Sep 22 Podcast #810: CEDIA 2017 and HDMI 2.1
Well you knew it wouldn’t last forever, but HDMI 2.0 is about to become the old standard and you guessed it, you will need another cable. But do you really need to upgrade? The HT Guys will help you sort it out.
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Today's Show:
News:
- LG's and Samsung's diverse smart home strategies
- Roku May Be Building Smart Speaker
- Black Friday: 55-Inch 4K TVs For $239?
- Dish Airing College Football in 4K
Other:
- ‘South Park’ Episode Triggers Viewers’ Amazon Alexa Devices with Raunchy Requests
- The 'South Park' premiere set off a lot of fans' Alexa and Google Home devices with hilarious phrases
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Best of CEDIA 2017
CE Pro named their 2017 best of CEDIA. We discuss a few on today’s show:
Door Lock: Yale Locks & Hardware Yale Assure Lock SL $200 Create unique pin codes for friends and family and remove codes whenever you need to. The lock is Grade 2 certified and backed by Yale, one of the world's best known brands in the lock industry that's been securing homes since 1846, ensuring that your home and family is always safe. Available in Z-Wave Plus, ZigBee and iM1 for HomeKit compatibility
Climate: HiberSense HiberSense Connected Climate Control. HiberSense acts as a network of smart thermostats adjusting the climate in every room The company plans to sell directly to the custom installation channel, as well as to HVAC contractors. Integration with Control4, Crestron, Savant, Lutron, Amazon Alexa and other control systems is coming, according to the company. Via the company’s online portal, integrators can build their own packages at their own price levels. Recommended pricing starts $99 for vents (based on style), $200 for the hub, and $79 for the sensors.
Television: Samsung Q9F QLED 4K TV $3500 - $20000 65” - 88” An unbelievably brilliant picture made possible by over a billion colors, producing images you have to see to believe. With 100% color volume thanks to Samsung's proprietary Quantum dots, picture quality and color volume have been elevated beyond any prior Samsung product. As smart as it is beautiful, the new Smart TV knows what’s connected and lets you control everything with one remote.
A/V Source Component: Sony UBP-X1000ES 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Player $600 - Built for optimum video and audio performance, this universal player enhances playback on non-HDR TVs with HDR to SDR conversion, grants access to the latest 4K HDR streaming services, and supports playback of almost any disc or file format including Hi-Res Audio.
Projector: Barco Residential Medea No pricing available. Featuring class-leading brightness levels, a high level of detail, highly saturated colors, sharper images and less latency, Medea delivers stunning images at 4K UHD resolution with HDR10 support. The outstanding image quality is powered by a new optical engine and laser light source, providing significantly improved image uniformity, nearly instant on/off, and a light source life of up to 40,000 hours for maximum performance and convenience.
Note - Sony added three new “true 4K” projectors to its lineup. The entry-level VPL-VW285ES projector, which features HDR, 10-bit depth and Sony’s Triluminous color processing, at $4,999 MSRP, available now. A step above that, the new VPL-VW385ES runs $7,999 and adds installer-friendly features like picture position memories for storing format-specific settings, advanced iris control, built-in auto calibration and customized lens functions. It’s also now shipping.
At the higher end, but still an attractive price for what it offers, the new VPL-VW885ES bumps the technology up to three-chip laser light source; adds Sony’s Reality Creation and Motionflow processing for sharp, smooth images; and has two 18Gbps HDCP 2.2 HDMI ports for future-proof content delivery. MSRP is $24,999 and it’s due out in late November.
Subwoofer: (TIE!) SVS SB16-Ultra Subwoofer $2000 & Stealth Acoustics Stealth Image III Sub - Customizable On-wall Art Subwoofer $600
SB16-Ultra features a massive 16" Ultra driver with astonishing 8" edge wound voice coil, a stunningly powerful 1,500 watts continuous, 5,000+ watts peak power Sledge amplifier with fully discrete MOSFET output and an innovative subwoofer control and DSP smartphone app with custom presets for precise tuning. The ultimate sealed box subwoofer.
An on-wall, high-performance, totally sealed subwoofer that has no grill, which can be easily painted, wallpapered, or finished in virtually any look imaginable, describes the Stealth Image III subwoofer. Unseen behind the highly durable proprietary FidelityGlass, UV protected, fiber-infused face panel are two beefy 8” cone woofers sporting 20 oz. magnets, driving bass response down to as low as 30Hz at levels up to 103dB. The low profile enclosure measures only 3.75” in depth, yet the radiating area of the front panel face provides more surface area than a 20” cone woofer – that’s a lot of surface area to couple deep bass to the air. Technically, there is a very tight air chamber between the drivers and the panel face, allowing the powerful 8” woofers to energize a much larger surface area via acoustical coupling. The result is a subwoofer solution that not only performs great but looks good doing so.
Most Promising: Dish Network AirTV Player $129. AirTV is the only major streaming platform that integrates local over-the-air (OTA) programming with your streaming services. Just add an AirTV Adapter and an OTA antenna to get local channels like ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX in HD, without a monthly cable bill.
Well you knew it wouldn’t last forever, but HDMI 2.0 is about to become the old standard and you guessed it, you will need another cable. But do you really need to upgrade? The HT Guys will help you sort it out. Let’s look at each one in a little more detail: Higher Video Resolutions - 4K50/60, 4K100/120, 5K50/60, 5K100/120, 8K50/60, 8K100/120, 10K50/60, 10K100/120. Right now there aren't any TVs on the market that can make use of these new resolutions nor are there any plans for content providers planning on supporting these new resolutions. Based on resolution support, we say no need to hold off a purchase based on the new resolutions. Dynamic HDR - The current HDR being used by the studios embeds metadata telling the television how to handle the image. This is done for the entire movie which means that some scenes look good and others not so much. It's a compromise. Dynamic HDR now embeds this data for each frame or series of frames. Note - Dolby Vision HDR already supports this on the current cable. You aren’t missing much here. Buy a TV that supports Dolby Vision HDR and no need to wait for HDMI 2.1. eARC - Support for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. While you will need new TVs and receivers to support this feature, you won’t need cables. Today’s current HDMI cable will support this. This is only an issue if you are using apps on the TV to provide the audio to your receiver and you want Dolby Atmos or DTS:X. However, if you want to buy a TV now that doesn’t support HDMI 2.1, go ahead. You can fix this issue by buying a $100 set top box and provide the video and audio directly to your receiver without going through the TV first. Game Mode - VRR features variable refresh rate, which enables a 3D graphics processor to display the image at the moment it is rendered for more fluid and better detailed gameplay, and for reducing or eliminating lag, stutter, and frame tearing. Translation - Faster gaming! Our take, if you are a serious gamer you may be interested in this. The HT Guys are not gamers. 48G Cables - enable up to 48Gbps bandwidth for uncompressed HDMI 2.1 feature support including 8K video with HDR. The cable is backwards compatible with earlier versions of the HDMI Specification and can be used with existing HDMI devices. You will need this to make use of the new video capabilities. Our take, buy them after they have been out for a while and then buy from Amazon Basics or Monoprice.HDMI 2.1
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