of John's music and see the abstract video patterns that move to the music.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: John Keane

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THX CTO Scott Francis talks about the company's work in commercial - and home - cinema certification, product certification, and technology development. Topics include history of THX, some technical details of the iconic signature sound called Deep Note, a new partnership with Cinemark called THX Cinema Alliance, recommendations for speaker placement and seating distance in a home theater, immersive audio, high dynamic range, audio and video product testing and certification, the company's recent acquisition by Razer, AAA amplifier technology, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Scott Francis

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Don North, president and chief designer at Riva Audio, talks about the company's WAND (Wireless Audio Network Device) whole-home audio speakers, the Arena and Festival. Topics include driver designs, passive radiators, built-in class-D amps, Wi-Fi networking, closed versus open architecture, casting, Trillium technology that creates a large stereo soundfield from a single cabinet, high-res audio, answers to chat-room questions, and more.

Host: Scott Wilkinson

Guest: Don North

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Thanks to CacheFly for the bandwidth for this show.