Black Friday and the holiday buying season are here, and once you’re in the store paying for your new hella cheap TV, or maybe something a little nicer, you might be offered an extended warranty. Extend your TV’s warranty for a small fee, offers the salesman, in case anything goes wrong. At first this seems …
Read More »
Ultra HD, colloquially known as “4K,” is everywhere on TV shelves and online this year. Previously restricted to only high-end models, 4K resolution has become so inexpensive that your next 50-inch or larger TV will probably be 4K. What does it mean? Does it matter? Why should I care? Here are the basics — a cheat sheet if you will …
Read More »
YouTube is firing up support for videos shot in high-dynamic-range, a picture quality growing more popular among TV makers. High-dynamic range accentuates color and amps up the contrast between the brightest whites and darkest blacks, improving overall image quality. The announcement by Google’s YouTube coincides with the rollout this month of the Chromecast Ultra streaming device, also made by Google. …
Read More »
We’re well into the transition to Ultra HD “4K.” Most mid- and high-end TVs are now Ultra HD resolution, with many also supporting HDR. Not surprisingly, cable manufacturers are jumping at the chance to sell new and more expensive “4K” HDMI cables. But guess what — you probably don’t need 4K HDMI cables, because your current ones can likely do …
Read More »
What do you need to get 4K in your home? I’ll give you a hint: it’s more than just a TV. While the 4K-compatible TV is the most obvious part — and prices on those TVs have never been lower — there’s also content, external devices, cables, and more to consider. So here, in five easy steps, is what you …
Read More »
The latest TV technology is high dynamic range, or HDR. If you want to take advantage of this latest and greatest, you need an HDR TV (of course), an HDR-capable source (either a streaming app on your TV or a media streamer/UHD BD player) and HDR video to watch. But do you need new HDMI cables? Surely those many-years-old, dust-covered, …
Read More »
Is SUHD really better than UHD, or is that “S” full of it? Is HDR better than 4K? What’s the difference between 4K, HDR, OLED, UHD, SUHD, UHDBD, and all the other letter jumbles? Good questions. The TV world is filled with impenetrable jargon, and TVs can get expensive, so it’s certainly worth taking a moment and figuring out what’s …
Read More »
Rumor had it that the focus of Apple‘s October event would be on its new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, and sure enough it was, with a new, entry-level 13-inch MacBook with standard functions keys thrown in as a bonus. But if you were hoping for news about any other new hardware products, you didn’t get it. Here’s a quick …
Read More »
High dynamic range (HDR) is quite the buzzword. There’s been an explosion of “4K HDR” TV sets to choose from, along with HDR TV shows and movies from Netflix, Amazon and others. Meanwhile there’s “another” HDR with which most people are much more familiar. It’s a photography process that’s been around for years, in particular on phone cameras. And now …
Read More »
The new Google Pixel phone has a super camera, with snappy performance and image quality that beats Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus overall. So how did Google do it? A lot of the success comes from a technology Google calls HDR+ that blends multiple photos into one to overcome common problems with mobile phone photography. Knowing that photography is a top-three …
Read More »
