Sony KF-60WE610 The Sony Guide to Home Theater - Page 49

Letterbox. One technique for accommodating widescreen programming on a standard 4:3 screen. Letterboxing presents the widescreen picture with black bars across the top and bottom. Cinema purists love letterboxing because it preserves the director's original vision. Others are disturbed by a picture that does not fill their 4:3 screen. Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). A television display type that uses a viscous liquid and a mesh of transistors to turn pixels on and off. LCDs are used in both direct-view and projection television. In both cases, LCDs require a light to generate brightness. Local channels. DIRECTV broadcasting that beams the signals of CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox local affiliate stations, plus a PBS national feed into many cities. No need for cable or a local TV antenna. Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel. The "0.1" bass channel of surround sound systems, commonly fed to a subwoofer. Luminance. The black-and-white component of a video signal, abbreviated Y. Luminance is combined with the color signal (chrominance) in composite video connections, but kept apart in S-Video and component connections. Memory Stick® media playback. A Sony feature that enables you to display JPEG images (DCF format).* Simply slide the Memory Stick media out of a Sony Cybershot® camera or Handycam® camcorder and into the television's Memory Stick slot! MID™ circuitry. Sony processing that enables advanced Twin View™ picture-andpicture, including simultaneous display of SD and HD-originated pictures. Multi-Channel Super Audio CD playback. The benefits of surround sound come to music. Super Audio CD supports up to 5.1 channels of full-quality sound. Noise. Random, unwanted interference with the signal to which you're trying to watch or listen. In audio, noise takes the form of hiss or static. In video, noise is picture "snow," random flecks or specks of unwanted color. NTSC. The U.S. standard for color TV broadcasting, adopted in the 1950s. NTSC is now used to refer to other aspects of conventional broadcasting, including the frame rate of 29.97 interlaced frames per second and the television raster of 525 gross scanning lines per frame and 480 active scanning lines. NTSC officially stands for National Television Standards Committee, although frustrated engineers will tell you it stands for "Never The Same Color." One Button Record. This feature of DIRECTV receivers lets you record a show from the program guide at the touch of a button. Uses the receiver's timer and an infrared "blaster" to automatically start and stop your VCR. Optical digital output. A method of connecting high-quality digital audio from a source component to an A/V receiver. Optical outputs use a fiber optic transceiver to convert pulses of electrical voltage into flashes of laser light. At the far end, the light is converted back into voltage pulses. Pan & Scan. One technique for accommodating widescreen programming on a standard 4:3 screen. The system selects out a 4:3 portion of the larger picture and presents only that portion. To follow the action in the larger picture, a technician must sometimes shift The Sony Guide to Home Theater 49