Home Entertaiment Components, Devices and Technology Terms Explained
Whole Home Entertainment
~Your home network
Watch what you want...Where you want!
Whole home entertainment, also referred to as the "digital home," or your "home network," is about connecting computers, TVs, AV receivers, and home theater components so you can listen to music, watch movies or look at photos all over your home (not just on your computer monitor).
Thanks to computers, media has become digital. We store our movies, music and photos on our computers. We download movies from the internet. We connect our cameras and camcorders and transfer or photos and home movies to store on our computer. And, most people store their music libraries on their computer and take it with them on iPods and other devices.
Our home theaters have become digital too. We record to DVRs (see below) that use hard drives. We watch DVDs and Blu-ray Discs that store movies on digital discs. Today, computers and home entertainment devices that can play digital media make it easy to share your movies, photos and music wherever you want to view it or listen to it.
When your computers and home theater devices are connected to each other using Ethernet cables (like the ones you use to connect your computer to your internet modem) or with a wireless home network, you can now watch media on TVs or computers anywhere in the house; or take it with you on your smart phone, iPod, and other portable media player. It used to be that whole home entertainment required expensive wiring and an installer. Today's computers, TVs, home theater devices and accessories make it affordable and actually pretty easy to watch what you want WHERE you want. Now you don't even need a computer.
Convergence
The marriage of computers and home theater.
"Convergence" is the term often used to refer to the phenomenon that the media that is stored on a computer can be shown on a home theater. It is the marriage of the computer world and the home theater/home entertainment world. The goal is to have the "10 foot" user experience...that is, instead of watching movies you've downloaded from online on your computer monitor that is about 3 feet away from your face, you can kick back on the sofa (typically about 10 feet away, but could be 6 feet or 15 feet or...) in a more relaxed environment where you can share your viewing and listening with others. Convergence is a term that is rarely used today. This is probably because many home theater devices do not require a computer. They have their own processors--even TVs have microchips (mini computers)--and many home theater components have hard drives for saving your movies, photos and music. Ultimately, convergence was the birthplace of our whole home entertainment/digital home. Read more
DMA - Digital Media Adaptors
Get to all of your saved movies, music, and photos from one place.
"Aggregator" is a term thrown around a lot today. (The definition of ag-gre-gate (v) is to collect together in a mass.) It means finding our media wherever it is stored and putting it all together in one place where you can navigate to your music or movies or photos, and play them without having to copy the files from your computer or other device. We have so many files today, saved in so many different places (computers, TiVos, smart phones, etc.), we need an easy way to find them and play them without having to actually copy them all to one place.
How do you find the files (music, movies, photos) that you want to watch on your TV? Digital Media Adaptors make it possible. Digital Media Adaptors can be a stand alone device, or it can be built-in to another component. DMAs do more than just find the files. Once found, the files have to be in a format that the TV can understand so it can be shown on your home theater. The function of a DMA is not just to find the movies, photos, and music that is on your other devices and computers, but to translate all of the different formats (jpeg, bmp, gif, mpeg, mp3, wma, etc. etc.) so it can be viewed on your TV and heard on your AV receiver. Many DMAs also can go online to stream movies and music from online sources. Different DMA manufacturers have partnered with online media providers like Pandora, Netflix, Vudu, Rhapsody and more. Networked TVs are an example of a "device" that has built-in DMA. AppleTV, Netgear's Media Center, and Popcorn Hour are just a couple of examples of devices that have hard drives to store media as well as the ability to show media that is stored on your computer(s). These devices are actually considered "digital media servers" with built-in digital media adaptors.
Don't confuse a DMA with a "media server." The difference is that a "media server" has a built-in hard drive so you can copy and save your movies, music, and photos to the media server; the DMA simply connects you to the files that are saved on your computers and converts the file formats to be seen on your TV. With a media server, you don't have to be connected to a computer. To play your media through a DMA, you need to have your computers turned on and connected to your home network. There are other details about how to create a home network that will be covered in other articles. LET'S COVER THAT AGAIN, as I know it seems confusing...a stand alone device with no hard drive would be considered a "digital media adaptor" or DMA. A digital media server, that has a hard drive will often have a built-in digital media adaptor to help it connect to your computers to find files.
What you need to know is that DMAs make it possible for today's TVs and home theater components to play your media. If you don't have newer TVs with the ability to connect to your home network, there are devices out there that make it possible. If you are looking for a new TV, DVD or Blu-ray Disc player, DVR, or other home theater device, look for the ability to connect to your home network and be able to play your movies, music and photos.
PLC- PowerLine Communication (Adaptors)
Whole Home Networking the simple, reliable and (relatively) cheap way.
What if your computer or networked TV is located in a room that has no internet connection but you want to connect it to get content from online? Today, you can magically turn any electrical outlet into your own home network connection. Powerline adaptors (also known as "powerline communication," "powerline converters," or "PLC") connect to your computer (or other device) with an Ethernet cable. It is then plugged into an electrical outlet. Another powerline adaptor is plugged into an outlet near where your "router" or modem is located. That adaptor connects to your modem or router with an Ethernet cable. And voila! It's as if you were connecting your computer (or device) with an Ethernet cable directly into your modem or router. The difference is that when you use a powerline adaptor, you don't have an Ethernet cable winding through your house and you don't have to pay an installer to run Ethernet cables through your walls.
The magic is that a powerline adaptor that is plugged into an electrical outlet sends the data over your household electrical power wires (hey, they're copper wires similar to what's in the cables you use!).
What this means is that you can connect a computer (or video game console, or Blu-ray disc player, or networkable AV receiver or networked TV) that is in one location to the internet modem that's across the room or in another part of the house.
Why?
Perhaps you want to
-play games online,
-access BD-Live features on your Blu-ray Disc Player
-watch Netflix on your TiVo Series 3 or on your TV by connecting to the modem for internet access.
-Or you may want to connect your TV or home theater components to your home network so you can access all of your media files (movies, photos, music) that are saved on the computers or "servers" in your home.
Why not use a wireless adaptor?
Is there a difference between the cheap powerline adaptors and the pricier ones?
You want a connection that is reliable and can handle all the data needed for high definition audio and video. If you want to connect more than one device, TV, computer or home theater at a time, you need to sent even more data. That's a lot of information, more than many wireless connections or cheap powerline adaptors can handle. You can compare it to experiences we have had using the internet. If your connection isn't fast enough, video becomes erratic and it's slow to load photos or transfer files; I'm sure you have experienced your wireless connection dropping out so you had to reconnect to the network. You want a connection that is reliable and can handle everything you want to do. There's nothing more annoying than having a movie cut out in the middle! A better powerline adaptor can reliably handle the demands of more than one stream of high definition movies and TV being sent from room to room.
To illustrate:
When you are transferring high definition audio and video and/or using a really fast internet connection (some broadband providers now are capable of speeds of 60 Mbps or more!), or when transferring high definition to more than oneTV/ home theater in your house, there is a lot of data that has to be sent back and forth. Wireless connections (wi-fi) aren't as reliable as a direct connection. Chances are that more than one person will want to go online with their computer, at the same time. Or maybe one person wants to watch a high definition movie that's stored on your home office computer and another wants to watch a TV show in the bedroom that is stored on a DVR in your home theater room. Each connection to the home network has its own stream of data that has to be transferred. When more than one person is connecting to other computers or to the internet modem, or to other devices, there are multiple streams of information that has to be sent and received around the house. The powerline adaptor has to capable of handling all that information and ensuring that it gets sent and received reliably.
To achieve that level of reliabililty, buy a good powerline adaptor that is capable of sending 100 megabits per second or more. These PLCs may be called AV (audio video) powerline adaptors or HD (high definition) powerline adaptors. While they cost more, you will have a steady flow of information, which you need to watch high definition and listen to surround sound from the internet or from movies stored on your computer.
What if you want to connect more than one device with a poweline adaptor?
If the devices are in the same area (as they would be for a home theater), you can get a powerline adaptor that has multiple Ethernet connections like ones made by Netgear. Or you can get a reasonably priced Ethernet hub (or see about routers ) that has a number of Ethernet inputs and then connects to the powerline adaptor.
If the devices/computers that you want to connect are in different areas of the house, you can connect each to its own powerline adaptor. All of those powerline adaptors transfer data to and from the adaptor that is connected to your modem or router.
In order to communicate with each other, all powerline adaptors need to be compatible, that is from the same manufacturer and made to work together.
Note: you cannot plug a PLC into a surge protector unless the surge protector is "Powerline compliant" and you connect the powerline adaptor into the outlet labeled for it.
I have a number of these adaptors in my house by different manufacturers and will cover it in a review. All this home networking information brings up many questions like, "What is a router?" "What is a hub?" "What devices can be networked to each other and to the internet?" These will be covered in my upcoming book and in articles to be posted to the site here. Come back to learn more!
THE DVR~ its many varieties
Record your TV shows to a hard drive. The many benefits of digital recording.
Is there any chance that you are still recording TV shows with a VCR? It's not only lower quality, it's actually harder to program than today's recorders. Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) are now available as part of your cable or satellite receiver or as a stand-alone recorder (TiVos, etc.). You simply choose the TV show from your onscreen program guide, press "record,computer peripherals (add ons) and software that can turn your computer into a DVR. Because a DVR uses memory (temporary memory as well as a hard drive) you can pause, rewind and fast forward on live TV. Read more
