JBL CVR700, CVPD50 manual Terminology

TERMINOLOGY

Home theater equipment has changed a great deal since the first VCR was intro- duced about 30 years ago. Some of the terms used to describe and configure your CVPD50 PDP plasma display monitor and the internal DVD/CD changer in your CVR700 may be unfamiliar. Some of these terms are described in this section.

Since they share some of the characteris- tics and technology of CD players, many of the terms and operational concepts used in a DVD player are similar to what you may be familiar with from CD players and changers, or older video disc formats such as Laser Disc. However, if this is your first DVD product, some of the terms used to describe the features of a DVD player may be unfamiliar. The following explanations should solve some of the mysteries of DVD, and help you to enjoy all the power and flexibility of the DVD format and the CVR700.

With the arrival of DVD, disc data capaci- ty has increased dramatically. On a DVD Video disc, most of this capacity is taken up by MPEG 2 video and the multichannel movie soundtrack in Dolby Digital and/or DTS. This information is compressed. But with DVD Audio, most of this capacity is available for music only, without any compression. This allows us to put the audio information on the disc in the same quality as the original mastering in the studio, in PCM up to 24-bit/192kHz.

DVD-Audio’s 24-bit system provides sub- stantially improved resolution of fine detail, because it describes a specific point in the musical information using a 24-digit-long string of ones and zeros with 16,777,216 possible combinations, while CD’s primitive 16-bit system offers only 65,536 options. The 192kHz frequency allows us to have fast changes in music made audible, which results in more dynamism, and also allows us to obtain a higher bandwidth, up to 96kHz. Although that is far beyond the human audible spectrum, it still improves the musical realism.

Aspect Ratio: This is a description of the width of a video image in relation to its height. A conventional video screen is four units wide for every three units of height, making it almost square. Newer wide-aspect-ratio video displays are 16 units wide for every nine units of height, making them more like the screen in a movie theater. The program material on a DVD may be recorded in either format.

NOTES:

■Due to the advent of HD (high-defini- tion) programming and the new 16:9 (also called 1.85 or widescreen) aspect ratio, many newer sources now offer their own scaling (resizing of the pic- ture to fit a frame) options which are accessed through their remote or through their on-screen menu. To take advantage of CVR700’s robust scaling capabilities, it is best to allow the CVR700 to handle all rescaling duties. This means that all high-definition external sources connected to CVR700 should be configured to supply a 16:9 picture to CVR700 if at all possible and all non-HD legacy sources should supply their native 4:3 (otherwise called 1.33 or FULL SCREEN) aspect ratio (with older devices, there are usually no adjustments or options for picture size, anyway). Regarding HD sources, some experimentation may be necessary, as not all offer a basic 16:9 aspect ratio option without other parameter settings. The correct mode may be called 16:9 FULL SCREEN in some brand products; in other brand products, you may need to select the 16:9 aspect ratio separately from selecting FULL SCREEN scaling. Some experimentation with the settings on your source device may be necessary to find the most pleasing appearance.

■There are two film formats commonly used in movie theaters today that are close to the 16:9 aspect ratio of your CVPD50 screen – 1.85:1 and 2.35:1.

The aspect ratio of your screen is 1.78:1, which is very close to the 1.85:1 film ratio that is found in many movies recorded on DVDs or broadcast on television, and these programs will fill your screen. However, some movies are filmed in the wider 2.35:1 ratio. Check the jacket of your DVD to find its aspect ratio. When playing such a DVD on your JBL Cinema Vision system, if you have turned off the DVD Auto Resize feature, or if your analog

video signal is of higher resolution than 480i or DVI, you may need to repeatedly press the Letterbox Button z 16 on your remote con- trol to select either the “2.35 LTRBOX TO 16:9” or “2.35 LB TO 16:9 CROPPED” mode, choosing the mode that provides the picture most pleas- ing to you. Note that the cropped mode may leave out portions of the frame in order to fit the image to the screen, and you may prefer the scaled mode, even though black bars will appear on the top and bottom of your screen.

If you have turned off the DVD Auto Resize feature, you may also choose how to view 4:3 ratio images. You may view the image as is, in which case black bars will appear on the left and right sides of the screen. You may set the system to stretch the image to fill the screen, using either linear (the stretch is even across the entire image) or non-linear (the stretch is more pronounced towards the edges of the image, leaving the center nearly unmodified) scaling. When the 4:3 ratio image consists of a letterboxed movie, you may simply zoom in to remove the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

Chapter: DVD programs are divided into chapters and titles. Chapters are the sub- sections programmed into a single title on a disc. Chapters may be compared to the individual tracks on an audio CD. Press the Menu Button j 38 to see a listing of the chapters on a disc. On DVD-Audio discs, a Chapter is referred to as a Track.

Component Video: This form of video signal eliminates many of the artifacts of traditional composite video signals by splitting the signal into a separate lumi- nance channel (the Y signal channel) and two color-difference signals (the Pr and Pb signal channels). With a component video connection, you will see greater picture resolution and eliminate many picture imperfections such as the moiré patterns often seen on check-patterned cloth. However, in order to benefit from component video you must have a video display with Y/Pr/Pb component video inputs. Do not connect the component video outputs of the CVR700 to the stan- dard composite or S-video inputs of a TV or recorder.

NOTE: The CVR700 is optimized to be used with the CVPD50 High-Definition

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