Podcast #676: Interview - Gary Yacoubian President of SVS Speakers

Interview - Gary Yacoubian President of SVS Speakers

From the SVS Website:

SVS was founded in 1998 by four audiophile/engineers who noted that customers were paying too much for lackluster subwoofer performance because of a manufacturing to sales process that was stacked against the consumer. The conventional model, where just good enough subs were sold at high markups did a disservice to customers who wanted great audio experiences but didn’t have unlimited funds.

To fix a broken system, SVS pioneered a disruptive, future-facing model by investing heavily in product engineering and performance and reducing operational costs by selling direct to its customers over the Internet. Customers could demo world-class subwoofers and speakers in their homes exactly where the products would be installed, allowing them to make the most informed purchase decision possible, without risk. This strategy allowed SVS to establish a global presence and continues to earn acclaim from professional and amateur reviewers, in forums, and at audio shows, while continuing to grow retail and direct distribution.

UHD Blu-ray

Many of you either have or will soon have a new UHD TV that will be begging you to throw some UHD content at it. Right now you can stream UHD content from Netflix and Amazon but while good, its not nearly as good as you can get from disc. There aren’t any discs, or players, out there that can support UHD. But there will be in the near future. The Blu-ray Disc Association has released a new specification that may help you justify the purchase of a shiny new UHD TV. So what do the new players and disc give you?

Better Color

Simply put, the new specification allows your TV to display more colors than your current HDTV. You probably are thinking that your TV already does a good job with this but it can only display about 30% of what your eye can see. The new specification will display about 75%. At this writing we don’t know of UHD TV that supports this spec nor do we know when we will see content that does. But its nice to know that your player will be ready when the content is there!

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

If you have a relatively new smartphone you may have heard of this term. On your phone your camera takes two (or more) shots of the same image, one with the darkest exposure and one with the lightest. Then it combines the best of the images to create one that shows great detail in all areas, nothing washed out and blacks looking black. This will provide depth and greater contrast on screen.

10-bit

Bottom line on this one is that it makes better color and HDR possible.

Higher Frame Rates

Until Hollywood shoots at 60 frames a second, think of this as future proofing the standard. This will help 3D as well.

Better Compression

There is a lot of data that needs to be stored on a disc for 4K so a more efficient way of compressing it is required. That’s where H.265 comes into play. The High Efficiency Video Codec (HVEC) is twice as efficient as H.264 (mpeg4). As a side note, HVEC is what makes streaming 4K from Netflix and Amazon possible at 7 to 10Mbps. Now imagine how good it would be at a little more than 100Mbps. Yes it will be a while before streaming catches up to fixed media.

Larger Capacity

All those bits need to be stored someplace. The new discs will have capacities of 66GB or 100GB

Audio

TBD