home theater

During this period of social distancing, everyone is streaming. As such, Netflix has had to lower the resolution quality of streaming down to SD in Europe in order to handle the load. That's a significant degradation if you have a 4K TV. Will it happen here? Scott wouldn't be surprised if it does. As more people shelter in place, they'll be watching more, and streaming more. Coupled with working at home, kids having virtual classes online, internet traffic is going way up. Leo says one way around this is to cache content. 

Scott Wilkinson is featured in this month's Popular Science, talking about the high dynamic audio range and how it's constantly needing to be adjusted when watching a movie at home. Scott ways that movies in the theaters are loud, but the spec is 85dBa, with peaks of 120dBa. The acoustic makes up the loudness, though. But when you get home, you don't have that luxury unless you've built it in. So you're constantly turning it up for dialog, and turning it down for things like explosions.

Scott joins Leo to talk about whether NAB will end up being cancelled due to the Corona Virus Outbreak. Leo also wonders this will be the death knell for the conference model in general. Scott has already decided not to go to several conferences and events this year because it's unnecessary travel. 

Scott says that TV makers are leading the way to 8K TVs now. But the question is, can the human eye even see the difference between 4K and 8K? Scott says probably not. In fact, Warner Brothers tested 130 people and found that most people either couldn't tell the difference or found 8K TVs only slightly better. And some judged 4K better than 8K. But that could actually be a blind guess. People with 2010 vision sitting 5' from the screen could see the difference, but only slightly. So Scott says we've reached the limit of how the human eye can see the resolution. 

Scott Wilkinson joins Leo to talk about the HPA Tech Retreat in Palm Springs. 500 Hollywood professionals from directors to cameramen, to post-production people. All talking about new techniques in moving making. One was making a short film in a single day. Scott says that while shooting the demonstration film was the near real-time upload of every shot scene to the cloud for editing in post. Using proxies.  Proxies enable you to create an "edit decision list" that can then be applied to the higher resolution footage to create the final cut.

Scott Wilkinson joins Leo to talk about one of the last vinyl record manufacturers, Apollo, being destroyed by fire. Apollo was responsible for making 74% of the lacquer masters that are used to create master vinyl recorders. Is this a big deal? Scott says that the sale of vinyl records has been rising every year for the last four or five years, and with a loss of this vinyl factory, it could mean that the cost of vinyl will go up dramatically. Can it be rebuilt? Maybe, but it'll be very difficult.