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.

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.