General:
Technology:
DLP or LCD TV? Which is better and which is the right TV for you?
Digital Music:
Is Digital Music (MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC) Truly CD Quality?
How Do I Play My Digital Music Through My Home Entertainment System?
Blu-Ray:
Will Blu-Ray Improve My Current System Without Updating Anything Else?
What Are Blu-Ray Firmware Updates?
Where Can I Get Blu-Ray Firmware Updates?
Surround Sound:
Is Upgrading To A 7.1 Channel Surround System Worth It; Would It Make A Difference?
Will 7.1 Surround Sound Work In My Room?
There are other companies that claim they can do what
Premier Electronic Solutions does. Why should we choose to do business with you?
It's true there are plenty of companies out there that
would be glad to take your money. So why choose us? First and
foremost, as a referral-based company, our primary concern is making you (our
clients and customers) so happy with our service that you will tell everyone you
know that no one can do a better job for them. Over our 21+ years in
business, we have been fortunate enough to bring the joy of movies, music, and
automation to thousands of satisfied clients.
Beyond our focus on service, our company offers the most knowledgeable, best trained, and experienced staff in the county. We have certified professional designers, installers, and programmers who can help transform your dreams into realities. Other companies might talk a good talk, but do they have the knowledge, training, and experience to make it happen?
Our 21+ years in business have allowed us to see almost any challenge imaginable come up, and we know how to prevent or preempt them. Our company's expertise and professional certifications are your assurance that we know how to follow a project through from beginning to end and make everything work as intended.
If you wouldn't trust an amateur heart surgeon or an amateur automobile mechanic, why trust an amateur Electronics System Contractor?
Is Digital Music (MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC) Truly CD Quality?>
Digital music is everywhere
today. It’s on our computers, iPods, in our cars, and even in our Home
Entertainment Systems. It takes up a fraction of the space and makes it easy to
catalog large collections. But is this digital music equal to the sound quality
found on a CD?
The answer? It depends.
Digital music is available in many different formats including uncompressed
WAV, as well as the more popular
compressed formats: MP3, Apple’s
AAC,
Microsoft’s WMA,
and FLAC. The positive side of
compression is that it allows for more music to be stored on your hard drive,
iPod, or other digital device. The downside of most compression is that in order
to shrink the file size a great deal of the original recording is stripped away
or lost. In fact, these file format are called “Lossy”.
Most times when you are either downloading or ripping these audio formats (MP3,
AAC, and WMA) you will see a “bit
rate” listed. These bit rates tell you the amount of data allowed per second
due to compression. Typically, you will see bit rates like 96, 128, and 192 kbit/s.
And while 192 might sound like a big number, the scary truth is that an
uncompressed CD is encoded at 1,411.2 kbit/s. Even 192 kbit/s is but a fraction
of CD quality.
But all is not lost for digital music. January 2001 saw the introduction of an
open source
audio format called Free Lossless Audio Codec, or FLAC. The FLAC format
functions much like a
zip file for data in that it compresses the size of the file without any
loss of data. The difference with FLAC is that it can the information can be
accessed without decompressing the file. With a
lossless format like FLAC, you can achieve compression of 40 to 60% and
retain identical audio quality to the original.
So can digital music be CD quality? Yes it can with a lossless format like FLAC.
And even though they came ½ a decade later,
Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMA Lossless) and
Apple Lossless Audio Codec
(.m4a) both offer true CD quality sound. So when making your digital music
choices, remember to choose wisely.
How Do I
Play My Digital Music Through My Home Entertainment System?
With Lossless Audio formats (FLAC,
WMA Lossless, and Apple Lossless) you are able compress and store CD quality
sound easily. But how do you play it back through your Home Entertainment
System? The solutions are many!
Did you know that all of our new Pioneer Elite Receivers, as well as Denon’s AVR-3310CI, AVR-4310CI, and AVR-4810CI, have the capability to connect to an iPod, iPhone, or other usb storage device directly? No dock required. Plug in, browse through the on-screen display, and play!
But what if your music is stored on you home computer or a networked hard drive? No problem with Denon’s new AVR-3310CI, AVR-4310CI, and AVR-4810CI. Pioneer Elite’s SC-25 and SC-27 also have you covered. Thanks to their built-in network port, they are able to stream music across your home network.
And if a new receiver isn’t in the cards, you can count on Universal’s ultimately user-friendly PSX-2 Personal Server with TV On-Screen Control. There is no easier way to find and playback music from your iPod. Think buttons like, “More of this Genre” and “More from this Artist”. Brilliant!
What Is Blu-Ray?
Blu-Ray as a technology encompasses many different things. For simplicity sake,
we’ll focus on Blu-Ray as it relates to home entertainment.
Most of us have watched movies on DVD for years. Blu-Ray is positioned as the
direct replacement for DVD movies. Why would you want to switch to Blu-Ray when
you already have a DVD collection? The biggest reason to switch is because Blu-Ray
discs offer vastly superior audio and video quality.
In terms of video quality, 1080p Blu-Ray discs offer 6x the resolution of 480p
DVDs – 2,073,600 pixels versus just 345,600. Additionally, Blu-Ray discs can
support “Deep Color” which allows for reproduction of up to 281.5 trillion
colors!
But superior video is not the only advantage of Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray is also about
much more realistic reproduction of sound. Blu-Ray supports a number of advanced
surround formats that are intended to bring the surround performance in your
home closer to what you hear in the best theaters. The two most common of these
advanced formats, DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby TruHD, offer up to 7.1 channels
of lossless reproduction. The utilization of lossless compression means that
these soundtracks are virtually identical to the original studio masters.
Will
Blu-Ray Improve My Current System Without Updating Anything
Else?
Yes it can! If you have a 720p or a 1080i TV or projector,
Blu-Ray will still offer you a 3x improvement in resolution.
And, if you have a surround processor or A/V receiver with
5.1 or 7.1 analog inputs, a Blu-Ray disc player with a
built-in surround processor can be used to give you access
to Blu-Ray’s advanced surround formats.
What Are
Blu-Ray Firmware Updates?
As it turns out, all of these great advances Blu-Ray offers
do come with a bit a downside for those who would prefer for
their technology to be hands off. This downside comes in the
form of the need for continual Firmware Updates.
Unlike DVDs, Blu-Ray allows for content providers to
continue adding new features as well as new varieties of
copyright protection to the discs they produce. Because
these features and protections are added after players are
already on the market, these players are left incompatible
with these new discs.
This is where the need for Firmware Updates comes in. After
these discs are released, manufactures take note of
incompatibilities and make Firmware Updates available that
allow players to properly read and decode the new features
and protections. This is much like updating the software on
your computer.
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Where Can
I Get Blu-Ray Firmware Updates?
DENON:
DVD-1800BD, DVD-2500BTCI, DVD-3800BDCI, and DVD-A1UDCI:
Firmware updates are made available in the
Product Updates & Upgrades section of the Denon website.
Select your model from the pulldown menu, enter the serial
number (found on the back of the player and outside of the
player's box), and press "GO". You will be redirected to a
page with the current firmware as well as directions for the
update procedure.
DBP-1610 and
DBP-2010CI:
Firmware updates are downloaded from Denon via the Ethernet
port on the back of the player. First, verify that the
player's Ethernet port is connected to your home network and
the internet by extension. Then, with the player in "STOP"
mode, press the setup button on the Universal or Denon Blu-Ray
remote. Navigate to the menu tab "Others" and select it.
Make sure "Network Connection" is listed as "Enabled". If
not, select "Network Connection" and adjust it so that it
lists "Enabled". Then select "Network Update" and follow the
directions on the screen.
DBP-4010UDCI:
Same as DBP-1610 and DBP-2010CI up to selecting the menu tab
"Others". After selecting "Others", navigate down to
"Firmware Update" and follow the directions on the screen.
Pioneer:
Updated firmware and update procedure for all models can be
downloaded from the
support section of the Pioneer website.
2009-10 models can also be updated via the Ethernet port
like the latest Denon players. From "STOP" mode press the
"HOME MENU" button. Navigate down and select "OPTIONS".
Select "SOFTWARE UPDATE" and follow on-screen directions.
Remember, your player must be connected to your home network
to update in this manner. If it is not, download from
support as mentioned above.
Samsung:
Updated firmware and update procedure for all models can be
downloaded from the
support section of the Samsung website. Enter model
number in the box titled "Search Product Support" and press
"See All Results". This will take you to a support page for
your player. Select the "Downloads" tab and then select
"Firmware". This will take you to a page where you can
download the latest firmware as well as upgrade procedure
instructions.
Models BD-P1200 and on can also be updated via the Ethernet
port like the latest Denon and Pioneer players. From "STOP"
mode press the "MENU" button. Navigate down and select
"SET-UP". Select "UPGRADE START" or "SYSTEM UPDATE" and
follow on-screen directions. Remember, your player must be
connected to your home network to update in this manner. If
it is not, download from support as mentioned above.
Before we delve into 7.1 and what it has to offer, let’s look back at the 5.1 surround sound that almost everyone is familiar with. You know, the same 5.1 Dolby Digital that was first available on DVD in 1995 with the release of Clear and Present Danger.
A 5.1 surround speaker system is comprised of front left, center, front right, surround left, and surround speakers plus a subwoofer (the .1 or Low Frequency Effects channel). In the diagram at the right, you can see that ideally the surround speakers in a 5.1 system are positioned slightly behind and wide of the main listening area. Although there can be exceptions. This positioning is intended to help the surround speakers offer a sense of both width and depth to the surround soundtrack. But it also means that the surround speakers are making a compromise between best width and best depth performance. This compromise affects the accuracy of the resulting soundstage.
Which brings us to 7.1 Channel Surround Sound. To improve on surround performance, the surround speaker duties are split into channels for width and channels for depth. As seen in the diagram on the right, an ideal 7.1 system has one pair of surround speakers positioned wide to the sides and another pair of surround speakers positioned towards the back. By splitting the surround duties, a 7.1 speaker system can offer much improved width and depth to the surround soundstage.
Even though 7.1 receivers like Denon’s AVR-3801 were available as early as 2001, DVD’s never had the storage capacity to hold a 7.1 soundtrack. Fortunately, June 2006 saw the launch of Blu-Ray. And with Blu-Ray came the introduction of multiple 7.1 surround formats, the most common of which are DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD.
Is Upgrading To A 7.1 Channel Surround System Worth It; Would It Make A Difference?
The short answer to this question is yes. The caveat is you need to keep the quality of the components equal. Upgrading from a high quality 5.1 system to a lower quality 7.1 system is a step in the wrong direction. Upgrading from an AVR-3600DTS to a new AVR-3310CI (approximately an equal replacement) is likely to yield a huge return on investment.
Will 7.1 Surround Sound Work In My Room?
Even if your main seating position is against the back wall, the answer is yes! Speaker positioning is intended to recreate a recording’s soundtrack in such a way that it centers on the action up on the screen no matter where you are sitting. At the Cinema, people sit anywhere from front row to back. And yet no matter where they sit, the surround effect remains anchored to the screen. The exact same principle is in play for your home.