Author: Press Room

Whether you’re using your TV to watch shows, movies, or for gaming, you want one that’s going to suit your needs properly. You likely did a lot of research into what TV you wanted or needed for your main purposes before you bought it. You’d be silly not to, considering it’s going in your home and you’re going to be spending a good amount of time looking at it. While buying a TV online can be easy, if you really want to make sure your purchase is exactly what you want, you should go to a store to look at…

Samsung makes some of the best OLED and LED TVs with excellent picture settings to match. I’ve personally used Samsung LEDs for the longest time and recently got a new 55″ LED 4K TV, except that the picture quality didn’t look right out of the box. After living with washed-out colors and inconsistent brightness for months, I finally dug into the settings and realized the problem wasn’t the panel itself. Samsung ships its TVs with several defaults turned on that look impressive in a showroom but hurt picture quality at home. Once I disabled a handful of these and adjusted…

Project Hail Mary is now out in theaters, and it’s dominating the box office. The movie, based on the novel by Andy Weir, is about a teacher and former microbiologist named Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) who gets drafted into an effort by the world’s greatest scientists to figure out why the sun is dimming. His journey will take him light years away from home to investigate one of the few stars in the galaxy that doesn’t seem to be getting dimmer. He forms an unlikely bond with a space alien named Rocky who’s in the area for the same reason,…

We’ve talked a lot about the Ethernet vs. Wi-Fi debate for smart TVs. Ethernet is preferred wherever possible — but TVs make things a bit trickier. Most TV manufacturers (and streaming boxes) cheap out on Ethernet. They either don’t include a port at all, or if they do, it’s usually a Fast Ethernet port limited to 100 Mbps. 100 Mbps is plenty of speed, but newer Wi-Fi technologies can deliver much more — hence the debate. I wasn’t particularly bothered by this. I was perfectly happy with the 100 Mbps Ethernet port on my TV — until I did something…

Every year, I visit family for a month over the holidays, knowing full well that I am entering an entertainment black hole. Being based overseas, I found that single-household-per-streaming-account rules throttle any attempts to circumvent them, even with a quality VPN, so I resigned myself to using the free services available on my Amazon Fire TV Stick for the foreseeable future. I expected a downgrade, with endless ads, low-quality content, and a frustrating viewing experience, but what I found was surprisingly different. Free streaming felt less like scrolling fatigue and more like rediscovering TV as I remember it, where you…

I don’t remember the first time I ever used VLC. It has just been the standard for years and is one of the few apps that I install on every PC. It’s probably the only app I don’t remember troubleshooting or second-guessing. The rule has been simple: as long as a file exists, VLC plays it. It was only when I started watching more 4K videos that I noticed cracks in this “flawless” tool. I needed a tool that was just as good as VLC but better able to handle 4K, so I settled on SMPlayer. SMPlayer is comparable to…

As our homes increasingly become rammed full of tech, smart lights have become hard to ignore. Bluetooth LED bulbs, Alexa-controlled lamps, smart strips for your patio. They’re everywhere. It’s no surprise smart lighting has also infiltrated the TV market, and am I ever glad it has. Though I love my LG G3 OLED, I can’t imagine watching one of the best HDMI 2.1 TVs for gaming without my Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box 8K. This expensive but genuinely compelling accessory has captivated me with mesmerizing light shows for over a year now, and I’m utterly smitten. What is the…

Every idea that’s born from our brains feels like a precious baby. We don’t want to give them up. So, most ideas feel stronger than they actually are especially when we are flush with it in the beginning. When something clicks, we are just too lazy to fully question it. ChatGPT doesn’t always help here either, since AI models tend to agree or stay neutral instead of challenging you directly. This AI echo-chamber is useful for searching or summarizing, but risky for decision-making. So I started getting into the habit of using a Socratic-style master prompt to tease and pull…

Dolby Atmos is a spatial audio format that works virtually on supported TVs or speakers and physically on surround sound speaker systems. For the best experience, you need a Dolby Atmos receiver and a 5.1.2 surround sound speaker layout to provide full spatial coverage. Dolby Atmos includes object-based sound imaging and uses down-firing speakers mounted above you to create a three-dimensional listening effect. This is how the audio format works when you have at least a 5.1.2 layout, but there’s one thing that could throw a wrinkle in your spatial listening experience. Regardless of whether your inbuilt TV speakers support…

Horror movies are having a moment lately, what with films like Weapons and Sinners taking home Academy Awards. But if you’re looking for something more bite-sized, there are also a number of solid horror TV shows out there. Big ones like IT: Welcome to Derry and Interview With The Vampire have made waves, but one of the best horror series on TV has flown almost completely under the radar. That show is From, which airs on MGM+. From is about to return for its fourth season, and now is the perfect time to get on board this spooky train. From…