Home Theater Geeks 556 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Scott Wilkinson [00:00:00]:
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I bid a fond farewell. It's the last episode, so stay tuned.

TWiT.tv [00:00:12]:
Podcasts you love from people you trust.

Scott Wilkinson [00:00:16]:
This is TWiT. Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here, the home theater In this episode, well, I'm sorry to say it's the last episode. TWiT has had to tighten its belt, and as a result, they had to cancel Home Theater Geeks, which I'm very sorry about. But the only constant in life is change, and this is one of those changes. So I'm going to do one more episode to look back at the changes that have happened in the audio video industry that I've been covering so diligently for so long right here on this show, nearly 20 years. And joining me to take a look back is my good friend Mike Heiss, an industry consultant and a journalist. Hello. And a regular guest on the show who's been in the AV trenches probably longer than I have.

Michael Heiss [00:01:36]:
Way too long.

Scott Wilkinson [00:01:38]:
Hey, Mike, welcome back one more time.

Michael Heiss [00:01:43]:
Yeah, thanks, Scott. You know, I guess happy to be here and sad to be here, uh, on this occasion.

Scott Wilkinson [00:01:49]:
It's a very bittersweet thing.

Michael Heiss [00:01:50]:
Yeah, mostly honored to be here. I, you know, I, I really appreciate the forum that you've given me over the years and And I've really enjoyed being able to, you know, communicate with the vast audience out there in Twitland.

Scott Wilkinson [00:02:06]:
In Twitland. Exactly right. Well, we're going to— we're going to have some fun today, I hope, and reminisce about some of the important things that have happened during our careers covering this really fascinating industry. I want to start by, um, telling a little story about how I met Leo Laporte, the head twit. Uh, it was in January of 2004. I was walking down the aisle at CES. Uh, it was the upper, upper, uh, balcony kind of area between Central Hall and North Hall. And here comes Leo Laporte.

Scott Wilkinson [00:02:50]:
Hi. walking my way, and I had seen him on Tech TV. Uh, and so I reached out my hand and I said, hey, Leo Laporte, I'm Scott Wilkinson. I'm here covering the show, uh, the audio-video stuff at the show. And he said, hey, nice to meet you. You want to be on my radio show? Um, he was broadcasting— this was one of his very first episodes of The Tech Guy in 2004, and he was broadcasting from Central Hall, from the middle of the floor in Central Hall. He had a whole studio set up there. And I said, sure.

Scott Wilkinson [00:03:27]:
So I met up with him later, and this picture is in that studio with me and Leo. I certainly had more hair then than I do now. And notice in this photo, you know, he's got a paper day timer.

Michael Heiss [00:03:46]:
And look at that big box behind you.

Scott Wilkinson [00:03:49]:
Exactly. All this technology, which no longer is needed. But it was a whole thing. And so that was, that was how I met Leo. I became a regular guest on the Tech Guy radio show, and I even substituted for Leo as host when he went on vacation. It was one of the, truly one of the highlights of my entire career. Here you see me laughing at something, as I often did, because I find

Michael Heiss [00:04:21]:
it—

Scott Wilkinson [00:04:22]:
Pretty funny. That was in November of 2012, episode 927 of The Tech Guy. Sitting at his desk was really one of the high points of my whole career.

Michael Heiss [00:04:37]:
Was that on the chair or on the ball?

Scott Wilkinson [00:04:39]:
I was sitting on the ball. I wanted to be just like Leo. So I sat on this exercise ball, which he sat on when he did the show. And I wanted to be just like him. So I, damn it, I sat on that ball. And it was great. It was great. Another highlight of my whole career, of course, was this podcast, which Leo offered me in 2009.

Scott Wilkinson [00:05:09]:
My first episode was, in fact, on December 14th, 2009. And my guest was Tomlinson Holman. The TH in THX. I was really proud to get him, uh, on my first show to talk about audio mostly. That was what he was involved in, and it was really great. Um, I had many other wonderful guests on the show, including Alan Parsons of the Alan Parsons Project. He was my guest on my 100th episode. I also had on Douglas Trumbull.

Scott Wilkinson [00:05:51]:
You remember him, Mike?

Michael Heiss [00:05:53]:
Absolutely.

Scott Wilkinson [00:05:54]:
He was—

Michael Heiss [00:05:55]:
I mean, oh, I mean, boy, this is like memory lane.

Scott Wilkinson [00:05:58]:
Yeah, seriously. He was the— he did special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, The Andromeda Strain, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I mean, he was a special effects wizard. Um, he also directed Silent Running. You remember that, that movie?

Michael Heiss [00:06:18]:
You betcha.

Scott Wilkinson [00:06:19]:
Yeah, it was great. Other guests included Floyd Toole, the OG audio scientist at Harman for many years, uh, Joe Kane and Joel Silver, who together started the Imaging Science Foundation. Joe subsequently left and Joel still does it. Um, I was pleased to have on a number of electronics designers including Bob Carver, Nelson Pass, Dan D'Agostino, and Mark Levinson, um, all of whom were, were very interesting talking about, you know, their amplifiers and electronics. Speaker designers including Sandy Gross, who started Polk and Definitive Technology and GoldenEar, all of which are great speaker brands. Paul Barton of PSB, Andrew Jones of Pioneer and ELAC, and of course Anthony Grimani, makers of the speakers I now have in my studio, in my home theater. That guy knows his stuff, not only about speakers but acoustics as well. So it was great to have him on.

Scott Wilkinson [00:07:28]:
I had as guests Stacy Spears and Don Munsel. who did the definitive, um, consumer calibration setup disc, uh, both in Blu-ray, in DVD Blu-ray, and Ultra HD Blu-ray. Um, and dig this, do you know the name, Mike? Do you know the name Gene Dolgov?

Michael Heiss [00:07:52]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's funny, I, I couldn't help— I did help myself. Spears and Munsell sounds like an accounting firm,

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:01]:
right? You know,

Michael Heiss [00:08:01]:
I mean, you know,

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:02]:
this is

Michael Heiss [00:08:04]:
So it's to some extent a somber occasion, but we're still going to get some, some to save them up for all eternity, some, some Scott Wilkinson laughs and some oh mans.

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:17]:
Yep. Yep. I'm sure we will. No doubt about it. Well, Gene Dolgov is the inventor of LCD projectors.

Michael Heiss [00:08:26]:
Not LCDs.

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:30]:
LCD projectors. Yeah, but not LCDs, not the flat panels. No, not LCDs, not liquid crystal diodes.

Michael Heiss [00:08:38]:
No,

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:38]:
but using them in projectors, video projectors.

Michael Heiss [00:08:41]:
Yep,

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:42]:
he invented that. He's a very smart guy and a really interesting guy too, and I was happy to have him on the show. And of course I had so many others, not least of which was Michael Heiss.

Michael Heiss [00:08:55]:
How did I rate with you? I mean, That's like an all-star lineup there. I mean,

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:59]:
it is an all-star lineup.

Michael Heiss [00:09:00]:
I just sort of, you know, you couldn't get somebody, so, you know, you know.

Scott Wilkinson [00:09:06]:
Well, it was much more than that.

Michael Heiss [00:09:07]:
In the case of, in the case that Miss America falls off the stage, you know, you'll be the runner-up.

Scott Wilkinson [00:09:12]:
You're the runner-up. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. I would not think of you that way at all. Um, you have seen so much in this industry. You may be, you know, not like these other guys who, who invented stuff, Uh, you know, you covered it and you, you saw it happen and you brought it to a wider audience, uh, like I tried to do.

Michael Heiss [00:09:35]:
No, to be sure. And in some of my other lives, uh, some of which I'm still doing, and somebody's got to market it and bring it, bring it to market and, um, you know, help get these products that folks like almost everybody that you mentioned here They conceive them and develop them, but there's this whole business, literally, you know, it's not show business, it's show business. And, um, you know, that continues particularly in today's environment. It's, uh, changing rapidly.

Scott Wilkinson [00:10:12]:
Yeah. So yeah, you worked for many years at, uh, at Harmon yourself, right?

Michael Heiss [00:10:16]:
Oh, I spent 25 years around the Harmatorium.

Scott Wilkinson [00:10:19]:
The Harmatorium.

Michael Heiss [00:10:22]:
And, you know, and at one point I was a direct report and knew him quite well, Dr. Harmon. There's, you know, nothing like—

Scott Wilkinson [00:10:32]:
Sidney Harmon.

Michael Heiss [00:10:33]:
You know, yep. I mean, it's nothing like, you know, hold for the White House, you know. Mike, Dr. Harmon is on the phone for you. Okay, I'll be right there.

Scott Wilkinson [00:10:42]:
Yeah, right, right. Now, in terms of this podcast, I did have a bit of a hiatus, 5 and a half years to be exact. I— the long-form show ended on September 28th, 2017 with episode 373. But then in March of 2023, Lisa Laporte, Leo's wife and business partner, Called me up and said, hey, we'd like to restart Home Theater Geeks. Are you interested? I said, you bet. So I, we started up right when we, right where we left off, episode 374, um, on March 9th, 2023. And here we are, uh, November 2nd, 2026 at episode 556. So I'm quite proud of that, I have to tell you.

Michael Heiss [00:11:44]:
Not a bad run.

Scott Wilkinson [00:11:45]:
Not a bad run. 556 episodes of some really compelling coverage of the whole audio video industry. And boy, hasn't it evolved over the last 17 years? Boy, I've been going to CES Much longer even than I've been doing this show, and you have too. I think I started about 1991. How about you, Mike?

Michael Heiss [00:12:18]:
Um, the first one I went to is probably like '72 or '73.

Scott Wilkinson [00:12:25]:
Oh man.

Michael Heiss [00:12:25]:
I've got one of them 45-year things. So, you know, back when the summer show was in McCormick Place.

Scott Wilkinson [00:12:34]:
Yeah, in Chicago.

Michael Heiss [00:12:35]:
in Chicago. The winter show was in the basement of the then Conrad Hilton Hotel, now the Chicago Hilton. And over the years, as the market, as we were talking, has changed, that the show has changed. It went, you know, from 2 shows a year to 1 show and moved to January. And it's, you know, still there. Got my, got my hotel. Oh man, I got my hotel booked and I got my plane booked. Oh, man.

Michael Heiss [00:13:04]:
And we know home theater Geeks. Oh man, I just have to call you and do one anyway.

Scott Wilkinson [00:13:09]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to have you on as soon as you got back from the show to talk about it, of course. Hey, but do you remember, I want to just remember a couple of things about CES. There was a time when the manufacturers would put on these big lavish shows in their booth.

Michael Heiss [00:13:32]:
Well, before that, at the same time, and that shows how the market has changed, most of the manufacturers— and in those days it was all the legacy, uh, Japanese brands, Hitachi and Toshiba and Sharp and, you know,

Scott Wilkinson [00:13:47]:
Sony,

Michael Heiss [00:13:48]:
Panasonic, Sony, Panasonic— and, uh, they had wine shows. So before, in the middle of the summer, they would have what were called wine shows and they would— I don't know if you ever went to some of them.

Scott Wilkinson [00:14:01]:
Oh, I went to many.

Michael Heiss [00:14:03]:
Right. And they, you know, you know, junket us all over the place to see what was coming up. And that's gone. That's completely

Scott Wilkinson [00:14:13]:
gone.

Michael Heiss [00:14:15]:
Well, and you look at even Apple, the last 2 announcements they made were for the home products and for the new MacBooks and all that business were not livestreamed. They were just sort of mini events instead of big events. And some of the stuff, they just, yeah, we'll put out a press release, right? There just ain't no more line shows. Um, and it, it shows where the market has changed with— we've gone through the transition from, remember, it's CES Zenith and RCA, for goodness sakes. And Westinghouse, when they owned their own brands. But even in those days, RCA was at the Desert Inn and Zenith had an upstairs, uh, meeting room in, um, in the McCormick— not McCormick Place, in, um, in the Las Vegas— the then Las Vegas Hilton

Scott Wilkinson [00:15:14]:
convention

Michael Heiss [00:15:14]:
center. And but you went from the you know, end days of the American brands owned by the American brands to the emergence of LG and Samsung. And I remember, uh, when I was at Harman visiting a dealer somewhere in the Carolinas, and I walk into a showroom and she had a TV on the wall that said Lucky Gold Star. And I said—

Scott Wilkinson [00:15:41]:
Well, that's what LG used to be.

Michael Heiss [00:15:43]:
That's— and I said, Oh, you're never gonna sell those in a high-end, you know, emporium. And she said, mark my words, Mike, they're coming for the legacy brands. And now it's LG and Samsung as the legacy brands, if you will.

Scott Wilkinson [00:16:04]:
Mm-hmm.

Michael Heiss [00:16:04]:
And then you've got the TCLs and the Hisenses of the world that are equal to or almost as big as LG and Samsung and Sony. You know, I guess we're sort of jumping around here. Sony's home electronics business is going to become a joint venture with TCL.

Scott Wilkinson [00:16:25]:
Mm-hmm.

Michael Heiss [00:16:27]:
And Toshiba and Panasonic— Toshiba is under Hisense for TV. Panasonic TVs will be from Skyworth. I mean, the whole market is changing because in those days you had— remember Circuit City? Remember Pacific Stereo? Now you've got Best Buy, thankfully. Where Fry's was up in Burbank, you know, near where you were, torn down.

Scott Wilkinson [00:16:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wanted to— I wanted to take you back a little bit to, to some of the things that happened at CES, rather. In particular, these big shows that they put on in their booths. Panasonic had a great show, for example, in 2006, where they had a mix of live performers and people on screens. I don't know whether that was prerecorded or they were live somewhere else, but that was a pretty interesting show, actually.

Michael Heiss [00:17:35]:
And now that thing behind them would be a DV LED wall.

Scott Wilkinson [00:17:40]:
Correct, correct. Sony had Cirque du Soleil in their booth one year, 2011, which, you know, Cirque du Soleil in Vegas, that would have been easy to hire them, although it wouldn't have been cheap. So I just wanted to remember, you know, that it was more than just looking at product. The manufacturers really wanted to To, to wow people, and they did. Now, of course, Sony doesn't even put any, um, any of their home electronics in there.

Michael Heiss [00:18:16]:
They're not gonna have a booth.

Scott Wilkinson [00:18:17]:
They're not even gonna have a booth

Michael Heiss [00:18:19]:
at all.

Scott Wilkinson [00:18:20]:
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:18:23]:
And, and what does it show that for the last 3 years is, uh, you just started to say there were— what, what's a TV? They had a car. Oops.

Scott Wilkinson [00:18:32]:
Yeah, yeah. Sony only had a car in their booth. They didn't have any TVs or any audio or any video at all.

Michael Heiss [00:18:38]:
Now they have no TVs or a car.

Scott Wilkinson [00:18:40]:
Yeah, they have nothing. They're not even going to be there. That's weird to me. Okay, let's take a look at some of the, at some of the, um, elements of the audio video industry, starting with video. My podcast, this podcast started just after the Blu-ray versus HD DVD format war, which was 2006 to 2008. Um, and for a while there, some movies were coming out in both formats, um, which I found very interesting.

Michael Heiss [00:19:17]:
And then there was going to be the HD DVD on one side and the Blu-ray on the other.

Scott Wilkinson [00:19:25]:
Yes. Which never happened.

Michael Heiss [00:19:29]:
No, but, but, you know, I guess I can sort of, you know, go you one better. I remember before that it was the SD DVD. There were 2 original DVD form or DVD-esque formats that were competing. And the standard, what we now know as DVD, won out. But I guess I can say I can go back a little further. And as you may have mentioned, I've done a lot of work over the years with CEDIA, and I remember giving lectures at CEDIA explaining what a DVD is as opposed to a VHS or a VHS or a Beta, for goodness sakes.

Scott Wilkinson [00:20:16]:
Yeah, we still had VHS when I started in this industry. In fact, I remember recording a bunch of TV shows off the air on VHS.

Michael Heiss [00:20:27]:
Yep. Yep.

Scott Wilkinson [00:20:28]:
Not realizing that 20 years later, you know, they were all going to be available on streaming anytime you want.

Michael Heiss [00:20:35]:
Well, but I saw something. I mean, just to bring it up to current, I saw something on one of the news— on one of the news feeds today that they just apparently have done an amazing 4K Ultra HD remaster of Gone with the Wind.

Scott Wilkinson [00:20:51]:
Really?

Michael Heiss [00:20:52]:
It is going to be released on HD, you know, Ultra Blu-ray.

Scott Wilkinson [00:20:57]:
Hmm. Well, that might be worth getting.

Michael Heiss [00:21:01]:
Maybe one of the last.

Scott Wilkinson [00:21:04]:
Yeah, maybe one of the last. Yep, exactly. Uh, in fact, Ultra HD or UHD Blu-ray came out in 2016. Um, and I think, and I, I would be surprised if you didn't agree, that's going to be the last video disc I don't think we're ever going to see another one.

Michael Heiss [00:21:22]:
No, I mean, there were at one point, there were things to come which never arrived,

Scott Wilkinson [00:21:28]:
right?

Michael Heiss [00:21:29]:
But, um, you know, who's making Blu-ray players? You know, I put my, uh, Oppo 203 on eBay and, and get a good chunk of change for it.

Scott Wilkinson [00:21:40]:
Good.

Michael Heiss [00:21:40]:
And I wouldn't be able to play all those discs.

Scott Wilkinson [00:21:42]:
That's right. Well, they're gonna, they're gonna have to pry my Oppo 203 out of my cold dead hands.

Michael Heiss [00:21:48]:
Hey, I still have my Pioneer CLD-93.

Scott Wilkinson [00:21:53]:
LaserDisc player.

Michael Heiss [00:21:55]:
LaserDisc with the nice wood sides.

Scott Wilkinson [00:21:57]:
Oh, nice.

Michael Heiss [00:21:59]:
And it's actually still, it's a pretty good CD player. Remember, CDs are the new streaming.

Scott Wilkinson [00:22:06]:
Right. CDs are still around. We're going to get to audio a little bit later.

Michael Heiss [00:22:09]:
Okay.

Scott Wilkinson [00:22:10]:
Now, when I started my podcast, my main display was a 50-inch Pioneer Kuro Plasma. Which was a great TV, 1080p, really deep blacks, which I value greatly. Um, but plasma TV ceased production for the U.S. market in 2014, uh, because LCDs, uh, were really taking over because they were less expensive. They were transitioning from, uh, CCFL fluorescent backlights To LEDs.

Michael Heiss [00:22:47]:
And no burn-in worries.

Scott Wilkinson [00:22:48]:
And no burn-in worries. And here's a picture you took, uh, at some CES somewhere, uh, with a comparison of the power draw between LEDs at the top and, uh, CCFL, cold cathode fluorescent, on the bottom. And they, they draw a lot less power, so of course they're going to be popular. And they they ultimately got a lot brighter and could be individually controlled. Um, now what about OLED TVs? My favorite technology of flat panel anyway. Uh, first introduced in 2007 with the Sony XEL-1. Do you remember that one?

Michael Heiss [00:23:33]:
I don't remember that particular one.

Scott Wilkinson [00:23:36]:
It was 11 inches Diagonal, and it costs $2,500.

Michael Heiss [00:23:44]:
In fact, I saw it first at CES, and I was on a business trip to Japan. And I'm guessing that on one of the trips you might have made, if you remember the Sony headquarters that Mr. Morita had built right in the middle of the Ginza district, the one that had a Maxim's of Paris In it. And that was one of the showcased products.

Scott Wilkinson [00:24:09]:
Yeah. An 11-inch OLED TV for $2,500.

Michael Heiss [00:24:17]:
And you could now buy probably a 98-inch for that amount of money.

Scott Wilkinson [00:24:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. LG launched its first OLED in 2010. It was a 15-inch, but they introduced a 55-inch the next year. And Samsung announced its first OLED TVs in 2013, but it did announce prototypes in 2010, which I got a picture of at the 2010 CES. And I thought, wow, that is so cool. But again, they're very small.

Michael Heiss [00:24:52]:
And Samsung in, in you know, consumer TVs, not for monitors or anything else, you know, really were never big behind OLED.

Scott Wilkinson [00:25:06]:
That's true.

Michael Heiss [00:25:07]:
And eventually, unlike LG, which still makes their own panels, Samsung just really, they just didn't seem to have the, you know, the interest in that. Although they've came back a while more recently, But then now they're in the RGB mini micro illumination for LCDs and QDs. And it just shows how things are crossing all over the place.

Scott Wilkinson [00:25:35]:
Yep, yep, yep. Well, of course, the next big development in televisions was 4K or UHD, Ultra HD, which was introduced at first in 2012. But it made a huge splash at the 2013 CES. And I've got a bunch of graphics to show. These are all from 2013 CES. We have Hisense. The next one's JVC. That Hisense was 110-inch, by the way.

Scott Wilkinson [00:26:08]:
This JVC is 84-inch. LG introduced a 4K or UHD. Panasonic had an OLED. 4K, uh, which looked really good. Uh, Samsung also had an LCD. I'm sure this was their easel stand.

Michael Heiss [00:26:27]:
Yep.

Scott Wilkinson [00:26:28]:
Remember that?

Michael Heiss [00:26:29]:
Absolutely.

Scott Wilkinson [00:26:30]:
Uh,

Michael Heiss [00:26:31]:
sure, to give credit where credit is due. Yeah, now you're in, um, increasing the size of the screens as well as the screen technology. The first over 100-inch TV was the 103-inch Panasonic plasma.

Scott Wilkinson [00:26:49]:
Exactly, which I'm gonna get to in a minute. I have a picture.

Michael Heiss [00:26:51]:
Oh, okay, sorry.

Scott Wilkinson [00:26:52]:
I do have a picture of it, um, even though that wasn't 4K.

Michael Heiss [00:26:58]:
No, no, that was, that was just regular HD.

Scott Wilkinson [00:27:00]:
Yeah, exactly. Um, so let's see, I think that's the Samsung. The next one is the Sharp. They, they had a weird name for it called the Purious. P-U-R-I-O-U-S. Purious.

Michael Heiss [00:27:13]:
I don't want to go there.

Scott Wilkinson [00:27:16]:
Yeah. Sony had an OLED 4K, of course. TCL had a 100-inch. Toshiba had one. And Westinghouse had 110 as well. So all of those TVs were introduced at CES 2013, which I thought was— it was a huge And very fast transition. You know, UHD took over HD very quickly.

Michael Heiss [00:27:50]:
But again, at the same time, that also shows again the increase in size.

Scott Wilkinson [00:27:58]:
Yes. Which was necessary because with greater pixel density, you had to have a bigger screen or sit closer in order to get all the advantage of that.

Michael Heiss [00:28:08]:
But I mean, but, you know, as we're talking about history and the progression of the business, when I was running Harman Video, and we were making projectors. Yeah. And the silver-coated reflective screen that we had to have people— most people wanted, when I had one in my house, a 60-inch screen with a 3-tube CRT projector. And you look at that in comparison for way less, even in the 2013 that you show. And in my own house where I had this huge reflective 60-inch screen that was the marvel of the neighborhood, now I've got a 65-inch Vizio that I bought, you know, when, when 4K first came out. And, you know, and now that's pedestrian.

Scott Wilkinson [00:29:01]:
Right, exactly right. Did you, did you know that actually Vizio demonstrated what they called Quad HD in 2010?

Michael Heiss [00:29:16]:
That I don't remember.

Scott Wilkinson [00:29:17]:
This is a, this is a photo I took. I sometimes, when I was taking photos at CES, I would zoom in on the screen and take a picture of just what was on the screen without any—

Michael Heiss [00:29:28]:
And forget the little card that's next to it so you remember what it is.

Scott Wilkinson [00:29:31]:
So I remember what the hell they're talking about, right? Exactly.

Michael Heiss [00:29:34]:
No, but that's 3840 by 2160, so there you go.

Scott Wilkinson [00:29:37]:
There you go. Um, okay, so what was the next big thing? I think it was quantum dots. Um,

Michael Heiss [00:29:49]:
quantum dots, and I would add at the same time, um, with the, um, smaller LED full array backlighting And the ability to do FALD.

Scott Wilkinson [00:30:02]:
Full Array Local Dimming. Yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:30:04]:
Coming in sort of, kind of around that time.

Scott Wilkinson [00:30:10]:
Around the same time.

Michael Heiss [00:30:12]:
The combination of QD and full array backlighting. Although interesting, this year they don't really— many of the manufacturers, those that are left, don't really mention how many zones They just say lots of them.

Scott Wilkinson [00:30:30]:
Lots of zones. I know a lot of manufacturers— How many?

Michael Heiss [00:30:33]:
Can't tell you.

Scott Wilkinson [00:30:34]:
Yeah, but a lot. Um, yeah, they do. Some manufacturers have never specified. Sony, I think, is among them who has, has never said how many zones. TCL, on the other hand, you know, will tell you happily, oh, we've got, you know, 400 zones or 1,000 zones or whatever. Um,

Michael Heiss [00:30:52]:
well, that's, that's, that's their, that's their marketing. And I think that Part of it is you look at the progression of this. Boy, somebody— I don't know if you ever had him on, on HTG— Scott Ramirez, who is now one of the executives at, at Visio— not— I'm sorry, Visio, right, at TCL.

Scott Wilkinson [00:31:14]:
TCL. Yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:31:15]:
I don't want to say how long ago, but I remember Scott and Craig Eggers both working at Toshiba. Promoting component video.

Scott Wilkinson [00:31:28]:
Well, we're going to get to connections here.

Michael Heiss [00:31:30]:
And to show how that— but just to show how things change.

Scott Wilkinson [00:31:34]:
Yes, yes, exactly. Connections is the next part of what we're going to talk about here. So put a pin in that. But quantum dots came out in 2013, basically, and they started appearing widely in 2015. Uh, and then there were QD-OLEDs, quantum dot OLEDs, which didn't hit the market till 2023. Currently the best flat panel display technology, in my opinion, that's available today, period.

Michael Heiss [00:32:07]:
I, I might argue with that, but I won't.

Scott Wilkinson [00:32:10]:
No, you can argue with it. It's fine.

Michael Heiss [00:32:12]:
Well, I'm, you know, I sort of, I wouldn't say best, I'd say best for what? If you've got a dark room, as Scott Wilkinson would say, if you got a dark room, get an OLED. If you have a slightly brighter room, yeah, either a quantum dot or— I, I guess I've been, you know, sort of convinced that the TCL, as we talked about, Scott, the SQDs are really, really damn good.

Scott Wilkinson [00:32:42]:
Yes, you are right. Context matters. And if you have a brighter room QLED, as they're called, quantum dot LED LCD TVs, in particular the TCL SQD, are probably a better bet than an OLED, even a QD-OLED. I would agree.

Michael Heiss [00:33:02]:
And, you know, and if price is no object, although the promise of smaller— we saw them claiming they would do it, mostly Samsung, at CES a couple of years ago. but they really have never downsized DV LEDs, direct view LEDs. And but if price is no object, you know, that's—

Scott Wilkinson [00:33:25]:
that's—

Michael Heiss [00:33:26]:
they be good pictures.

Scott Wilkinson [00:33:27]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they be good pictures. Uh, let's talk a minute about high dynamic range, HDR, which to me was a far more important, uh, development than going from HD to 4K, to UHD.

Michael Heiss [00:33:44]:
Absolutely.

Scott Wilkinson [00:33:45]:
HDR10 was introduced in 2015, Dolby Vision even a year before that, 2014, although it was launched in 2015. HLG, which is another HDR format, in 2016. HDR10+ with dynamic metadata the next year, 2017. And after about 2020, HDR became a standard feature in most new TVs, and rightly so.

Michael Heiss [00:34:12]:
Base HDR.

Scott Wilkinson [00:34:14]:
At least base HDR. Yeah, exactly. Did you go see Tomorrowland in the theaters? That was the first commercial cinema title with HDR using Dolby Vision.

Michael Heiss [00:34:27]:
No, but I, I will point to what you said about HDR being more important than 4K. The first professional video monitor designed for HDR was built by Dolby, and it was this huge, ridiculous, expensive thing, and it was 1080p. Yeah. And they said that's what's more important, was the HDR and the 14-stop equivalent instead of the 7-stop equivalent. Well, but it's not HDR, but not UHD. And it was damn bright.

Scott Wilkinson [00:35:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. And it got super dark and that was the point.

Michael Heiss [00:35:13]:
Yep.

Scott Wilkinson [00:35:15]:
And it was beautiful. It was a beautiful display. Okay. Now talking about TVs getting bigger, I just want to remember the Panasonic 103. which you mentioned. Uh, here it is in, um, uh, 2008.

Michael Heiss [00:35:33]:
Do you know who, uh, was, uh, rumored to be one of the first, uh, uh, customers for that set?

Scott Wilkinson [00:35:39]:
No.

Michael Heiss [00:35:41]:
Bill Gates.

Scott Wilkinson [00:35:42]:
Of course.

Michael Heiss [00:35:44]:
And when he built his, uh, this huge mansion that he's got in some island up in, in the Seattle area somewhere. Yeah, yeah. There are like you know, hundreds of, um, not these, but of screens all over the house. And there were more than a few apparently of these.

Scott Wilkinson [00:36:04]:
Yeah. And I remember at CES 2008 and maybe a year or two of that, uh, this Panasonic 103 was always— Sharp was trying to upstage it with their 108-inch LCD, right? Which, uh, is the next picture. And hey, we've got 5 more inches.

Michael Heiss [00:36:30]:
You just don't have pictures and you don't have, um, to be politically incorrect, what back in the day were called booth babes.

Scott Wilkinson [00:36:44]:
I know.

Michael Heiss [00:36:45]:
And the manufacturers would hire models.

Scott Wilkinson [00:36:49]:
Yep.

Michael Heiss [00:36:50]:
You know,

Scott Wilkinson [00:36:50]:
and there is one right there.

Michael Heiss [00:36:52]:
And I'm guessing that that nice young lady is not a sharp employee.

Scott Wilkinson [00:36:58]:
No, I would imagine she was hired from the many models and showgirls of Las Vegas to come work this convention, and she probably worked a million conventions.

Michael Heiss [00:37:09]:
But to their credit, um, you know, uh, those women were not dummies because They had to learn some fairly intricate scripts that they had to repeat over and over for 4 days. So I give them credit for that.

Scott Wilkinson [00:37:25]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. A couple of years later in 2010, Panasonic introduced a 152-inch plasma. I forget that guy's name. We could zoom in and find his name on his name tag.

Michael Heiss [00:37:41]:
Boy, I don't remember.

Scott Wilkinson [00:37:42]:
He was a tall— he was a big guy. Yeah, here he is spreading his, his arms to show how big this TV is, and that's ridiculous. Oh, can we see his name? I, I don't—

Michael Heiss [00:37:54]:
No, I'm sure if we could see it, we'd say, oh yeah, him.

Scott Wilkinson [00:37:57]:
Oh, him, right. I remember

Michael Heiss [00:37:59]:
that guy,

Scott Wilkinson [00:38:00]:
right? Okay, now we get to what I used to call micro LED, but you, I think, more rightly call DVLED or direct view LED, which are— which is a display consisting only of tiny little microscopic LEDs, red, green, and blue, that form the image directly. They're direct emissive. You— what the light you see is coming straight off those LEDs.

Michael Heiss [00:38:33]:
It's a self-emissive display.

Scott Wilkinson [00:38:36]:
Yes, exactly. First invented in 2000.

Michael Heiss [00:38:40]:
Well, and the, um, the, the seaweed, because if you have seaweed for more than 4 hours, call your doctor immediately.

Scott Wilkinson [00:38:51]:
Oh yeah, you got me.

Michael Heiss [00:38:54]:
I'm sorry, Scott. You know, I gotta get— I gotta get them in while I can, man.

Scott Wilkinson [00:38:58]:
You do. Yeah, it's your last chance, man.

Michael Heiss [00:39:01]:
Um, but actually Sony, the first implementation that Sony had of that was in about a 65-inch set.

Scott Wilkinson [00:39:10]:
55, actually.

Michael Heiss [00:39:11]:
That they had one year in their CES booth.

Scott Wilkinson [00:39:14]:
Yep.

Michael Heiss [00:39:14]:
So, uh, and the name of which escapes me.

Scott Wilkinson [00:39:18]:
Well, I don't remember the name of that one, but I do remember 2 years later, uh, or so, they had the CLEDES.

Michael Heiss [00:39:27]:
Yes.

Scott Wilkinson [00:39:27]:
Crystal LED Integrated Structure. And,

Michael Heiss [00:39:32]:
and, you know, and, and that's now a big— I mean, and that's— it's interesting, actually. I've asked the, uh, the Sony professional, the broadcast people, which division is not going over to TCL.

Scott Wilkinson [00:39:45]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:39:46]:
You know, are they going to continue with that? And, and absolutely, because on the professional, uh, broadcast, uh, film production world, uh, or retail, these things are everywhere.

Scott Wilkinson [00:39:58]:
That's right. This one, this picture I took, uh, I believe in 2017. Um, and you're right, movie studios and TV production houses use these as virtual sets. They don't use green screen anymore. They put the background that they want on a display like this, and actors are in front of it acting.

Michael Heiss [00:40:22]:
And then they can have them above, below, around, to the side. That's right. And that's, you know, that's a major shift in the— I was going to say film— in the content.

Scott Wilkinson [00:40:35]:
Yes. Creation. Yes.

Michael Heiss [00:40:38]:
Yes,

Scott Wilkinson [00:40:39]:
exactly. Now, virtually all of these, most of them so far, consist of tiles, maybe a foot or 2 square. And you put a bunch of them together and you can put any number of them together you want almost.

Michael Heiss [00:40:55]:
But as you do that, that changes the resolution.

Scott Wilkinson [00:40:58]:
Correct.

Michael Heiss [00:40:58]:
It's sort of a— it's an interesting art. And it is over the past couple of years, you know, and again, having gone to CEDIA, you know, as we've spoken over the past few years, that's become a very big piece of the business in the high-end residential world, Also because you can put them outside. I mean, if you look, if anybody's ever been to SoFi and that big—

Scott Wilkinson [00:41:27]:
Oh, the SoFi Stadium?

Michael Heiss [00:41:29]:
The SoFi Stadium in, in LA. And those are displays by Samsung, and it's this huge 2-sided, uh, display. But every, you know, stadium runner, uh, displays and all those things has dramatically changed the large venue world, uh, with DVLED as it hasn't as much changed the consumer and residential world, mostly because of the cost. I mean, it's just— it ain't cheap.

Scott Wilkinson [00:42:02]:
It ain't cheap, that's right.

Michael Heiss [00:42:04]:
But unlike those large, um, then plasma, now LCDs that we're talking about, you don't need to— if you're putting it in a you know, a big Millionaires, Billionaires Row in New York building, you don't have to hire a piano mover, poke it out and bring it in from the outside with a crane, which in some cases in the early days with the 103 plasmas, they actually did.

Scott Wilkinson [00:42:32]:
Yeah,

Michael Heiss [00:42:32]:
but now you put it in piece by piece.

Scott Wilkinson [00:42:34]:
Yep, exactly. The most famous one of these, I think, was Samsung's The Wall.

Michael Heiss [00:42:41]:
It was really the first consumer-oriented display, and almost to the point where the wall has sort of been Kleenexized or Xeroxized, as people refer to them as the wall. And even as Samsung has tried to shift their marketing to a different tack for the way they, they market their components, Mm-hmm. They're still kind of— they did such a good job that people still call it the wall.

Scott Wilkinson [00:43:11]:
The wall. Yeah, yeah. And I love this display. Uh, this was, uh, CES 2018, I believe, uh, where they sort of embedded the wall within a wall. And, uh, I just thought it looked great. Now LG and many others have joined the, the party, as we know. Um, particularly more seeing it more at CEDIA than at CES. But, uh, there are quite a few people now who are offering these, and, uh, I think that's one future high-end— agreed.

Scott Wilkinson [00:43:48]:
Uh,

Michael Heiss [00:43:49]:
well, but again, and I know you'll get to this in a bit, but still, with anything, whether it's a DVLED or any solid flat panel, and I've spoken to our buddy Anthony Gramani, um, about— and others— about where do you put the center channel? You don't be poking a hole. You don't micro-perf, you know, a $200,000 wall,

Scott Wilkinson [00:44:14]:
right?

Michael Heiss [00:44:14]:
And that is one of the challenges that, um, the industry is still dealing with,

Scott Wilkinson [00:44:20]:
right? Right, exactly. Okay, let's talk a moment about projectors. Uh, projectors are great. If you have—

Michael Heiss [00:44:33]:
I ran— for those who don't know, I spent more than a few years running a company called Harmon Video, which is at the time when I, uh, actually did report to Dr. Harmon. And it was— those were interesting years, um, with 3-tube CRTs. And I can even say that, um, we My Harman Video division had the first digitally converged 3LCD projector. And—

Scott Wilkinson [00:45:00]:
You mean 3CRT?

Michael Heiss [00:45:02]:
3CRT, yeah, right.

Scott Wilkinson [00:45:05]:
This alphabet soup, man.

Michael Heiss [00:45:08]:
To converge the 3CRTs all aging at a different rate and keep them in convergence, It was fun.

Scott Wilkinson [00:45:20]:
Yeah, boy, no kidding. But of course, that gave way to digital imaging technologies. We had DLP, digital light processing, from Texas Instruments. Uh, we have LCD, uh, from Epson, Sony, and others. The first projector was built by Gene Dolgov. I mentioned him at the beginning. He was one of my guests on the show. Yeah, he built that in 1984.

Scott Wilkinson [00:45:48]:
And there's also LCOS, liquid crystal on silicon. JVC calls it DILA, first introduced in 1998. Sony called it SXRD, first introduced in 2003. And all these cases, the resolution went from 720p initially to 1080p full HD to UHD. And even some 8K. JVC in particular has some 8K models, but most of them, certainly all of the 8K ones from JVC and many other 4K ones from others, use what's called pixel shifting. So they actually have fewer than that number of pixels and they quickly shift them around.

Michael Heiss [00:46:42]:
Hence the term faux-K.

Scott Wilkinson [00:46:45]:
Faux-K, yes.

Michael Heiss [00:46:47]:
F-A-U-X.

Scott Wilkinson [00:46:49]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:46:49]:
Because there are, unless I've missed something, there still are no 8K, uh, TIDOPs.

Scott Wilkinson [00:46:56]:
No, I believe that's true.

Michael Heiss [00:46:58]:
So you've got to do the pixel shift. And, you know, I mean, you can call it faux-K and make fun of it, but, but they're, they're good pictures.

Scott Wilkinson [00:47:05]:
They are, they are.

Michael Heiss [00:47:07]:
know, and, and again, even, uh, although it was a, uh, not a 4K, it was an HD, you mentioned the Qualia, uh, the Sony, when that was their high-end line for a year or two, and that was a damn good projector.

Scott Wilkinson [00:47:21]:
Yeah, it sure was. The Qualia 004, I think, was their first one. I tried— I have a really nice picture of it that I took and I couldn't find it. Now Sony to their credit, their 4K projectors are true 4K. They are not faux 4K pixel shifters. They have truly 4K, um, pixel resolutions. So that's, uh, that's to their credit, I think.

Michael Heiss [00:47:54]:
And you always see them, you know, the Epsons and the Sonys and the— not just JVC as much, but many years at Sony, it would be Epson versus Sony, and they'd be just having at it.

Scott Wilkinson [00:48:09]:
Right, exactly. And of course, as you know, um, lamps in projectors gave way to laser illumination,

Michael Heiss [00:48:20]:
which lamps always burned out. And, and again, I, I go back to my CEDIA world, which always burned out like before Super Bowl, New Year's Day, Macy's Parade.

Scott Wilkinson [00:48:32]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:48:33]:
Um, nothing like having a celebrity Bel Air circuit client and the projector bulb burned out, you know, before Oscar night.

Scott Wilkinson [00:48:42]:
Correct.

Michael Heiss [00:48:42]:
And, right, you know, everybody was very happy to see that go.

Scott Wilkinson [00:48:47]:
Right. So laser illumination now we have, and that lasts tens of thousands of hours, maybe 100,000 hours. Um, and we had— we, we have 2 types of that. We have blue lasers with yellow phosphor. Blue plus yellow equals white. And then red and green and blue filters. Uh, and now we're seeing a lot more projectors with red, green, and blue lasers to separate those 3 primary colors out. And That seems to work exceedingly well.

Michael Heiss [00:49:21]:
I mean, that, that's mostly where the, where the market is.

Scott Wilkinson [00:49:24]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:49:25]:
And, um, you know, although at one point I think Casio and a few others had a combination of bulb or bulb and laser and LEDs.

Scott Wilkinson [00:49:36]:
Yes, it wasn't bulb and laser, it was laser and LED.

Michael Heiss [00:49:41]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, all these things that kind of seemed like a good idea at the time and, and were You know, to their credit, but just didn't resonate in the marketplace. It was too complicated to get market traction.

Scott Wilkinson [00:49:54]:
Yeah. You mentioned the 3 CRT gun projector onto a curved silver screen.

Michael Heiss [00:50:04]:
Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson [00:50:05]:
The Advent VideoBeam was one of those.

Michael Heiss [00:50:09]:
It was the first.

Scott Wilkinson [00:50:11]:
Yeah. And

Michael Heiss [00:50:12]:
then video beam with Henry Kloss.

Scott Wilkinson [00:50:16]:
Yes, yes. Uh, then we went to rear projection, these gigantic behemoth boxes with the projector inside and shooting onto the back of a translucent screen.

Michael Heiss [00:50:29]:
Yep.

Scott Wilkinson [00:50:30]:
And now those are gone, and we have UST, ultra short throw projectors, which sit on your credenza right up against the wall and shoot straight up to a special kind of screen, ambient light rejecting, ALR, that takes the light coming up from a steep angle and shoots it straight out into the audience.

Michael Heiss [00:50:54]:
And it's become, you know, not as big as— well, you know, I haven't looked at the statistics to see where projection sales are versus flat panel, But ultra short throw, I think actually walk into almost any classroom these days, and you'll see a UST hanging above the whiteboard. And, you know, and the teachers will use, you know, their laptops and PowerPoints and whatnot. But UST has become a fairly decent segment of the market.

Scott Wilkinson [00:51:30]:
Mm-hmm. I wanted to touch upon a few things in the TV world that came and went. For example, 3D TV.

Michael Heiss [00:51:46]:
Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson [00:51:47]:
Here's a picture you took. To watch 3D TV, for the most part, you had to wear glasses. And it came in the late 2000s. And was kind of gone by 2017.

Michael Heiss [00:52:02]:
Well, as at the same time though, there was the 3D craze for movies.

Scott Wilkinson [00:52:07]:
Yes, and that's still around a little bit.

Michael Heiss [00:52:12]:
A little bit. But if, um, uh, James Cameron spent a gazillion dollars to do a 45-foot mobile unit with cameras and all the things you need to make 3D content because everybody thought it was going to be coming to theatrical world and then down to home consumers. Mm-hmm. You know, but he could afford it.

Scott Wilkinson [00:52:42]:
Yeah. And then what about curved TVs?

Michael Heiss [00:52:46]:
Well, you know, that's a curved TV. Nice idea. But as I sit here speaking to you, I'm looking at my 34-inch curved LG monitor.

Scott Wilkinson [00:53:02]:
See, it makes sense for a computer monitor.

Michael Heiss [00:53:06]:
That's right.

Scott Wilkinson [00:53:06]:
Because you're sitting 2 feet away from it.

Michael Heiss [00:53:10]:
And I'm looking straight in, but I can still see out to the sides.

Scott Wilkinson [00:53:15]:
Right.

Michael Heiss [00:53:15]:
And in the Over kind of 30-ish-inch monitor world, curved is still a thing.

Scott Wilkinson [00:53:26]:
Yeah, but it's not in the TV world. They tried. LG really tried.

Michael Heiss [00:53:33]:
Well, what do you do when you have everybody over for the big game?

Scott Wilkinson [00:53:37]:
It's terrible.

Michael Heiss [00:53:38]:
Get the guy you don't like sits over there.

Scott Wilkinson [00:53:42]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:53:42]:
And where's the angle of view?

Scott Wilkinson [00:53:45]:
Yeah, exactly. And then there are extra subpixels. Sharp Quattron.

Michael Heiss [00:53:57]:
That may have been in one of those slides. Yeah, that one. Yep.

Scott Wilkinson [00:54:00]:
That one.

Michael Heiss [00:54:01]:
They

Scott Wilkinson [00:54:01]:
added a yellow subpixel to RGB.

Michael Heiss [00:54:06]:
And how old is that picture?

Scott Wilkinson [00:54:08]:
2010.

Michael Heiss [00:54:10]:
Okay. And what did, what did I see this year at CES?

Scott Wilkinson [00:54:16]:
You saw some displays with extra 4th subpixels. So it's coming back as of this year.

Michael Heiss [00:54:25]:
Yeah. Whether it'll really, you know, Sharp was, was really just pounding the drum when this came out. That's when Sharp was, that's when Sharp was Sharp. One, one, right?

Scott Wilkinson [00:54:38]:
Do you remember, do you remember the ad campaign with George Takei?

Michael Heiss [00:54:43]:
Yep, yep, yep.

Scott Wilkinson [00:54:45]:
Oh my.

Michael Heiss [00:54:48]:
You know, and, and unfortunately this past week, George Takei and Shatner are the, uh, only remaining, uh, living members of the original, of the original series.

Scott Wilkinson [00:55:00]:
Yep. May Walter Koenig rest in peace.

Michael Heiss [00:55:03]:
You know, oh

Scott Wilkinson [00:55:05]:
my. Oh my. Well, let's talk just a moment about HDMI because that has come a long way too. I mean, I remember in my early days using— you, you were mentioning it too— component video and S-Video.

Michael Heiss [00:55:19]:
S-Video, right.

Scott Wilkinson [00:55:20]:
Um, and those are analog video compo— uh, video, uh, connections.

Michael Heiss [00:55:27]:
But for those youngsters out there—

Scott Wilkinson [00:55:29]:
Yeah, what the hell are they talking about?

Michael Heiss [00:55:32]:
It was a way to separate, as the name for component implies, the components of the video rather than everything being, uh, matrixed together for— so that you didn't get as much moiré and maybe crosstalk and resolution. And you could see Johnny Carson's, you know, houndstooth jacket without, you know, with, you know, the camera moiré

Scott Wilkinson [00:55:56]:
going on,

Michael Heiss [00:55:56]:
going bonkers. Um,

Scott Wilkinson [00:55:59]:
right.

Michael Heiss [00:55:59]:
But as digital came into, uh, into the world, um, you know, actually HDMI, but before that DVI.

Scott Wilkinson [00:56:08]:
DVI, Digital Visual Interface.

Michael Heiss [00:56:11]:
The same technology, mostly with a different connector and no audio.

Scott Wilkinson [00:56:17]:
DVI had a larger connector and no audio. That first came out in 1999. Uh, the HDMI 1.4 The HDMI 2.0 spec was released in 2002, uh, and the first authorized testing center was opened in 2003.

Michael Heiss [00:56:33]:
And along with it, the dreaded HDCP, because everything that everybody always blames on HDMI is almost always the fault of HDCP. I have scars to prove

Scott Wilkinson [00:56:46]:
it. I remember at CES 2004 They were touting this, oh, this new thing, one cable going from your source device to your receiver or whatever.

Michael Heiss [00:57:00]:
For audio and video.

Scott Wilkinson [00:57:02]:
Look at that. Look at that. A single wire connection.

Michael Heiss [00:57:07]:
From a DVD player.

Scott Wilkinson [00:57:09]:
Right, right. To a receiver.

Michael Heiss [00:57:13]:
Well, but you know, but you look on the back, that's still got the component. Still got all the HDMI.

Scott Wilkinson [00:57:20]:
You

Michael Heiss [00:57:20]:
know, man, I love those spring— love those spring clip speaker terminals over

Scott Wilkinson [00:57:26]:
there. All right.

Michael Heiss [00:57:28]:
Oh, wait a minute. I'm sorry. Wait, what? This has also got an S-Video connector.

Scott Wilkinson [00:57:34]:
It does. An S-Video connector, a component video connector. And,

Michael Heiss [00:57:41]:
uh, what brand is that? I can't remember.

Scott Wilkinson [00:57:43]:
Panasonic.

Michael Heiss [00:57:45]:
Oh, the, the AVR or whatever.

Scott Wilkinson [00:57:46]:
Oh, I don't know about the AVR.

Michael Heiss [00:57:49]:
Well, I

Scott Wilkinson [00:57:49]:
can't, can't see that.

Michael Heiss [00:57:51]:
And before you get to content delivery though, Scott, it's worth noting while that picture is up, the region code on the DVD player.

Scott Wilkinson [00:58:02]:
Uh, where do you see that?

Michael Heiss [00:58:03]:
Next to Panasonic. You see the 1?

Scott Wilkinson [00:58:06]:
Oh yeah.

Michael Heiss [00:58:08]:
You know, whereas now The content services can geo-block things. Just ask anybody who's been to China and, you know, and wants to do Google stuff or Facebook, that that's how they were able to control where discs could play.

Scott Wilkinson [00:58:28]:
Mm-hmm. Right, exactly. Region 1 was the US, at least, maybe North America.

Michael Heiss [00:58:35]:
Yeah. North America, and I think Japan actually, and maybe NTSC world.

Scott Wilkinson [00:58:39]:
Right. Um, so speaking of NTSC, that was the broadcast standard since 1941. Uh, National Television Systems Committee was analog broadcasting, went color in 1953. Uh, but then ATSC, Advanced Television Systems Committee, announced their 1.0 version of digital broadcasting, high definition adopted by the FCC in 1996. And I'm sure you remember, Mike, uh,

Michael Heiss [00:59:14]:
in

Scott Wilkinson [00:59:14]:
2009 when U.S. broadcasters were required to shut down their NTSC signal.

Michael Heiss [00:59:23]:
Yep, yep. That was, uh, I still have actually, um, the late Joe Flaherty, who for many years, Dr. Joe, who was the head of engineering for CBS. Every year at NAB, they used to give out a tchotchke, and we were invited as press. And one year he gave that— gave everybody a countdown clock that stopped at the date of the shutdown, but then they postponed the shutdown.

Scott Wilkinson [00:59:52]:
Oh man. And you remember, I'm sure, the, the, the government issued analog-to-digital converter boxes that people could get for their older TVs.

Michael Heiss [01:00:03]:
And every household, you know, every household gets, uh, 40— 2 $40 coupons.

Scott Wilkinson [01:00:09]:
That's right, that's right.

Michael Heiss [01:00:11]:
And people still use them. You can still buy them, by the way.

Scott Wilkinson [01:00:14]:
Really?

Michael Heiss [01:00:16]:
Oh, and you know, the— and the best application of that is, um, I'm sure you know Dave Arland, who is a PR guy in was for many years part of RCA when it was RCA. And he has a fully restored RCA CT-100, which was one of the first color TVs.

Scott Wilkinson [01:00:37]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:00:37]:
And he has an ATSC converter box and an NTSC converter box. Oh no, only, only NTSC, ATSC 1.0, because he couldn't get the HDMI to go to a 50, 55-year-old TV set.

Scott Wilkinson [01:00:55]:
Yeah, right, right.

Michael Heiss [01:00:56]:
And it still, you know, presents a picture.

Scott Wilkinson [01:01:00]:
And now of course we have ATSC 3.0, which is the next generation called NextGen TV, actually.

Michael Heiss [01:01:06]:
Yep, which Dave is actually working on now, and I use it daily.

Scott Wilkinson [01:01:10]:
Right, uh, which has voluntary deployment. It started around 2020. It now reaches about 76% Of how—

Michael Heiss [01:01:20]:
76% of the market, of that TV household market. And that's one we'll save to the end because there are folks now trying to lobby for an ATSC 1.0 turnoff date sometime in the next couple of years.

Scott Wilkinson [01:01:40]:
Right.

Michael Heiss [01:01:41]:
I'm not so sure.

Scott Wilkinson [01:01:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. South Korea has 4K over ATSC 3.0.

Michael Heiss [01:01:51]:
There will be some 4K starting here soon, I believe. But the state of broadcast right now of, you know, over the air is interesting.

Scott Wilkinson [01:02:04]:
Yes.

Michael Heiss [01:02:05]:
From a business and political standpoint.

Scott Wilkinson [01:02:08]:
Right. Right. So in terms of cable, we had analog cable all the way since 1945. Digital cable became widely available in 2000. And then there was satellite TV. I had satellite TV. I had both Dish and DirecTV.

Michael Heiss [01:02:27]:
Whoa.

Scott Wilkinson [01:02:28]:
For some time. They started in the '70s.

Michael Heiss [01:02:33]:
And then, you know, it was if you were, you know, not, you know, Burbank, not particularly rural, but if you were, you know, in a rural area, rural area out of the range of a TV station, or if there was no cable satellite, you know, think for those who, for those who can't imagine why, think of people out in a rural area that have a Starlink dish.

Scott Wilkinson [01:02:56]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:02:56]:
To get internet.

Scott Wilkinson [01:02:57]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:02:58]:
And this is the video for which coincidentally they would now use to get streaming services.

Scott Wilkinson [01:03:04]:
That's correct. That's correct. I misspoke before. I said satellite TV started in the '70s. DirecTV and Dish Network both started in mid-'90s.

Michael Heiss [01:03:13]:
Well, but remember, before that there was C-band.

Scott Wilkinson [01:03:17]:
Correct.

Michael Heiss [01:03:18]:
That there were people—

Scott Wilkinson [01:03:19]:
These gigantic antennas in your backyard.

Michael Heiss [01:03:24]:
There's one guy when I go, you know, on my daily exercise walks about 2 blocks down from my house, he's still got a C-band dish. I don't know what he uses it for. But because at that point, the network feeds were not encrypted.

Scott Wilkinson [01:03:42]:
Right.

Michael Heiss [01:03:42]:
So you could put up a C-band dish and get everything. And again, in, in rural areas, um, uh, uh, one of or two of my CDIA buddies are in, in rural Utah, and they did dozens and dozens of C-band dishes.

Scott Wilkinson [01:04:03]:
And now, of course, TV delivery is done mostly by streaming.

Michael Heiss [01:04:08]:
Yep, yep.

Scott Wilkinson [01:04:09]:
I mean, cable still exists. Cable still exists, although my digital cable, the DVR for example, the video recorder, that's all stored in the cloud. That is not stored locally.

Michael Heiss [01:04:21]:
I still have my, uh, you can take my TiVos from my cold dead hands even though they don't, they don't make them anymore, right? And one of mine blew up and I had to get another one from eBay. Because I'm still old-fashioned and I want, I want my stuff stored locally. I don't want to— you know, God bless her, my mother is 99, and teach her how to navigate through menus. It just, it's just not, you know, it ain't gonna happen. It ain't gonna happen. So she still has cable because if she wants to go to CNN, it's 2 And, you know, and there's a segment of the population to whom that's important.

Scott Wilkinson [01:05:08]:
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:05:09]:
For everybody else—

Scott Wilkinson [01:05:12]:
There you go.

Michael Heiss [01:05:14]:
It's this cockamamie thing. Well, though people want to watch sports, the things that are keeping broadcast, over-the-air broadcast alive, Regardless of the delivery mechanism, are sports and news.

Scott Wilkinson [01:05:29]:
Yep. Yep. That's it. All right. Let's talk about audio for a minute because we talked about video a lot and audio certainly should not be discounted here. You know, we went from analog audio, cassettes, vinyl, reel-to-reel tape,

Michael Heiss [01:05:50]:
wire recorders,

Scott Wilkinson [01:05:51]:
wire recorders. My dad had a wire recorder.

Michael Heiss [01:05:55]:
Wow.

Scott Wilkinson [01:05:55]:
Um, that was displaced by digital audio CDs in the '90s and then MP3 players in the 2000s. Although we have to say that vinyl and even reel-to-reel tape still survive. Vinyl thrives even.

Michael Heiss [01:06:11]:
There isn't enough pressing capacity to make vinyl. I, I'm having a problem getting some L-cassettes, but, um, there was an applause line. in there, Scott. You missed it, man. Oh

Scott Wilkinson [01:06:27]:
man,

Michael Heiss [01:06:28]:
you know me. Well, and also there is, you know, now these days in the era of social media, there's a community for everything, and there are people that are still into reel-to-reel.

Scott Wilkinson [01:06:37]:
Yeah, that's true.

Michael Heiss [01:06:38]:
I don't know where they get the tape from, but you know.

Scott Wilkinson [01:06:43]:
And of course I mentioned MP3 players, which is what's called a lossy compression. It discards up to 90% of the audio information in a— in an audio file, uh, but it lets it be stored in a relatively small place. And that led to products like the iPod, uh, in 2001, and the Zune.

Michael Heiss [01:07:06]:
Oh man, but stored and transmitted.

Scott Wilkinson [01:07:10]:
Yes.

Michael Heiss [01:07:10]:
And, you know, the ability to fit more stuff in a smaller pipe, you know, how much quality is a given listener willing to forgive in order not to consume the bandwidth?

Scott Wilkinson [01:07:29]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:07:30]:
And that goes for— and quite frankly, that goes for, you know, what's the best way— just for a minute to go back to video— what is the best picture quality that you can get right now? Over the air.

Scott Wilkinson [01:07:42]:
Over the air. Well, in terms of transmission, I would say Blu-ray.

Michael Heiss [01:07:45]:
Over the air because it's not compressed.

Scott Wilkinson [01:07:48]:
Right. Well, it is, but not as much.

Michael Heiss [01:07:50]:
But not to the degree. Yeah, but you don't know what— you know, you don't want to see the sausage made. You don't know how they're compressing whatever video it is that you're watching.

Scott Wilkinson [01:08:02]:
Right.

Michael Heiss [01:08:03]:
And you don't know with variable bitrate What's going to happen when too many people start watching the same thing at the same time?

Scott Wilkinson [01:08:09]:
Yeah, agreed. Well, then we have the, uh, the CD, of course, uh, the audio disc. Um, and now we have high-resolution versions, SACD from Sony and Philips, 1999 is when that came out, and DVD audio. Uh, in 2000,

Michael Heiss [01:08:35]:
uh, which you don't really see that much. Yes,

Scott Wilkinson [01:08:38]:
they're really not used very much except by audiophile labels,

Michael Heiss [01:08:42]:
because otherwise what would they be able to use as demo material at hi-fi shows?

Scott Wilkinson [01:08:46]:
Yeah, exactly.

Michael Heiss [01:08:48]:
You know, but now that's all vinyl again. You know, what goes around comes around.

Scott Wilkinson [01:08:52]:
Yes. Or, or even reel-to-reel. I've seen some audiophile shows recently.

Michael Heiss [01:08:56]:
Yes,

Scott Wilkinson [01:08:56]:
yes, they use reel-to-reel tape recorders, tape decks. Um, and we— you can actually stream uncompressed or losslessly compressed audio, high— even high-resolution audio over the internet fairly easily. We have services like Tidal and Qobuz, uh, and others that can do that. And so you don't even need discs to— and you don't have to compromise audio quality.

Michael Heiss [01:09:27]:
But that— but to the point of what people are willing to tolerate in exchange for, you know, getting music, everybody except for me loves Apple stuff, but there ain't no aptX on an iPhone. There's no lossless audio in the Apple Music, and people don't care. That's true.

Scott Wilkinson [01:09:52]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:09:52]:
And, and, and that's one of the challenges of the industry is to expose, you know, right here, but to expose them youngins to good audio because, you know, I'd be using these, but everybody else, whoops, is using these things. Now some of them are good, well, them little white ones, but, you know, If that's all you've ever heard, then you think it's fine.

Scott Wilkinson [01:10:24]:
Which is one reason I think a lot of companies are anxious to get young people to hi-fi shows, to actually expose them to, get them to listen to uncompressed high-resolution audio on a really good system.

Michael Heiss [01:10:42]:
Well, and also, you know, to be fair, there have been a lot of advances in headphone technology or earbud technology. Yeah, a lot of it led by the research done by Dr. Sean Olive and Harmon Kurvin. And well, well, Sean is— Is a protégé of Floyd. He's the next generation Floyd.

Scott Wilkinson [01:11:05]:
Right.

Michael Heiss [01:11:05]:
And, you know, and in fact, now, Sean, he's with Dr. Olive. has retired from Harman and is now consulting, and he's primarily in the headphone world.

Scott Wilkinson [01:11:19]:
Yeah, yeah. Um, so one, uh, let's talk a minute about, um, audio formats, in particular, um, immersive audio— Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Auro-3D. You remember Auro-3D?

Michael Heiss [01:11:38]:
It's still around. It is. It was the first one. And well, I think Atmos was the first.

Scott Wilkinson [01:11:46]:
Well, according to my research, Auro-3D came out in 2006 and Atmos was introduced in 2012.

Michael Heiss [01:11:54]:
Okay. Um,

Scott Wilkinson [01:11:56]:
but Auro-3D was still channel-based.

Michael Heiss [01:12:01]:
And, and it's, it's more because it was originally A lot of the development work was done by Barco people. Correct.

Scott Wilkinson [01:12:09]:
So it was meant for movies.

Michael Heiss [01:12:11]:
Well, and waffles. Yeah. And for those who don't know, Barco, the projector company, is based in Belgium. But Auro-3D is a good— it's different. The speaker placement is quite different than—

Scott Wilkinson [01:12:30]:
And it's very specific.

Michael Heiss [01:12:32]:
Yes, like don't mess with me,

Scott Wilkinson [01:12:34]:
right?

Michael Heiss [01:12:34]:
Uh, kind of.

Scott Wilkinson [01:12:35]:
Whereas Atmos, you can put speakers almost anywhere and it remaps to whatever you've got.

Michael Heiss [01:12:40]:
And Auro-3D is kind of big on voice of God speakers, you know, up right on top.

Scott Wilkinson [01:12:46]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:12:46]:
And, and then, you know, and look, that's, that's their thing, but it is much more of a European, um, based thing,

Scott Wilkinson [01:12:53]:
right? Whereas Dolby Atmos, uh, is channel-based and Very flexible. And,

Michael Heiss [01:13:00]:
uh, and as is DTS:X.

Scott Wilkinson [01:13:01]:
As DTS:X. Uh, I will say just for the record that the first soundtrack in Dolby Atmos was the Pixar movie Brave in 2015. Uh, sorry, 2012.

Michael Heiss [01:13:16]:
Wasn't— what about Batman? Oh, that was Dolby Digital, I think, maybe.

Scott Wilkinson [01:13:20]:
Right, that was before

Michael Heiss [01:13:21]:
Batman. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson [01:13:22]:
right. And then we, we have surround and even immersive audio, uh, in, uh, like soundbars. I remember hearing the Yamaha sound projector. Uh, oh

Michael Heiss [01:13:38]:
yeah.

Scott Wilkinson [01:13:39]:
Remember that thing?

Michael Heiss [01:13:40]:
Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson [01:13:41]:
It was, uh, it was remarkable. I thought it was remarkable at how well it put sound. This was only surround. It wasn't multi-channel. It wasn't immersive. not overhead, but it puts sound out and around the listener. I heard this demo and I went, whoa.

Michael Heiss [01:14:00]:
But if you compare that to what we're seeing now, and, you know, and again, in my other parallel life, I'm involved in sourcing some soundbars now. And, um, you look at what a soundbar can do now, um, you know, either for a modest budget or Some of this— there are soundbars in the, you know, $1,200, $1,500, $1,700 price range that are quite, quite good and are Atmos with up-firing, you know, speakers. So this was definitely a precursor of things to come with, with this particular product.

Scott Wilkinson [01:14:37]:
Exactly. Um, another company that kind of came and went— I haven't heard of them in a while, but I have a great picture— uh, was a company called Sonic Emotion.

Michael Heiss [01:14:48]:
Who's that guy?

Scott Wilkinson [01:14:49]:
Who's that guy?

Michael Heiss [01:14:50]:
Who's that guy?

Scott Wilkinson [01:14:52]:
One year at CES, I forget which year actually, um, uh, he, uh, Leo and I were walking around CES and we came across this booth and I got this picture of him and I, I thought it was really great. And they— I thought they looked—

Michael Heiss [01:15:06]:
It looks like Leo doing an imitation of Gary Owens.

Scott Wilkinson [01:15:16]:
Yes, exactly.

Michael Heiss [01:15:17]:
Your announcer is speaking.

Scott Wilkinson [01:15:22]:
Yes. And then we have a virtual immersive from headphones. We have Dolby headphone.

Michael Heiss [01:15:29]:
There are Atmos headphones.

Scott Wilkinson [01:15:31]:
And there are now Atmos headphones. Yeah, Atmos for headphones. DTS headphones.

Michael Heiss [01:15:35]:
That was from the very beginning that that was always in their roadmap.

Scott Wilkinson [01:15:42]:
It was first developed by Lake Technologies, an Australian company, in 1997, uh, licensed to Dolby, and then Dolby bought that company in 2003. Um, there's also Sony 360 Reality Audio, uh, which they use, uh, in, in a lot of their headphones too. As you told me in an email, speakers haven't changed very much.

Michael Heiss [01:16:07]:
Well, you know, what do you do? You need something to push that. You know, I'm going to be a subwoofer here.

Scott Wilkinson [01:16:14]:
Yeah, right.

Michael Heiss [01:16:16]:
You need something to push that air. And that's what they do. Now, to be sure, there are different ways to do it and different technologies for the drivers and the thing. What's a speaker? It's a thing that moves air.

Scott Wilkinson [01:16:33]:
Right, in response to an electrical signal.

Michael Heiss [01:16:36]:
Correct. And typically in a cabinet, of which there are different kinds. And that's what makes, you know, the fun of people like this, people like that. But, you know, there haven't— and, and somebody please correct me if I'm wrong— there hasn't been any, you know, there are magnaplanar kinds and there are ribbon speakers and there are flat panel speakers and there There are things that go into the, into the wall and vibrate, and I've done them all. We've all done them all. But, you know, the advancements come from refining the technology of the components.

Scott Wilkinson [01:17:22]:
Yes.

Michael Heiss [01:17:23]:
And the acoustics of where they fit into the cabinet as much as the Nobel Prize-winning developments.

Scott Wilkinson [01:17:33]:
Right, right. It's more evolution than revolution.

Michael Heiss [01:17:38]:
Right. Which again is not to say that there aren't new speakers that are doing something different. But, you know, I stand by at the end of the day, they're all pushing air.

Scott Wilkinson [01:17:51]:
They're all pushing air. Mm-hmm. All right. Last segment. What's next? Um, you, you mentioned earlier that FCC has proposed a roadmap for full transition to ATSC 3.0.

Michael Heiss [01:18:06]:
I think they put out a rule. It's hard. It's in Washington, which means who the heck knows?

Scott Wilkinson [01:18:12]:
Who the heck knows?

Michael Heiss [01:18:13]:
And who the heck knows what it's going to be? For those who are watching this on a replay, who knows what's going to happen after tomorrow?

Scott Wilkinson [01:18:21]:
Yeah, right.

Michael Heiss [01:18:23]:
Um,

Scott Wilkinson [01:18:23]:
right.

Michael Heiss [01:18:24]:
Right. So, you know who—

Scott Wilkinson [01:18:30]:
You voted. Good for you. So did I. So did I.

Michael Heiss [01:18:33]:
So who knows what's going to happen? And I certainly don't want to get into politics.

Scott Wilkinson [01:18:37]:
Yeah,

Michael Heiss [01:18:37]:
but a lot of that is caught up in lobbying and, you know, the nature of the FCC. But the broadcasters are lobbying for a cutoff date, maybe 2028-ish. Or maybe they'll tier it like they did the last time by market size. But—

Scott Wilkinson [01:18:57]:
What I read was that the full transition to ATSC 3.0 in major markets by 2028, complete transition in all markets by 2030.

Michael Heiss [01:19:08]:
And at the same time, I mentioned earlier, remember converter boxes that you could buy for about $40. and everybody got 2 $40 coupons. That ain't gonna happen. That ain't gonna happen again. On both. And again, without, you know, getting into politics, the— anybody, you know, tried to buy any DRAM lately? Can you get it? And if you can get it, what do you have to pay for it? And, uh, an acquaintance of mine whose company makes a very, very good ATS 3.0 converter box, had to redesign it because he couldn't get the memory because it all got— is getting sucked up by them evil data centers. And, and, you know, and again, not politics, but just the state of the world and the politics and the tariffs and the data centers and all that stuff. goes to the point of the industry.

Michael Heiss [01:20:14]:
The ATSC people, Pearl TV, has promised that there will be relatively inexpensive ATSC set-tops in early '27, maybe $60, $65— don't quote me— dollars.

Scott Wilkinson [01:20:33]:
Hmm.

Michael Heiss [01:20:34]:
But for people that don't have a new TV, But those are a lot of the people that are still using over-the-air, which is actually much like vinyl coming back because cord cutters are saying, to heck with this, you know, paying a gazillion dollars a month.

Scott Wilkinson [01:20:52]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:20:53]:
So there's— oops, where are we going, Kevin? There's a lot of this going on between the broadcasters, the license holders, how much the patent royalties are. Um, that's going to be one to watch.

Scott Wilkinson [01:21:10]:
Yep, yep, exactly right. Um, the next thing, uh, in terms of what's, what's next that I had in my notes was 8K. You know, the displays are already here. Um,

Michael Heiss [01:21:23]:
the displays are here, the panels are here, there's content being made, there's much more content at 4K, which can then be more generously updated to 8K—

Scott Wilkinson [01:21:38]:
Upscaled.

Michael Heiss [01:21:39]:
Or SD upscaled to 4K. There is 8K content being made, or the raw files can be sort of 8K.

Scott Wilkinson [01:21:51]:
But mostly they're being downconverted to 4K.

Michael Heiss [01:21:55]:
Well, yeah. Whereas on the other hand, the 4K broadcast of the Super Bowl are 1080p upscaled to 4K. So go filter.

Scott Wilkinson [01:22:04]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:22:05]:
Or as we say at Passover, go filter fish. Sorry.

Scott Wilkinson [01:22:12]:
Oh man.

Michael Heiss [01:22:13]:
Oh man. You know, I can't— I won't have any place to do this anymore, Scott. What are you doing? What are you doing to me?

Scott Wilkinson [01:22:20]:
I'm kidding you. I've got a picture. I've got a picture that you took of a Sony 85-inch 8K LCD prototype with a peak luminance of 10,000 nits, which is the complete max of HDR.

Michael Heiss [01:22:38]:
And it comes with a pair of sunglasses.

Scott Wilkinson [01:22:40]:
Yeah, really. I saw it. It was hella bright.

Michael Heiss [01:22:44]:
Well, but, and, and to the point, the colorists and the color graders that take the raw files from cameras regardless of the resolution and do, you know, the mixing and the color correction and all of that. With some of these monitors, you have to take a break every 15 minutes because it burns your eyes. I mean, that, that is not a joke.

Scott Wilkinson [01:23:14]:
No, it's not. 10,000 nits. is

Michael Heiss [01:23:18]:
searing, and, and you just can't stare at that too long, or, you know, your brains will explode.

Scott Wilkinson [01:23:27]:
So my question, yeah, is will 8K ever really be important in the marketplace?

Michael Heiss [01:23:36]:
Well,

Scott Wilkinson [01:23:37]:
the

Michael Heiss [01:23:37]:
consumer marketplace, I'm treading lightly because I certainly have friends in the 8K world.

Scott Wilkinson [01:23:44]:
Um,

Michael Heiss [01:23:46]:
Hard to tell.

Scott Wilkinson [01:23:47]:
Maybe in the case of giant DV LED walls that you can build with these panels, with these tiles to make an 8K display.

Michael Heiss [01:24:00]:
And medical imaging and CAD/CAM or whatever, you know, the modern-day equivalent— I date myself— of CAD/CAM is, you know, industrial design. and production line inspection. And, you know, I, I want the radiologist to be looking at the highest resolution so he can tell me there's nothing there, or if there is something there, they can tell me what it is and how they're going to fix it.

Scott Wilkinson [01:24:28]:
And with 8K, even on a small screen, you can zoom in and still see a lot of resolution.

Michael Heiss [01:24:34]:
Well, and there are 8K cameras used in production because that enables you to blow it up. That, that was one of the first applications of 4K. Yeah, the 4K CineAltas and cameras of that nature, because then you can do the super slow motion. And, you know, was it a touchdown or was it not a touchdown? You know, did he tag the— was the runner tagged or was he, you know, was he on the play?

Scott Wilkinson [01:25:03]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:25:04]:
And the ability to blow it up is where you see the 4K cameras in sports production. And almost all of the major NEP and Game Creek and those folk all have 4K cameras and some 8K cameras, you know, in their trucks.

Scott Wilkinson [01:25:26]:
I saw a picture. The last picture I'm going to show is one you took of a Sharp 8K video camera at CES 2018.

Michael Heiss [01:25:34]:
Oh yeah, don't— again, that's when Sharp was Sharp. Um, that never made— that was supposed to be a precursor, you know, the size notwithstanding, supposed to be the precursor of a consumer camera, you know, not with all those cables. Where's that? To your point from before, where's that HDMI there?

Scott Wilkinson [01:25:56]:
Yeah.

Michael Heiss [01:25:56]:
And by the way, you didn't mention HDMI 2.2. I think I saw HDMI 2.2 on the back of a milk carton, you know.

Scott Wilkinson [01:26:05]:
Where is it? Um, oh,

Michael Heiss [01:26:09]:
that was— no, that was— I, I apologize. That was, that was at a school.

Scott Wilkinson [01:26:13]:
No, no, that's fine, that's fine. Um, there are companies that make 8K cameras, you know.

Michael Heiss [01:26:18]:
There are companies making 16K cameras. Yeah, Blackmagic, um, at NAB this year, you know, had a very reasonably priced 12K camera. And, you know, overshoot, oversample, because you're never— to the point of what's next, you never know what's next. I'll bet that that Gone with the Wind transfer might have been done in 8K. I don't know. But they'll never say. You

Scott Wilkinson [01:26:50]:
know, that just depends on what, what is the effective resolution of film? I've heard 35mm in the 6K range.

Michael Heiss [01:27:00]:
Yeah, 4 to 6K, depending upon, you know, the film stock and all of that. You know, but, you know, be careful. Christopher Nolan is looking over your shoulders. So, you know, you never know. But it, you know, that's a good one. I'm gonna I'm gonna sit and watch that. I mean, again, you, you had it in our little outline. RED is very big into 8K cameras.

Scott Wilkinson [01:27:27]:
Yep.

Michael Heiss [01:27:28]:
And the sensors, you know, sensors. Do you know what Sony's biggest business segment is now?

Scott Wilkinson [01:27:35]:
No.

Michael Heiss [01:27:36]:
Sensors. All those little round dots on the side of your car, all those sensors. I've got a loaner from the dealer. My car's in the shop, and I got a, a 2016 i4 as a loaner, and it's got a gazillion cameras and sensors. And Sony is, is the leader in that. That was one of the shticks behind the car, that it was going to be a showcase for that technology. Right. But, you know, so be it.

Scott Wilkinson [01:28:11]:
Well, the last thing I want to predict is that quantum dot electroluminescent, that is direct view quantum dot, not putting it through an LCD, not doing the color conversion in OLED, just direct red, green, and blue quantum dots. I think that is going to be the next really big flat panel technology.

Michael Heiss [01:28:36]:
Well, to paraphrase a long gone but very well-remembered industry journalist, Dave Lachenbrook, who for many years was the editor and reporter for what was called TV Digest. And Dave used to say flat panel TVs are the same place they were 10 years ago, 10 years away. And the— and I think he's actually the guy that came up with prosumer and camcorder as well. And he was a wonderful, wonderful guy. Yeah. QDEL. I talked to Jeff Urich of Nanosys, who's now, I believe, moved somewhere else. Correct.

Michael Heiss [01:29:16]:
But Nanosys is very, very— the company that makes a lot of the quantum dot material is very big into that. And the last time I spoke to Jeff about that in May was, it's getting closer, Mike, it's getting closer. Well, how close? Well, it's closer than 10 years, but, but yeah. Well,

Scott Wilkinson [01:29:39]:
it's what they say about quantum computing too. It's, it's 10 years, or fusion power, it's 10 years away. They've been saying that for 20 years.

Michael Heiss [01:29:47]:
You know, let me put up a Cauchy bet. Which will come first? You know, um, inexpensive 75, 85, 100, under 100-inch DVLED micro LEDs or emissive QDEL. Which one will come first?

Scott Wilkinson [01:30:10]:
I would have to say DVLED. That would be my

Michael Heiss [01:30:14]:
guess. I— even though, as we both have been talking for way too many years, the manufacturing efficiency and the technology needs—

Scott Wilkinson [01:30:25]:
Is very low.

Michael Heiss [01:30:26]:
that is why— and the yield which results in the yields is still problematic, which is why, you know, you're seeing all these big— please don't, folks, please don't call them LCDs. They're LED illuminated LCDs. But that's why you're seeing all of that micro LED backlighting.

Scott Wilkinson [01:30:50]:
Because it's less expensive. Bingo. And QDEL will be expensive when it comes out. So which one will make it to affordability first? I wouldn't hazard a guess.

Michael Heiss [01:31:08]:
Don't know.

Scott Wilkinson [01:31:09]:
As the prophets say, what a long, strange trip it's been.

Michael Heiss [01:31:15]:
Indeed. Indeed. And thank you for allowing me to be a part of it. And, you know, I clearly enjoy making you laugh. And, you know, and the friendship that we've had over the years, both ourselves and our significant others who—

Scott Wilkinson [01:31:35]:
Yes.

Michael Heiss [01:31:35]:
You know, should be mentioned in the thank you.

Scott Wilkinson [01:31:38]:
Yes, they will.

Michael Heiss [01:31:39]:
You know, the last time you were down here, you almost got me to get a paizookie.

Scott Wilkinson [01:31:45]:
Well, the next time we come down, we will go back to that restaurant and we'll get a pizookie.

Michael Heiss [01:31:51]:
So I really appreciate your allowing me to be part of the whole situation.

Scott Wilkinson [01:31:55]:
Well, thank you so much for being here so many times and talking with me. And I value our friendship tremendously and your knowledge tremendously. It's been a real pleasure and a privilege to work with you for all these years.

Michael Heiss [01:32:09]:
Thank you very much.

Scott Wilkinson [01:32:11]:
Tell people for the last time on this show where they can find you online.

Michael Heiss [01:32:15]:
You can read— I just finished my next article at midnight last night that'll go into the next issue of Hidden Wires print, a print magazine.

Scott Wilkinson [01:32:25]:
A print magazine?

Michael Heiss [01:32:26]:
I'm crying out loud.

Scott Wilkinson [01:32:28]:
I thought those disappeared.

Michael Heiss [01:32:30]:
Also available online, Hidden Wires. It's, uh, hiddenwires.co.uk. There you go. Thank you very much. And I am now also seen in TV Technology, uh, tvtechnology.com, and occasionally in TWICE and Residential Systems.

Scott Wilkinson [01:32:50]:
Well, all the best of luck to you in your continued endeavors covering all of this stuff. Yeah, and, uh, thanks again.

Michael Heiss [01:32:58]:
Tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

Scott Wilkinson [01:33:00]:
Somebody's got to do it. Thank you again for being here, Mike.

Michael Heiss [01:33:04]:
Thank you, Scott.

Scott Wilkinson [01:33:06]:
So this is it, the end of an era. 17 years doing Home Theater Geeks. I do have a number of people I want to thank, so if you'll, uh, indulge me in that. My deepest thanks to Leo Laporte, who gave me the opportunity of a lifetime, uh, In my career, uh, being a guest on his show, his radio show, and guest hosting the show, and now the podcast, uh, have been truly, really highlights of my entire 30-plus-year career as a journalist in this field. I also want to thank Lisa Laporte for bringing me back in 2023 to do more episodes of Home Theater Geeks. I also want to thank Kevin King, who has been producing, engineering, and editing this show for the last 3 years, and I greatly appreciate his work on the show, making me look good. And I want to thank Anthony Nielsen for overseeing the production and John Ashley for filling in for Kevin when, when Kevin wasn't available. I also want to thank John Slanina, who has retired from TWIT, but he was engineering the show for me from 2009 to 2017.

Scott Wilkinson [01:34:34]:
And his engineering expertise is unparalleled. And I always just tremendously enjoyed working with him. I want to thank Russell Tammany for solving a number of computer problems, which he always came to the rescue for me, and I greatly appreciate that. Um, Burke McQuinn, uh, gets a big thank you from me for tech checking all of my guests, making sure that when they get online on, uh, on Zoom or, um, Restream, uh, that it works. And I thank him for that. Certainly all of my fantastic guests, um, I have just enjoyed so much, uh, talking with such luminaries in the audio and video Uh, business that, uh, it wouldn't have been the same show without him, and I sure do appreciate it. And last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my wife, Joanna Kasdan, aka Mrs. Scott, as she was known in the earlier days of this podcast, who supported my career for all of these years.

Scott Wilkinson [01:35:49]:
And I will be eternally grateful to her for that. So thank you for watching. Thank you for being there for all these years. And, uh, I hope to see you again sometime. As always, geek out. Geek out.