This week we look at how our buying habits have changed for AV and Hi-FI equipment during lockdown, we ask if a large screen HDR TV or a projector is best for a home cinema system and Greg looks at a TPLink whole house mesh Wi-Fi system for the home. Plus it is the end of the month so we round-up the best music, films and TV shows to watch...
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Presented by Phil Hinton with Ed Selley, Cas Harlow, Greg Hook and Tom Davies
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Here's the question you have to ask. What to you want the environment in which you watch movies to feel like? If you are really interested in recreating a "movie theatre" atmosphere and psychotically placing yourself in a movie theatre as opposed to your "TV room," then a projected image is the only way to go. They call it a Home Theatre and not a Home TV room for a reason.
There are the two issues that everyone debates in the"which is better" discussions -- the brightness nits issue and the size. There is a third issue that is rarely discussed and that is the sound system and how well it can match the "perfect" theatre system, be it 5.1, 7.1 or Atmos (you know...All Over .1)
I say, unless you can darken a room as close enough to what the movie theatre environment looks like, it matters not if you have a 2000 nit image in front of you if it is in a brightly lit room, you still only have a TV den and not a movie theater, and that's great, if you are not interested in trying to recreate a cinema environment. Many people aren't and that's fine. But if you are, then watching a movie in a room with the lights on so the occupants can chit chat and socialize simply won't cut it; if people are talking in a lit room while a movie is running, no matter how bright the image to allow for the high ambient light levels, then you are stuck with a display screen which, no matter how big, will always be a TV and a room that will never be a cinema.
And yes, let's talk about size; the fellow or gal goes out to find the biggest TV they can afford, but no matter how big, the size rarely seems to inspire them to treat it as if it were a cinema screen being placed in movie theatre. It simply remains and is treated like just a big TV screen is, It never seems to inspire the owner to add things that advance the look of a cinema -- no masking (in fact the big thing is to try to get that bevel to almost be invisible), never any curtains with curtain lights -- those very expensive TVs always remain as just that -- TVs.
But put in a video projector and a screen, even if it is smaller than the largest available TV, and a whole new mindset emerges. A large screen, fed movie content by a projector, is just the opposite. Those screens tend to be enhanced with the accouterments of a cinema. Projection setups by their very nature motivate the owners to adorn that space with what you find in a cinema, from comfy seats with cup holders, curtains, movie posters, etc. A friend's son, in his first apartment insisted on turning his modest living room into a cinema. He didn't have a lot to spend, but still once that projector and screen were set up, he did everything he could, even if he had to resort to inventive things like purchasing inexpensive strip LEDs to tape around the perimeter of the room to mimic the isle lights in a cinema. Once he started that movie, anyone who dared speak above a whisper and about anything more than "pass the salt" for his buttered popcorn, would get thrown out. As it should be!
But of course the elephant in the room that is rarely discussed or even acknowledged issue that is by its nature, essential to a credible sound system and ONLY addressable when using a projection system, but impossible to address if using TV display, at least until they can figure out how to make an acoustically transparent TV panel.
Any cinema sound technician or designer of cinema sound installations will tell you that UNLESS THE CENTER CHANNEL IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE LEFT AND RIGHT CHANNEL, you are doomed. People with TVs spend huge amounts of money on a TWO CHANNEL system (Left and Right channels -- still thinking in stereo, not cinema configurations) and then somehow delude themselves into thinking that a wimpy little soundbar under that TV is somehow going to cut it as a Center channel -- you know, the Center channel where the majority of dialogue is mixed. It's a joke. And they aren't laughing when they complain, "We can't hear what they are saying...the music and the effects are WAY to loud." Take a guess why, TV viewer!
For Cinema Sound, people have to stop thinking two channel stereo. Cinema sound, the way it's mixed and the way it's played back is ALWAYS with THREE screen front channels, not two. A TV screen with the most robust and high-end Left and Right speaker systems that the cinemaphile can afford sitting on either side of it, and then an unmatched soundbar stuck under it is simply sound done wrong. Now I know, it's the best that can be done until they invent that 2000 nit TV panel that is sound transparent, but no matter the reason, it is the nature of the beast: you simply can't put speakers behind a TV and to get true cinema sound, you need three identical speaker systems consisting of identical power capacity, identical reproduction characteristics and they need to be place BEHIND that screen so as to create the necessary illusion of sound emanating from and married to the image. That illusion, BTW, is more important that you think; if you can SEE a speaker bin, your mind tends to demand you identify that location as the source of the sound. With speakers behind a projection screen, you can't see the sound source so the illusion that the sound is spread evenly across the entire width of the screen becomes more real. If you can see those two boxes on either side of the screen, illusion is broke and the sound will always be locked to those two locations. And of course, without a speaker system identical to the Left and Right placed behind the screen in the center, you are then just stuck with the laughable soundbar to do all the work of what should be a Center channel of the same make and model of the Left and Right. Or as some folks do, trying desperately to adhere to the cinema tech's hard rule of THREE identical speaker systems for the screen channel to adequately reproduce cinema soundtracks, they'll raise up the TV and put an identical speaker system under it for the Center channel. Nice try, but that identical Center speaker is still not in the temporal alignment with the Left and Right speakers; more than likely it's going to have to live on its side with the high frequency driver no where near in the same plane as it's L & R siblings.
So it is really not debate as to what's "better," rather than what are you trying to achieve as an overall, psychological effect of the space. Do you want to have a Home Cinema or a TV/game room? If you really want to get serious about recreating a movie cinema, then video projection with an acoustically transparent screen is THE way to go, and don't buy a stereo pair...buy 3 identical screen channel speakers. There is a reason almost all AV Processors have three identical power outputs for the front channels and not two. You have to get that two channel stereo mind set out of your brain and think CINEMA!
And as for 3D, which for some of us is like magic on steroids and for which I will forever spit on the ground any time I hear the names Sansung or LG, video projection is the only way you can go. For someone who has a library of almost every 3D movie ever released, for a Home Cinema not able to show those films in 3D is just unthinkable. This has gone on long enough; I will let the other passionate 3D lovers out there wax poetic about the glories of the depth of 3D. It's stereo for the eyeballs and just as impressive. For those 3D haters out there, I say they should be forced to have to watch movies only in mono sound.