When it comes to our entertainment systems, we all want the best of the best –the perfect picture, the highest quality sound. However, if you don’t know the terms to look for, shopping for the best equipment for your home entertainment system can be a challenge. Once you learn expressions such as OLED, Quantum Dot Display, and HDR, the whole process becomes just a little bit easier.
The term OLED, meaning organic light-emitting diode, refers to a type of television or monitor that isn’t backlit, at least not in the sense that most of us are used to. The pixels in the screen can be controlled independently because they each have their own current, allowing for a greater contrast ratio and more precise imaging. HDR –or high dynamic range –is used to describe how, when a video is shot, a greater contrast between light and shadow is captured, allowing for a wider spectrum of colour to appear on your television. As much as the phrase Quantum Dot Display sounds like something out of Star Trek, its actually describes plates of Nano-crystals in your television between the backlight and the LED panel that enhances the varying shades of colour, allowing for greater depth of the image.
Now for every great imaging system, there is an equal and complementary sound system. Up until last year, most television companies neglected advancing the technology in their speaker systems in favour of high-definition images. However, this year audio companies have stepped in to create better and better sound to improve your home theatre. What you are looking for is something that has high-resolution audio –a term that was originally coined by Sony. Systems like the LG® MusicFlow which will allow you connect almost any type of speaker to your home network and control them through an app on your smart phone. The upside about connecting multiple speakers around your living room is that you can better replicate the type of sound that you would hear in a movie theatre. The downside is that stocking your room with speakers is that it gets pretty costly pretty quickly. However, one of the leading movie theatre audio companies, DTS, has been working hard in the advancement of audio technology and is, in doing so, revolutionizing the sound bar industry. DTS’s new sound bar technology tricks your brain into thinking it is hearing crisp surround sound when it’s actually being produced by a solitary bar under your television. Because of this advancement, soon even more cost effective sound bars will be of a much higher quality.