On right now’s episode of You Requested: Is it value upgrading to Sony’s Bravia Theater Quad if you have already got the HT-A9? How a lot has OLED improved within the final both years? How can TV remotes management your different units lately? And what are you able to do to repair annoying audio sync points in your system?
Why Is My TV Audio Out of Sync? Sony HT-A9 vs Bravia Theater Quad? | You Requested Ep. 51
Upgrading to the Theater Quad?
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Salama writes: Is the Bravia Theatre Quad value upgrading to from the HT-A9?
For background, Salama has been wrestling with audio dropouts, which they’ve managed to abate by altering the wi-fi setting on the HT-A9 to choose sign stability over higher-resolution sound high quality.
I point out that as a result of I believe it’s solely value upgrading from the older HT-A9 to the brand new Theater Quad for 2 causes: One is when you just like the look of the flat audio system far more and would respect the easier placement and lower-profile look, wall-mounted or in any other case. The opposite is in case you are having audio-dropout points.
I can’t stress take a look at the Theater Quad properly sufficient to say with absolute certainty that it’s going to be rock-solid in each single residence or retail location, however Sony’s modifications and enhancements to the wi-fi audio sign transmission are important, and I really feel fairly assured saying you’ll in all probability get out from below these wi-fi audio dropouts with the improve.
However a far inexpensive strategy to take care of the audio dropouts can be to determine the supply of the wi-fi interference and see when you can take care of that. In case your Wi-Fi router is in shut proximity to your system and you may transfer it with out negatively impacting the rest? Strive that. In the event you can transfer the little processor field so it has a transparent line of website to the audio system, strive that.
In fact, it’s attainable that the supply of the interference isn’t inside your management. If that’s the case, the brand new system might be your greatest wager. It’s simply an costly resolution. (Although, it’s totally attainable you might promote your HT-A9 to offset the fee.)
Oh, and utilizing the acoustic heart sync choice might be not going to assist. You aren’t relieving the HT-A9 system of something by going that route.
LG C4? Or the LG G4?
LG C4 OLED Douglas Murray / Digital Tendencies
Jimmy from Belgium says that after 9 years and 30,000-plus hours of intensive use, their LG EF9500 OLED is starting to indicate some burn-in. They’re contemplating the LG C4 or G4, and they’re questioning if they’re lacking out on a lot in the event that they don’t additionally get a brand new 4K Blu-ray participant that helps Dolby Imaginative and prescient.
Properly, this one’s simple, Jimmy. You’re in for a fairly important improve with both the LG C4 or the LG G4. Granted, your present OLED remains to be an OLED, so that you’re used to the distinction OLED can present. However the elevated distinction accessible from a contemporary OLED TV — due to each white brightness and coloration brightness — is sort of noticeable and an actual deal with. Additionally, the EF9500 mannequin you might have was one of many first TVs to supply HDR, and HDR processing alone has come a great distance since then. You’ll discover significantly better HDR efficiency, however image high quality throughout the board goes to be higher as a result of LG’s picture processing has improved by leaps and bounds in simply the final couple of years.
As for Dolby Imaginative and prescient — there are some circumstances through which the Dolby Imaginative and prescient model of the HDR content material you watch can supply some benefits. There are some circumstances through which the Dolby Imaginative and prescient model is much less most popular than HDR 10 or HDR 10+. It actually is dependent upon the content material. Dolby Imaginative and prescient has the potential to look significantly better. However on the finish of the day, it’s a device, and the way good the image seems to be in Dolby Imaginative and prescient goes to be as much as the artist that wields that device.
I believe you’ll be so happy with the advance in image high quality that you simply gained’t really feel such as you’re lacking something with out Dolby Imaginative and prescient on disc. Nonetheless, if it’s a matter of price range — and when you actually desire a extra trendy disc participant that helps Dolby Imaginative and prescient — I’d get the LG C4 and a brand new disc participant as a substitute of spending all of your allotted funds on only a G4.
Whither the cable field
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Chris Renteria writes: I’ve a Samsung S95B you really useful 15 months in the past, and I’ve beloved the image high quality. However I’ve by no means been capable of get my Spectrum DVR cable field to work with Samsung’s One Distant. Are you able to assist? Or ought to I simply hand over making an attempt to make it work and go together with YouTube TV, which may do the identical as a DVR cable field and already has an app on the TV?
I believe numerous of us run into this subject, and it may be particularly complicated for these of us who grew up programming our remotes utilizing codes and such.
The distant controls that include many trendy TVs — definitely the entire ones I take a look at lately — solely use infrared for very primary features, like powering the TV on and off. Many of the management alerts get from the distant to the TV through Bluetooth. Trendy remotes don’t have programmable buttons and may’t management different units utilizing infrared anymore.
As a rule, the best way your TV distant goes to manage your TV lately is over the HDMI cable utilizing a protocol referred to as HDMI CEC, or Client Electronics Management. CEC is much from good. Actually, it may be fairly buggy. However, it’s what we’ve received.
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The best way to get your TV distant to manage your cable field or Blu-ray participant if it doesn’t already is to be sure that HDMI CEC is turned on within the cable field, Blu-ray participant, or no matter else you’re making an attempt to manage. Generally a producer will use another form of time period; different instances it’s proper there on the display. CEC On, or CEC Off.
The trick is to seek out that setting and switch it on. In fact, it could even be attainable that your field is sufficiently old that it doesn’t help that form of characteristic, through which case the answer is to get an up to date field out of your cable or satellite tv for pc supplier.
I’ll additionally level out that many trendy TVs have as a part of their preliminary setup wizard the choice to “add units.” (And, once more, you want HDMI CEC turned on in your linked units for this to work.) That usually helps the TV acknowledge what bins are linked and label the enter as such — so HDMI 2, for instance, may turn into “Blu-ray” or “Xbox” or “cable.” The distant ought to then management most of the management features of that linked gadget with out you needing to do a bunch of labor.
The perils of audio sync
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Nick Hanninen writes: I just lately arrange my 83-inch Samsung S90C and am loving the expertise, apart from one factor. For no matter cause, when working 5.1 audio via TOSLINK to my older receiver, I can not get the audio timing synced up. It’s driving me loopy seeing dialogue out of sync. I discovered the delay choice within the TV, however nonetheless can’t get it dialed in. Ought to I search a professional audio calibrator? Or is there one thing else I can do to repair this?
I’ll inform you proper now that fixing audio sync points is a troubleshooting process that relies upon drastically on what gear you might be utilizing and the way it’s all linked. What I can inform you is that the audio processing that takes place in a soundbar or a receiver can usually trigger delay you could’t modify for within the TV. And the delay within the audio gadget is often meant to delay the audio so it matches up with the video sign that’s handed on to the TV by that very same audio gadget. So, it’s not unusual to regulate these sync/delay choices and truly make issues worse as a substitute of higher.
It’s possible you’ll have to do digging deep into your TV audio settings in case you are sending audio from the TV to a receiver or soundbar through HDMI ARC or optical. Usually, telling the TV to transform the audio to PCM — which suggests an onboard audio decoder is utilized by the TV — helps overcome the delay. This tends to work very properly if you wish to ship only a stereo sign all the way down to a stereo soundbar, however it might additionally work if you ship a 5.1 sign, because the TV can do the decoding.
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Generally setting the TV to passthrough reasonably than setting it to Dolby Digital or DTS might help, particularly in case you are utilizing eARC.
I don’t anticipate this recommendation to assist everybody, as a result of there are too many permutations of settings. However you don’t have to rent a professional audio calibrator for one thing like this. Their experience is greatest used when optimizing the audio of a complicated audio system. Hiring them to do work like fixing sync points is like hiring a structural engineer to switch one of many floorboards in your deck.
