Hdtv Picture Problems
Visual Acuity Advisor - What Size HDTV or PC?
What is your visual acuity? How to design or buy an HDTV, PC or any other display device.Do you really neeed 1080p HDTV? What pixel resolution should your PC or laptop have? What font size should you use for presentation charts? For printed documents? Here is all you need to know about choosing the right resolution or font size for any given screen size and viewing distance. And lots more. A relatively simple Excel-based tool helps you make the right decisions. It is available for FREE.
What is Visual Acuity and Why Do YOU Care?
People with "sharp" eyesight read signs from far away and recognize things before those with poorer vision. We are all familiar with the optometrist's eye chart used to classify our vision as "20/20" or "20/60" or whatever. But what does this all mean when it comes to practical things like designing or buying a digital display device, creating a blockbuster Powerpoint chart set, or, for that matter, selecting the right size sign for your business or office? The Visual Acuity AI Advisor is an Excel-based tool that will help you answer all these questions, and more. DOWNLOAD IT FREE at http://sites.google.com/site/bigira/stuff-ira-knows/VisualAcuityAIAdvisorV1.xls?attredirects=0&d=1 After reading my explanation of what the Visual Acuity AI Advisor can do for you, please read the scientific basis for visual acuity in the final section of this Knol..jpg) |
| Displays may appear sharp and clear to you, but fuzzy to others with poor Visual Acuity. |
Character Height and Font Points
The first page of the Visual Acuity AI Advisor asks for only one input from the user, Viewing Distance. You may enter that number in Inches, Feet, Centimeters, or Meters and you will receive results in all these units.Character Height
Using the Viewing Distance value you input, the spreadsheet calculates the recommended Character Height for reliable reading from the given distance by all people in the "normal" range. For example, if you are posting an important notice or warning in your office or store, and you want almost everyone to be able to read it from at least twenty feet away, you should make the characters at least two inches high. Did you know that? If you are fortunate enough to have sharp eyesight, you might have thought one inch or smaller characters would be OK. If so, you would be leaving out a significant percentage of the population! You would be serving some of your customers poorly. You can use the Visual Acuity AI Advisor to determine how big to make letters on labels for a handheld product (0.1 inch high if viewed at 11 inches), the name on your office door (1 inch high if viewed from 10 feet), or the letters on a billboard (27 inches high if viewed at 200 feet).Font Size
What if you are creating a printed document or presention slides? What is the minimum Font Size you should use? Well, that depends upon the viewing situation. For example, if you are using Microsoft Word (or similar word processor) and the document is to be printed and viewed from about 18 inches, you should use 12pt font. If those reading your document are willing to hold it closer, at 15 inches, you could use 10pt. For footnotes where the reader may be willing to hold it still closer, at 12 inches, you could use 8pt. What if you are creating a PowerPoint (or similar) chart that is to be viewed on a PC or Laptop display? Well, display devices are usually specified by their diagonal measure, from one corner to the other. If you have a 15 inch display to be viewed at 18 inches, you could use 10pt. If you are in an office situation and your presentation charts are to be viewed from a distance of twelve feet on an HDTV or projection screen, you should use a minimum of 22pt font. On the other hand, if you are preparing a presentation for a large conference room, with a ten-foot display and some peope will be as far as thirty feet away, you should use a minimum of 24pt. There are so many variants involved that it is difficult to know if all the members of your target audience will be able to read your materials. Again, if you have sharp eyesight, and you judge your materials by your capabilities, you will be excluding many others - perhaps your boss! You can use the Visual Acuity AI Advisor to determine font sizes for any situation from hand-held documents to projection on a giant forty-foot movie screen!What is Right for YOUR Audience?
The results given above are for the people with the poorest eyesight in a "normal" audience. Over 95% of the general population falls between "20/20" and "20/60". The Visual Acuity AI Advisor gives the sizes that should be reliably readable from the given distance even by those with poor "20/60" visual acuity. (This corresponds to the range between 1.0 arcminute to about 3.0 arcminutes or from about 0.3 milliradians to 1.0 milliradians.) The figure below shows a typical screen capture from the first page of the Visual Acuity AI Advisor which recommends Character Height and Font Points for various common situations. |
| Character Height and Font Points - Screen capture for Viewing Distance of 10 feet. |
PC and HDTV Selector
If you are buying or designing a PC or HDTV, or creating content for any digital display device, will your customers or audience have a good Subjective Viewing Experience? The answer requires analysis of a complex combination of the pixel resolution of the given display device, the viewing distance, the resolution of the analog or digital source material, and, of course, the visual acuity of the members of your viewing group. The second page of the Visual Acuity AI Advisor requires just three inputs from the user, Viewing Distance, Display Diagonal, and a letter designating the Image Resolution of the display device or of the source material, whichever is poorest. The output is the calculated Image Resolution in pixels and milliradians per pixel for different aspect ratios: 4x3 standard TV and older PCs and Laptops, or 16x9 HDTV and newer PCs and Laptops. The Visual Acuity AI Advisor also provides a description of the Subjective Viewing Experience: "OK, but won't see all available detail", "OK - JUST RIGHT!", or "May appear fuzzy or boxy". |
| Subjective Viewing Experience based on Viewing Distance, Display Size, and Image Resolution |
Your Visual Acuity and Equivalent Measures
What does "20/20" mean? How does that compare to visual acuity expressed in arcminutes or milliradians? What is your personal visual acuity? The third page of the Visual Acuity AI Advisor converts between four different visual acuity measurement systems. You can input an acuity measure in milliradians, arcminutes, or Snellen chart "20/20" terminology. Did you know that in Metric countries "6/6" is equivalent to "20/20"? The Visual Acuity AI Advisor includes Metric measures as well.
The Visual Acuity AI Advisor also includes a Snellen eye chart that you can use to determine you own visual acuity (approximation only - see your eye doctor for a more accurate value). Once you know that measure in "20/20" terminology, you can convert it to Metric or arcminute or millirdian measure for further analysis. He Sees, She Sees and Pixel Resolution of a Digital Display Device
The fourth and final page of the Visual Acuity AI Advisor introduces you to two fictional characters who see the world in totally different and fairly extreme ways. Chances are, neither of them sees the world as you do. Yet, if your are buying or designing displays or creating display materials, you better be sure to satisfy them because they represent part of your audience or customer set. |
| "He" is at the Poorest end of the "normal" human range. "She" is at the Best end. |
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| Definition of Display Pixel and Character Pixel. How Many Display Pixels per Character? |
Scientific Basis of Visual Acuity
All About Milliradians
Small angles are often measured in milliradians (mr) rather than degrees. You may remember from trigonometry that a radian is defined simply as the arc length divided by the radius. An mr is just one-thousandth of a radian. For small angles, the arc length is equal to the straight line length, so you can determine a Visual Angle by simply dividing the Height by the Viewing Distance and multiplying the result by 1000.A Simple Example
For example (see image below) with a Viewing Distance of 33", the young women is looking at two lines, each about 0.1" thick, that have a 0.1" Height space between them. The Visual Angle = 1000 x Height/Viewing Distance = 1000 x 0.1/33 = 0.3 mr. She can clearly see the space between the two lines, which means her Visual Acuity, at 0.3 mr, is very sharp. She is the type of driver or passenger in a car who is the first to be able to read a street sign as the car approaches it. (An optometrist would say her vision is "20/20" which means she can see at 20 feet what a person with excellent vision can see at 20 feet.).jpg)
The middle-aged man, on the other hand, sees only a fuzzy blob under the same viewing conditions. However, when he is shown two lines, each about 0.3" thick, with a 0.3" space between them, he can reliably distinguish them. His Visual Angle = 1000 x Height/Viewing Distance = 1000 x 0.3/33 = 1.0 mr. He is the type of person who is the last to be able to read a street sign as the car approaches. (An optometrist would say his vision is "20/69" which means he can see at 20 feet what a person with excellent vision can see at 69 feet.) Applying Your Knowledge of Visual Acuity
Everyone knows that people with the sharpest vision can see and reliably read signs at greater distances than people with the poorest vision. Generally speaking, younger people have the sharpest vision and acuity tends to decrease with age. There are also genetic variations and diseases that may affect both young and old. Visual acuity is a way to quantify the visual ability range of "normal" people who must be served by our computer systems and other visual displays and signage designed for a general audience. However, be aware that no visual display product can serve the total population. For example:- Blindness. Unfortunately, some people are totally blind or "legally blind".
- Poor Vision. Some people, while not "legally blind", have such poor vision that they need special devices to see displays.
- Very Sharp Vision. Some people have such sharp vision that they may see artifacts in our displays that others do not see.
Mitsubishi HDTV Picture Problem?
My friend and I were watching TV on a Mitsubishi HDTV 1080 Integrated Series (not sure exact model number) and everything looked fine, I went to pick up the remote and the picture became all distorted. We are sure it's not the Satellite picture because the actual display from the TV has the same problem. The best way I could explain it is that you see one font that says "Input 1" in red, then behind it you see "input 1" in green but it looks like it's almost an Italic font and is to the right of the red font just a bit. We can't seem to find an button on the remote to correct this and are unsure of what to do. We really don't think we could have caused a major problem with the remote but we are a bit worried considering the Super Bowl is tomorrow. Please Help!
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HDTV picture problems???
I have a Konka TM2718 LCD HDTV and have external HDTV Set Top Box plugged into the Ycbcr slot of the TV... When I set the output video format to anything HD (720p, 1080i) I get a weird dark screen and the everything's messy and all over the place... However when I set it back to PAL, it's alright again... Any suggestions how to fix this?
However, if I plug it into the Y Pb Pr slots, it works perfectly with HD resolutions... But I'm using that slot for something else and I don't want to keep switching...
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Help with new HDTV? Picture problem?
I got a brand new Vizio VL320M and plugged it in. The cable channels look AWFUL. Grainy and all around bad. I don't have digital cable or rabbit ears...just a coaxial cable.
However, when I have my Xbox 360 hooked up, it looks great.
Do I need to get an HD cable box to get better reception through my cable? Or am I missing something?
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Samsung HLS5687w DLP HDTV Picture Problem Troubleshoot
3 Nov 2009 at 3:43pm
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LG Releases Gorgeous New Pics of the World's Largest OLED Screen
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Lessons Learned from Digg: A Story of Love and Hate
25 Sep 2010 at 8:51pm I was there when it started. I was there when Digg first started chugging along. I remember it being slow, ugly, and crappy. I remember wondering why anyone would ever use something like it. And who cares if 79 other people think a story is worth my time? I browse my own news sites, thank you very much. I dont need to know what the other geeks care about boy was I ever wrong. I kept my eyes on Digg (and its many, many competitors) over the next several years as I graduated from college, worked, then went back to school. It wasnt until I began studying online communities, however, that I really understood anything. Recent Problems If you spend any time on social news sites, youve already noticed the mass migration of users from Digg to Reddit. How did this happen? Where did it all begin? And is this really a bad thing for Digg (or a good thing for Reddit)? Im trying to answer these questions myself, and like all good community mixups, it just turns up more questions. But there are answers to be found, and Id like to share my ideas as I keep searching. Most people think the roots of this change-up lie in Digg v4. It was meant to be an upgrade from Digg v3 a permanent change with better load times, better features, and a better UI. But shortly after the site went up, something went very, very wrong. Not only did users dislike the general look and feel of the site, but they also felt betrayed as personal information (formerly attached to their accounts) disappeared without warning. Additionally, the site was constantly crashing due to a new, bug-laden database. Shortly thereafter, users began closing their accounts and moving out. If the reports are to be believed, it appears most of them went to Reddit. But hold on. Is this truly the beginning of the end as so many former-Diggers claim? Will the mass exodus actually destroy Digg? Im not so sure. Most of the Diggers think this is something new, but this type of community migration has occurred on the Internet time after time after time. Community migrations happen almost constantly due to the ebb and flow of the net. Diggs loss of user base is just a very high-profile occurrence. Im here to argue that Diggs not done just yet and on top of that, this whole thing started long before Digg v4. In the Beginning In the beginning (2004), there was Digg. It was crappy, slow, and ugly. As an experiment run by 3 friends (one of which is current CEO Kevin Rose), it focused on technology news and not much else. Digg slowly picked up steam by word of mouth (and email), and eventually there was something like a stable user base. Due to the sites content and founders, most of these users were tech geeks, developers, and information technology people. (Sort of a social news equivalent of slashdot if you remember slashdot.) Digg v2 Over time, Digg grew. To keep up with the changing community (and compete with other sites), Digg launched version 2 with a new friends feature (July 2005). Suddenly the anonymous posting and approval features took a new turn those 128 other Diggers all had names and icons. Furthermore, this pushed toward new features such as suggestions and recommendations from friends. The awareness of others began to creep into Digg, and the whole site began shaping itself into a community. Diggnation Parallel to the Digg v2 launch, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht hosted a new podcast called Diggnation. It served as a best of the week show for Diggs top stories, and it attracted a much larger audience than Kevin Rose had ever imagined. The name Diggnation really proved itself to be accurate as live recordings pulled bigger and bigger crowds. Users proudly wore Digg T-shirts and sent pictures to the show. Girls asked the hosts on dates and (*gasp*) wanted their bodies autographed. Kevin Rose appeared on the cover of BusinessWeek in an embarrassing photograph that became part of Digg culture (and legend). The listener base became so large that Diggnations parent company (Revision3) began offering a wider array of shows and operating independently of Digg. Diggnation proved one thing: ignoring Kevin and Alexs couch-seat comedy, Diggs user base had become unprecedentedly large. Digg v3 Early in 2006, Digg began receiving buyout offers. Kevin Rose (and company) pushed forward with the site and launched Digg v3 (June 2006). Aiming to bring a wider audience to Digg, the site boasted new categories, expanding beyond the tech crowd with World & Business, Entertainment, and Videos. Furthermore, features like top stories became more explicit throughout the life of Digg v3. Things that were formerly hidden became transparent, and the developers experimented with a number of different features to varying degrees of success. The New Crowd In some ways, Digg v3 was a smashing success. It attracted an entirely new crowd of users wholly uninterested in technology news. The community was utterly central to Digg, and the site reflected this attitude. Digg was all about friends, following, and personalized news. But were the New Crowd really faithful to Digg? In other ways, Digg v3 was a resounding failure. Older users slowly trickled out this was not the site they knew and loved any more. Gone were the in-depth articles on technology and development. Gone were the analyses of programming. Gone were the debates over Ruby on Rails vs. PHP. Replacing them were things like how to cook in 10 easy steps. Digg began to look less like a technology site and more like a web version of Maxim magazine. Sure, you could filter out the stuff you didnt like, but why bother? Even the programming channels had turned away from in-depth articles and toward basic tutorials. Digg had, in a sense, sacrificed depth for breadth of content. As the content of Digg became broader, so did the audience. Sadly, as the depth of Digg became shallower, so did the audience. Digg users felt entitled to their resources. They felt they owned their accounts, owned their list of dugg articles, owned their interface. When the encryption key for HD-DVD was cracked, Digg forced a gag order on all related stories. In response, the community threw a fit. They demanded not to be censored, and they threatened rebellion. In desperation, Kevin Rose (and the entire Digg company) relented. Kevin personally published a story on the official Digg blog with the encryption key in it, announcing he would no longer censor stories on Digg. after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, youve made it clear. Youd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we wont delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying. A brave move to be sure, but what was the motivation? Was this for fear of rebellion or a desire to be true to the community? Nobody really knows, but whatever the case, Kevin set a dangerous precedent by bowing to community pressure. After initially proclaiming Kevin Rose a hero, Digg users became increasingly demanding. Additionally, Digg became less about reading interesting content and more about popular comments. It was extremely commonplace to see comment threads where most of the audience hadnt even read the linked article. Memes evolved from the New Crowd and were used and re-used into the ground. (In fact, if you check the archives of Diggnation, you can find a list of most commonly used Digg memes.) The Digg Effect When Digg first started, blog-owners would often report cases where their entire site had crashed due to a sudden influx of traffic. Named The Digg Effect, this traffic rapidly drew the attention of outsiders. For entrepreneurs, this traffic could be an easy source of income. The power of Digg traffic slowly dawned on several different audiences, all of whom tried to leverage it for their own uses. At first, business-people tried to copy Digg; in the face of failure, they tried to buy out top Diggers and re-direct traffic toward their sites. Unscrupulous Diggers tried to create Digg exchanges where they bought and sold Diggs on one anothers stories, all to get articles to the front page. Community members competed for attention in comment threads. The once-dreaded Digg Effect had become a marketing tactic known web-wide. The Release of Digg v4 All the while, the developers at Digg were hard at work on a new version. To combat exploitation from both outsiders and users, Digg made it so that content-owners received credit for their stories (rather than random users who submitted the stories first). The goal was give credit where due and reduce duplicate submissions of the same story. To make the site more community-oriented, Digg made several features friend-oriented by default. Gone were the days where you saw the opinions and pulse of the entire community suddenly your world was limited to specific friends and taste-makers. While developing Digg v4, the idea was obviously to make Digg more community-oriented. The users, however, received it much differently. On August 25, 2010, Digg officially released Digg v4. Early reports indicated crashes, data-loss, and a general sense of confusion. In the words of the now-famous meme, Digg accidentally their website, and it was bad. In response, Kevin Rose posted a message on his blog to ameliorate the Digg community. The community was not amused. When the site came back online, Diggers began complaining en-masse about the problems, the layout, and the loss of their data. The nation of Digg demanded a full revert to Digg v3. Whether on purpose or by freak accident, many of these stories mysteriously disappeared from the front page. This was the last straw Digg went into a full-scale revolt. Users began posting all submissions to Reddit (Diggs #1 rival), then submitting the Reddit pages to Digg. By mob power, the Digg front page was dominated by Reddit articles. Vocal Digg users began publicly abandoning the website in droves. Legitimate stories were covered with comment threads full of this account is now closed. Few (if any) Digg users were brave enough todefend the website.The community had officially turned against Digg. Where We Are Now Despite the problems, Digg is still alive, and it has undergone many changes to placate the mob that abandoned it. Thenextweb estimates that Digg has lost 26% of its U.S. market and even more in the UK. This is substantial to be sure, but its a far cry from the mass destruction the mob intended. While Digg is currently in a tough spot, the site still retains about 3/4 of its original user base. Perhaps the 1/4 that left were just the loudest? Only Digg really knows anything about who left and stuck around. Given Diggs response (virtual silence), I wouldnt be surprised if the users who left the website were undesirable or problematic to begin with. Think about it. This is a website that risked its own financial stability to satisfy the community. On a number of occasions Kevin Rose has risked the collapse of Diggs financial backing for the apparent good of the community. Remember that HD-DVD scandal I mentioned? It couldve easily gone the other way. Remember the Kevin Rose fanboys that supported his every move? Gone. The BusinessWeek photograph had gone from a fun inside joke to a banner of hatred. How did we get here? How did the community go from love to hate so very quickly? One thing is certain: those who abandoned Digg were not the original, loyal user base that existed in Digg v1. Those who loved Digg for its technology focus had trickled off the site years ago. They were slowly replaced by a new generation (a New Crowd) of less-loyal, more selfish individuals. These were people who loved MySpace because it let them have their own webpage. Then they abandoned MySpace for Facebook, which became their new stomping ground. When they heard about Digg from their geeky friends, they decided to try it. Then they decided to make it their own. These people were the community of Digg. Is it really surprising they pitched a fit when Digg did something they hated? I dont think so. Like any good story, theres a lot more under the surface. We can safely assume that the community for which Digg bled, sweated, and sacrificed itself had become immature and selfish over time. Maybe Digg will collapse. Maybe Digg is just happy they left only time will tell. Those who have moved on to Reddit have already begun making some unwelcome waves. For now, the vocal users of Reddit seem happy to have them, but perhaps well see the same thing happen there as well? I would offer the following words of caution to Reddit: Be very careful which community you encourage to stick around (and which one you alienate). You dont want to sacrifice yourself for a community that abandons you.Read more...
Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men. Or At Least Stop Blaming Me.
28 Aug 2010 at 11:23pm Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesnt matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If you idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich. For the most part Ive sat on the sidelines over the years during the endless debates about how we need to do more to encourage more women to start companies. What I mean by sat on the sidelines is this until today I havent really said what I felt. Now Im going to. Heres why. Yet another article, this time in the Wall Street Journal, takes a shot at us and others for not doing enough to help women in tech. Says Rachel Sklar, a perennial TechCrunch critic: Part of changing the ratio is just changing awareness, so that the next time Techcrunch is planning a Techcrunch Disrupt, they wont be able to not see the overwhelming maleness of it, said Ms. Sklar, referring to the influential tech conference. Yeah ok, whatever Rachel. Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak. Where do we end up? With about 10% of our speakers as women. We wont put women on stage just because theyre women thats not fair to the audience whove paid thousands of dollars each to be there. But we do spend an extraordinary amount of time finding those qualified women and asking them to speak. And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference. Whats The Real Problem? I could, like others (see all the links in that Fred Wilson post too), write pandering but meaningless posts agonizing over the problem and suggesting creative ways that we (men) could do more to help women. I could point out that the CEO of TechCrunch is a woman, as is two of our four senior editors (Im one of the three). And how we seek out women focused events and startups and cover them to death. But Im not going to do that. Instead Im going to tell it like it is. And what it is is this: statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs, because the press is dying to write about them, and venture capitalists are dying to fund them. Just so no one will point the accusing finger of discrimination at them. That WSJ article also criticizes Y Combinator for having just 14 female founders out of their 208 startups to date. But I know that Y Combinator wants really, really wants female founders and that there just arent very many of them. I know this because Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston has told me how excited they are to get applications from women, and that they want to do everything they can to get more female applicants. What they probably wont admit, but I suspect is true anyway, is that the rate of acceptance for female applicants is far higher than for male applicants. The problem isnt that Silicon Valley is keeping women down, or not doing enough to encourage female entrepreneurs. The opposite is true. No, the problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs. Why? I was asked that question as part of a New York Times interview earlier this year. I dodged it completely, and referred them to Cyan Banister, the founder of Zivity, instead: Q. Do you anticipate that there will be more companies led by women at the TC50 and Disrupt this year? A. Women are really tough. I have no idea why. We invited a team founded by a woman to Disrupt. But they canceled. There just arent a lot of female tech entrepreneurs out there relative to the number of men, I think. We celebrate the ones we find whenever we find them. Theres a chance well write about what theyre doing, simply because theyre a fairly rare thing in our world. But it is really hard to find female entrepreneurs in tech, in my experience. I really think this is an industry-wide problem. Q. How do the female tech entrepreneurs and investors in your community feel about this situation? A. Theres a fascinating company, Zivity, its a venture-funded, adult photography community yes, they put up pictures of naked women online it was co-founded and is run by a woman, Cyan Banister. She wrote me in response to a post about women who are entrepreneurs, saying, basically, though these are not her exact words, women [stink] as entrepreneurs a lot of the time because they are nurturing and not risk-taking enough by nature. She also said when men roll the dice and take risks, that society doesnt punish them at all, and its in their nature to take stupid risks. I didnt respond to that. I didnt want to jump into that debate. And I guess I still dont. Is Cyan right? I dont know, Im from Mars, not Venus and I cannot speak intelligently about the nurturing and risk tolerance needs of women. But I will say this. The next time you women want to start pointing the finger at me when discussing the problem of too few women in tech, just stop. Look in the mirror. And realize this there are women who complain about how there are too few women in tech, and there are women who go out and just start companies. Lets have less of the former and more of the latter, please. And when you do start your company, well cover it. Promise.Read more...
