Test Your HT Savvy The Answers

Check the box of each question you answered correctly, then count the total number of checked boxes.

1] b. A footlambert is a unit of picture brightness. More specifically, it measures light as it is reflected off a surface, such as a projection screen. Color temperature measures the color of whites and grays in a picture.

2] c. Encryption is scrambling data for purposes of copy protection.

3] b. A brightness control is used to set a picture's "black point." While long-term convention has firmly established the term "brightness control," it would be more correct to call it a black-level control.

4] a. A letterboxed display has the same scan-line spacing as a full-frame (4:3) display, but uses only about 2/3 of them for the active area of a widescreen image. The rest are used for the black bars. An anamorphic widescreen image has the same total number of scan lines, but uses all of them in the active picture area of a 16:9 image on a widescreen display. This results in a significant increase in resolution.

5] a.

6] b.

7] b. While there are some remotes on the market that use radio waves (RF), most use digitally modulated heat waves, or infrared (IR) waves, to send commands to the controlled device.

8] c. The plasma causes phosphors to glow.

9] b. This loss of detail, or crushing, may occur at the bright or dark end of the brightness range.

10] c.

11] a.

12] b. Decorrelation is rear-channel phase shuffling, which gives spaciousness to an otherwise dimensionless surround signal. While it was more useful in the Dolby Surround era, when all surround channels were mono, it still finds application in today's discrete surround era in the 7.1-channel THX Surround EX format. There it's used to spread the single, matrix-derived rear center surround channel into two separate rear surround channels. THX's front/surround sound matching is called timbre matching. Optional dynamic-range compression is a feature of Dolby Digital, not THX.

13] c.

14] b. There are actually three separate paths, one for the brightness information (designated Y), and two for color-difference information (red-Y and blue-Y). When all signal information is carried by the same circuit path, it's called a composite signal.

15] b. 8-VSB stands for 8-level vestigial sideband.

16] c. A capacitor is an insulator for DC (0Hz), but passes higher frequencies with increasing ease. The simplest loudspeaker crossover, for example, uses a single capacitor in series with the tweeter to block low frequencies.

17] b.

18] b.

19] a.

20] c. DVDs and CDs are laser-optical; solid-state means transistorized.

21] a.

22] c. A downlead is the wire between an antenna and the TV set; a demodulator converts radio-frequency broadcast signals into video signals.

23] b.

24] c.

25] b.

26] b. OK, trick question. Our more common abbreviation, RPTV, would make it too easy.

27] a.

28] c.

29] c.

30] b.

31] c. Assuming an unchanged focal length for the projection lens, doubling the distance quadruples the picture's area, which reduces brightness by 75%, to 1/4 of its original brightness.

32] c.

33] a.

34] c.

35] c.

36] a.

37] b.

38] a.

9] c.

40] b.

41] b.

42] a.

43] a.

44) b. In the high-definition world, an HD monitor is a television that will display high-definition material in full HD resolution, but requires an external tuner or other HD source to do so. But a video monitor, as classically defined, is any device with a built-in video display screen.

45] a.

46] b.

47] a.

48] c.

49] a.

50] c. Though you might choose to argue with this one. In fact, there's never been a universally accepted definition of the term home theater. While we prefer to define it here as a home system that at least has surround sound and a reasonably sized screen, who can argue that for a classic movie fan, watching a 32-inch screen with a decent external monophonic sound system in subdued room lighting is not a home theater?

How did you do? A score of 45 or more is excellent, 35 is so-so, and less than 30 means you are either a newbie or need to brush up on your reds, greens, and blues.

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