An alternative to a cable TV set-top box which allows the consumer to choose which type of set-top box they want as opposed to only the ones a particular cable company offers. Many display devices offer a direct connection for a CableCARD which is a PMCIA type card that handles decryption. A new standard of CableCARD has been proposed which offers interactive features such as pay-per-view and interactive program guides.

To adjust with reference to a standard.

Analog display device that generates an image on a layer of phosphors that are driven by an electron gun.

Community Antenna TeleVision or cable television. Method of delivering television broadcasts via coaxial cable, which is less susceptible to interference that via antenna. CATV cable is another term for coaxial.

Constant Bit Rate. Refers to an unchanging encoding rate for MPEG where quality gets downgraded on compression demanding scenes such as ones with a high amount of movement. Variable bit rate (VBR) encoding keeps quality at a standard level and is considered more efficient.

Charged Coupled Device. Electronic sensors used in video cameras that convert light energy into electrical.

Compact Disc - Recordable. See CD.

Compact Disc – Re-Writable. See CD.

Consumer Electronics Association. An industry association of some 2000 electronics manufacturers. Produces the Consumer Electronics Show or CES.

Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association. International industry association for home electronics installation and design related businesses. It also certifies members with professional designations.

Center designated signal of a 5.1 audio system. Typically for home theater, the corresponding speaker should be as close as possible to the video image associated with the sound.

A separate signal or signal path.

The color part of a video signal.

An optical defect of a lens which causes different colors or wavelengths of light to be focused at different distances from the lens. It is seen as color fringes or halos along edges and around every point in the image.

The color quality of light that is defined by the wavelength (hue) and saturation. Chromaticity defines all the qualities of color except its brightness.

State where color signal lags behind the brightness signal, which shows as color smearing or bleeding at the edge of objects.

Color portion of a video signal.

Closed caption (CC) superimposes a transcript of the audio portion of a video program over the program image. Its primary use is to provide people that are deaf or hard of hearing the opportunity to read a transcript of the audio as it is being played. Closed Caption is also helpful for people learning to read or learning a foreign language. Closed Caption can also be used to display text unrelated to the program being viewed, such as weather or news.

A variety of materials put on high quality lenses to minimize the amount of light reflected back to the lamp and the amount of ambient light that mingles with the focused light leaving the lens. Generally good coatings can add 15% or more to the lenses brightness. Other coatings are used for filtering colors.

An audio or video cable with a single internal wire with an outer shield that is ground. In audio, a speaker type where one speaker is positioned within another larger speaker’s cone.

Stands for COmpression/DECompression. Generic term for an algorithm for compressing and decompressing data, audio, or video files. Lossless codecs such as LZW are used for data files where every bit must be preserved, while lossy codecs such as MPEG and WMA are used for video and audio files where losing information is tolerable.

Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing. An HDTV broadcast method adopted predominantly in Europe as opposed to 8VSB being adopted in the U.S.A. Sends a digital signal over a thousand or so carrier signals from multiple antennas. Resistant to multipath where the same signal gets reflected off objects to create ghosting or faint duplicate signals arriving later.

A device for measuring the color accuracy of a display device relative to the standard of D65 or 6500 degrees Kelvin.

Calibration pattern used to adjust the brightness, saturation and hue of video displays.Â

Image anomaly which looks like a rainbow at the edge of bright objects on screen. Also called rainbow effect where sequential color systems, such as single chip DLP projectors or some LCoS RPTVs, update color information at different locations on the screen because of quick movement of screen objects or a viewer’s gaze. For instance, the red component of a white object will show at a different location on the screen than blue when an object moves quickly across because color is being displayed sequentially. This also occurs with quick relative movement such as moving your gaze from point to point across the screen. Most noticeable in bright objects.

Circuit in a display device that separates the color part of the signal from the luminance. Can effect picture quality if set by manufacturer to compensate for higher color temperature of overdriven displays or other color variations.

The whitest whites, reddest reds, bluest blues and greenest greens. High color dynamics are a result of dynamic range/contrast ratios. Having excellent color dynamics implies rich colors, excellent definition, high contrast.

Measure of color purity. Highly saturated colors emit a very narrow band of wavelengths of light instead of the broader spectrum of frequencies emitted from mixed colors. A display with good saturation capability will look vibrant.

Color balance of white light which goes from red to blue as the temperature rises. Measured in degrees Kelvin, which starts at absolute 0 or –273 degrees Celsius, color temperature matches the reference standard of the light being emitted from a carbon block heated to the stated degrees. For instance, the early morning sun is around 2500K, which is the same warm light that a carbon block heated to 2227° Celsius would emit. Heating the block further to ~10000° Celsius would emit the same bluish light of a blue-sky mid-day sun. Common color temperatures are 5500 Kelvin (black and white movies) and 6500 Kelvin (standard color films).

Rotating wheel with 3 or more translucent color filters used to display sequential color on single imager light valve based projection devices. The imager reflects or transmits the color component of a given image when the wheel’s corresponding color filter is affecting the light passing through to the lens. A 1X wheel cycles through all colors in 1/60th of a second.Â

Reduces interference between color and luminance signals carried in composite video. Better than a notch filter and in order from worst to best quality, 2-line, 3-line and 3D.Â

A motion artifact caused by interlace where an object has moved appreciably within a frame and its new position is displayed in a different position in one field over the other. Looks like the teeth of a comb.

Component Video is a method of delivering quality video (RGB) in a format that contains all the components of the original image. These components are referred to as luma and chroma and are defined as Y'Pb'Pr' for analog component and Y'Cb'Cr' for digital component. It is comprised of luminance (Y) and two chrominance channels of blue minus luminance and red minus luminance.

Single signal version of video where both chroma and luma are carried with chroma on a 3.58MHz sideband of the luminance signal, usually through a 75 Ohm cable. Poorest quality signal type.

Most projectors and displays automatically accept images that are of greater resolution than the native (true) resolution of the video device. The resulting image is scaled to fit the native resolution of the video device using a variety of scaling algorithms. Not all video devices use the same compression algorithms; therefore, the quality of compression can vary. The nature of compression in a digital device means that some image content is lost.

Contrast increases as the white point increases. Increasing the white point creates a greater difference between white and black.

The ratio between white and black. The larger the contrast ratio the greater the ability of a video device to show subtle color details and tolerate ambient room light. There are two industry methods used: 1) Full On/Off contrast measures the ratio of the light output of an all white image (full on) and the light output of an all black (full off) image. 2) ANSI contrast is measured with a pattern of 16 alternating black and white rectangles. The average light output from the white rectangles is divided by the average light output of the black rectangles to determine the ANSI contrast ratio. When comparing the contrast ratio of video devices make sure you are comparing the same type of contrast. Full On/Off contrast will always be a larger number than ANSI contrast for the same video device.

An issue for CRT displays, projectors, and RPTVs. Convergence is the alignment of the component colors of a display where the respective electron beams or pixels must sit at the precisely correct position for the proper color to be rendered.

Colors of a color component display such as a CRT or projector do not line up correctly to create a proper image and create color halos or incorrect color.

Interference of an electrical signal by another electrical signal in close proximity caused by its electromagnetism.

Cathode Ray Tube.