High Dynamic Range (HDR) is an advancement in picture quality that will quickly find a market. It will change the AV industry more than any other display technology that has debuted in the last few years. The upgrade to HDR is easy to see by the customer and will establish a foothold in the market quickly due to its stunning dynamic range of brightness — like really, really stunning. HDR creates pictures in the same way that the human eye does and makes videos come to life with shadows and shading details the likes of which we have never seen on other displays. Viewers can instantly notice the difference and begin imagining it in their homes and businesses. Yet, we are facing one problem to implementing HDR — this upgrade has a lot of technology behind it that will not be understood by everyone.

The most prominent issue is that HDR requires the maximum bandwidth specified in the HDMI® 2.0 spec — up to 18Gbps for support of the full–color spectrum and detail it provides. The components, the cables and accessories must all meet the full specification. The problem is that HDMI products can legally state, “supports HDMI 2.0” when they only fall into the minimum specification range of HDMI 2.0 under 10.2Gbps making them unable to support the bandwidth requirement for HDR. Making it even more complicated is that the hardware specification for HDR is HDMI 2.0a. Luckily, making the move from HDMI 2.0 to 2.0a is going to be done with a firmware upgrade on most devices. Therefore, the products that only meet the HDMI 2.0 minimum–specification will not support HDR.

New releases in the home theater industry’s product technology are never ending! By the time you learn about the latest and greatest technology, it’s already being replaced with something newer and better. What you thought was emerging is now obsolete, and you haven’t even had time to review, no less educate yourself, on all the details of what’s changed.

This can be costly if you don’t know the details of the new HDMI® 2.0 and 2.0A specs. Education is more important than ever due to the hot–button feature everyone is talking about: High Dynamic Resolution (HDR).

With all the hyperbole about this new technology being thrown around, along with the talk about new cable certifications, it’s easy to get confused quickly.

Here’s an example that occurred in our office last week. One of our staff members received a typical sales email from a manufacturer that read:

Dear friend,
Good day. Attached is our HDMI 2.0 HDCP 2.2 100m extender (HDBaseT) for you.

Whoa, wait a minute! HDBaseT has upgraded to HDMI 2.0 and can therefore now support 4k/60, HDR and 4:4:4 color? Without a clear understanding of HDMI 2.0, 2.0A, 4K and HDR, one would think this HDBaseT was something to consider purchasing for use with the new 4K, HDR components because of the “HDMI 2.0” listed spec.

Thru the years the complexity of HDMI® based installations have grown, because of this we have seen a marked increase in “system failure” support calls. This can be very upsetting to dealers, consumers and causes stress on the support side.

The most common “system failure” is as follows: everything was working great for about a week or so, then we started to see [insert one/more of the following] sparkles, picture fade, and/or dropping of resolution until there is no picture or sound. Trouble shooting this can be a real problem due to the fact that at our end we rarely can get a truly complete picture of the install over the phone.

We think Thermal Overload is the problem.

Metra Home Theater has expanded our installation accessories category with the introduction of single, dual and triple gang mud rings. We listened to the most common complaints regarding mud rings from our installers and addressed the most common issues. These complaints included rings that were flimsy and not holding their shape when mounted, flanges that are not large enough to cover mistakes and the wall plates being sold at Big Box Stores and Electrical Supply houses are now mid-sized. Our new “CS” series Mud Rings (CS-SGMR, CS-DGMR & CS-TGMR) address each of these concerns.

Our new mud rings push the flange size and rigidity up a notch and now it fits the newer “Mid-Sized” plates being used now at major stores and Electrical Supply houses and the ring will not change shape when tightened down.

The new CS series are a very strong and reliable mud ring mount that you can count on out in the real world.

At the office we recently have redesigned our catalog. At home I have been working on my Holiday Gift List. One would not think these two lists would have anything in common, but you would be wrong. In spending several weeks reading and proof reading the catalog, we have products that will come in handy this Holiday season if you are purchasing new technology.

Here are the top six products:

1. 

   Metra Multi-Media Broadcast System (M3B) — If you want to watch the bowl games but the kids want to play their new PS4, you need this product. This system will allow the kids to play games on a TV, bowl games to be viewed on another, and movies to be watched on a third television. All without moving the sources to the various TVs. This product will make everyone happy this holiday season.

2. 

   LED Lights — Have a covered back porch or entrance way? Do you want to decorate them with lights for the holidays? Use our LED lights and you can leave these lights up all year to save time for future holidays.

3. 

   HDM-GA1 — Are you purchasing a new 4K TV? You will need to make sure the existing cables will work with this new fancy 4K television. Our HDM-GA1 will update your passive cables to provide content.