Technical

The Inner World of LCD TVs – Part II

As you probably know well by now, LCD TVs are far and away the most popular type of flat-panel television available today. But exactly how they work is a mystery to most, even technically inclined folks within the industry. So I decided to provide a clear and comprehensive explanation of the inner workings of LCD TVs—no easy task...

Anthem Room Correction (ARC) System – Part 2 – Including a Subwoofer

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the Anthem ARC (Anthem Room Correction) firmware that is present in their SSPs as well as the AVRs which have a  reduced filter bank size. By far, the most significant sonic issue for acoustic music when a subwoofer is deployed occurs around the crossover from the subwoofer to the main speaker. In Part 2 of this series, we take a look at Anthem's ARC (Anthem Room Correction) when adding a subwoofer to the system.

Spears and Munsil HD Benchmark Setup and Test Disc – Version 2

Readers of Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity are likely familiar with the names Stacey Spears and Don Munsil. They authored the Secrets DVD Benchmark and brought to light issues like Chroma Upsampling Errors, as well as our recent HDMI Benchmark for Blu-ray players. They also authored the Spears and Munsil HD Benchmark Blu-ray test disc. Version 2 of their HD Benchmark disc is now available, and reviewed here.

The Inner World of LCD TVs – Part I

(Source: Oleg Lavrentovich, Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University)

When you go shopping for a flat-panel television these days, the vast majority of available models are LCD TVs. Today's LCDs are super-slim, super-bright, and super-colorful thanks to many improvements made since Sharp introduced the first commercial LCD TV—with a screen measuring a whopping 14 inches—in 1988.

But exactly how does an LCD TV work?