HDTV GlossaryHDTV - Plasma - LCD - Digital TVs
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Read the glossary on these pages to help you in deciding
which Digital TV, HDTV- Plasma, LCD, Wide Screen, or Flat Panel TV is best for you.
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3/2 Pulldown (Progressive Cinema Scan)
Provides more faithful reproduction of film-based materials. Movies on film are converted to NTSC interlaced video (480i) for television by a process known as telecine conversion, in which the 24 frame-per-second film is converted to video at 60 fields per second. The fields are then paired to create 30-frame-per-second 480i video. Some of the frames will contain dissimilar pairs of fields derived from two different frames of the original film, which causes artifacts. Generally, when 480i video is converted to progressive scan (480p), the artifacts from the telecine process will remain. Progressive cinema scan circuitry, by contrast, converts 480i video to 480p while restoring the original frames of the film for a more faithful movie reproduction.
See also Progressive Cinema Scan.
4:3
The width-to-height ratio of standard televisions.
16:9
The width-to-height ratio of widescreen TVs and HDTVs. This screen ratio is presently considered the mostlikely contender to be adopted by the ATV committee for future widescreen broadcasts.
- Benefit: Allows you to watch movies in the original wide-frame format and not miss any imagery.
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AC-3 (Dolby® Digital)
See also Dolby® Digital.
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC)
Also known as ATSC, the committee responsible for digital television standards and development, as well as all 18 formats of DTV.
A/D
Analog to digital conversion (or converter). Used at transmission end of broadcast
Analog TV
"Standard" televisionbroadcasts analog TV. Analog signals vary continuously, representing fluctuations in color and brightness. The screen resolution of an analog TV is about 512 x 400 pixels.
Anamorphic
The process of compressing wide screen images, 1.78:1 or greater, to fit into the bandwidth of a standard 1.33:1 television signal. The images are then expanded for viewing in their original format on a widescreen display device.
Artifacts
Unwanted visible effects in the picture created by disturbances in the transmission or image processing, such as edge crawl or hanging dots in analog pictures, or pixelation in digital pictures.
Aspect Ratio
Refers to the width of a picture relative to its height. If an NTSC picture is four feet wide, it will be three feet high; thus it has a 4:3 aspect ratio. HDTV has a 16:9 aspect ratio. (The relationship of width to height in a television set. Traditional Color Television product features a 4:3 aspect ratio. Widescreen and future HDTV products will incorporate a 16:9 aspect ratio.)
A/V (Monitor) Inputs
Permits direct connection of your VCR, DVD or Home Satellite Receiver to your television set for playback purposes. When compared to RF performance (channel 3/4), direct video inputs can improve picture performance by as much as 20 percent.
A/V Outputs
These outputs allow you to easily send the audio/video signal to a VCR or DVD recorder for recording. Fixed audio outputs can also be connected to an A/V receiver to provide a cleaner signal for two-channel based home theater systems.
- Benefit: Simple connection of A/V signals to additional components for recording or amplification.
BBE® High-Definition Sound
Improves speech intelligibility, and restores the dynamic range of musical passages to help provide a more natural sound.
Licensed by BBE Sound, Inc. under USP4638258 and 4482866. BBE and BBE symbol are registered trademarks of BBE Sound, Inc.
Bit Rate
Measured as "bits per second," and used to express the rate at which data is transmitted or processed. The higher the bit rate, the more data that is processed and, typically, the higher the picture resolution.
Brightness
Brightness ratings are listed as cd/m² (candelas per square meter) raging from 250 to 400. The higher the number the brighter the picture.
Calibration
To optimize the settings of the TV for your home lighting conditions.
Most HD TVs are preset from the factory to be as bright as possible on the showroom floor (brighter TVs sell better), and that once at home and with the lights turned down the picture looks excessively bright, even glaring, the colors are bad and skin tones might make your skin crawl. The solution: hire a HDTV Professional Calibrator ($200-$400) or use any number of Calibration DVDs, you should have gotten one with the TV. THX® Optimizer is one way you can use to calibrate your picture and sound.
Color Temperature
Color temperature is a way of measuring and describing the color quality of white light by comparing it to a theoretical black body heated to a specified temperature on the Kelvin scale. It's important in the design and use of HDTV's, computer monitors and digital cameras. Every time we watch a TV, use a computer monitor, take a picture or look at a photograph, our brains adjust the colors we see so that they look the way we think they ought to. Color temperature is a useful way to describe the whiteness of white light, especially when comparing one light source to another.
Contrast Ratio
This refers to the difference in brightness from full brightness and black. If a unit puts out 300 cd/m² (candelas per square meter) at full brightness and 0.3 cd/m² when black the vendor will divide 300 cd/m² by 0.3 cd/m² to get a 1,000:1 ratio. Some manufactureres will measure dynamic contrast ratio, in which the unit will analyze the signal and adjust the backlight to create an even higher contrast ratio.
D/A
Conversion of digital to analog signals. The device is also referred to as DAC (D/A converter). In order for conventional television technology to display digitally transmitted TV data, the data must be decoded first and then converted back to an analog signal.
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