All posts tagged: TVs

Trump TV’s intentional brainrot

Trump TV’s intentional brainrot

Published by Sam Flores

Despite everything, I sometimes find it hard not to sympathize with Donald Trump.  Like Trump, I also chose to make the site of a future climate catastrophe my permanent home. Like Trump, I live in a home more than a century old and spend each day disgusted with the handiwork of the previous inhabitants. Like Trump, I’m fighting a losing battle against decay. I can’t get too mad when Trump smoothes out the columns of the White House or paves over the Rose Garden when I look at my closet shelves shoved through  drywall or my mirrors held in place with blue-tack putty. When I see the sloppily applied makeup on his hands or the AI edits that transform his doughy octogenarian body into a superhero physique, I try not to think about the cobwebs of spliced knob-and-tube wiring in my attic that became outmoded around the time of Thomas Edison’s death.     Trump’s poll numbers are in free fall, presaging a brutal midterm election that might make him a premature lame duck. The Big Lie …

HDMI 2.1 cables don’t work with HDMI 2.0 TVs and nobody warned you

HDMI 2.1 cables don’t work with HDMI 2.0 TVs and nobody warned you

Published by Miika Tikkanen

You’ve got a shiny new HDMI 2.1 cable. It’s rated for 48Gbps, boasting 4K at 120Hz and all the buzzwords that can future-proof your home entertainment. You plugged it into your TV, and nothing changed. You don’t experience 120Hz or any extra sharpness. And you wonder why you’ve spent extra money on a better cable. Well, an HDMI 2.1 cable can fit and work with an HDMI 2.0 TV. The connector is the same, so the cable still fits into the port, and your devices can communicate with each other. Since the HDMI connections are backward compatible, an HDMI 2.1 cable will show picture and sound on an HDMI 2.0 TV. Now, what the newer HDMI 2.1 cable can’t do is give your HDMI 2.0 TV features that it doesn’t support in the first place. In fact, that extra bandwidth will be wasted. That’s where the confusion starts. Related Please stop using old HDMI cables That old cable is limiting what you can do with your modern display. Your HDMI 2.0 TV has limits A …

The Best Home Theater Projectors in 2026: XGIMI, Hisense, Leica, and More

The Best Home Theater Projectors in 2026: XGIMI, Hisense, Leica, and More

Published by Miika Tikkanen

It’s impressive, but not as impressive in a bright room, unfortunately—this projector is best utilized at night. And it lacks the dynamic iris of the Titan Noir Max (which is, admittedly, much pricier). Best Budget I had to double check the price of the BenQ W4100i because it’s so much cheaper than my other top picks. Yet, of all the home cinema projectors I’ve tested in the last few months, the quick and easy setup on this model, plus a few unusual perks, made it a top pick. It’s easy to configure, even though it uses the older Android TV operating system. I asked the onboard Google Assistant bot to start the install process and it only took a few minutes to do the whole thing. While the dark gray enclosure is understated, I liked how easy it was to adjust the focus and throw distance using analog levers on the top of the projector. At this price, the W4100i is not meant to compete with the titans of home cinema like the Hisense XR10, …

TV’s Neurodivergent Casting Reckoning

TV’s Neurodivergent Casting Reckoning

Published by Daniella Wilson

Television’s portrayal of neurodivergence has long suffered from a persistent blind spot. By casting neurotypical actors to play stereotypical — and often heavily coded yet undiagnosed — white male savant archetypes, Hollywood built a rigid standard that has largely erased women, people of color and the broader diversity of real-world neurodivergent experiences. “When you lump all neurodivergent perspectives into the same story — like ADHD, dyslexic and autistic adults — without showing the difference in lived experiences, people start to assume that they’re all the same,” says Tal Anderson, a first-time Emmy nominee for The Pitt. “People start to think that autistic people are all low-support needs [i.e., highly functioning] if that’s all they see onscreen. When that happens, an entire half the autistic community is left out of the conversation and, long-term, that’s really damaging for all of us.” When director Cian O’Clery co-created Love on the Spectrum — first in Australia, then as an Emmy-winning U.S. adaptation for Netflix — he never expected the docu-reality dating series to “become such a focal point …

Hayden Panettiere lived out TV’s myth of the indestructible girl

Hayden Panettiere lived out TV’s myth of the indestructible girl

Published by Sam Flores

NBC’s “Heroes” made Hayden Panettiere a household name by making us believe she was unstoppable. Not her, of course, but Claire Bennet — the Odessa, Texas high school cheerleader who couldn’t be killed. In the series premiere, Claire throws herself off an oil derrick’s rusty platform, plummeting at least 70 or 80 feet in a fall that should have broken her body. Instead, she stands up, pops her dislocated shoulder back into its socket and grimly declares to the shocked classmate filming her, “This is Claire Bennet, and that was attempt No. 6.” Later, in that same episode, she runs into a burning building to rescue a man trapped inside. He suffers horrible burns, but she dashes away unscathed. Claire wears her cheerleader uniform in both scenes — the identifying outfit that generated the first season’s catchphrase, “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” There are so many dark stories about child stars that make us wonder what might have been, if only. Panettiere, who died on Sunday at 36, lived one of them. She rocketed …

4K TVs are still awful monitors — for a reason nobody puts on the box

4K TVs are still awful monitors — for a reason nobody puts on the box

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Computers are pretty great, but you need a display to be able to actually see what they’re up to. Most people buy a computer monitor for this task, but if you really want to go big, a 4K TV can be tempting. But that big screen comes with a compromise that might make you think twice about using a TV as your monitor. Buying a big-screen TV does seem like the obvious approach, though. But when you come home with your new TV and plug it into your PC, you’ll likely be left disappointed. Don’t worry, your new TV isn’t faulty. You’re just running into a key technological difference between TVs and monitors. Related What I Wish I Knew Before Buying a New 4K TV I thought 4K would be simple. It’s not. But it’s totally worth the learning curve. An introduction to chroma subsampling The hidden difference Pankil Shah / MakeUseOf Plugging a 4K TV into a computer is likely to yield fuzzy or distorted text, and that’s a problem. Unlike TVs, computer monitors …

LG Micro RGB Evo Review: Brilliant, Bright, Not Budget-Friendly

LG Micro RGB Evo Review: Brilliant, Bright, Not Budget-Friendly

Published by Miika Tikkanen

The TV supports 100 percent of the color gamut specs for BT.2020, DCI-P3, and Adobe RGB. Very few movies actually meet the BT.2020 spec, but I tested a few that do, such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Inside Out, both on Disney+. Each looked amazingly colorful. Micro RGB, Macro Picture Quality Photograph: John Brandon As a first test of the new micro RGB tech, I ran through the usual Spears & Munsil Benchmark tests. Skin tones looked phenomenal, easily beating out the Hisense UR9, the Sony Bravia 7 II, and the TCL RM9L in terms of tonal variation. Lighter skin tones didn’t look washed out, and there was a nice differentiation in color. A scene with a fence had bright green grass in the background, something that is often less obvious with an older LED or QLED television. A yellow flower looked more vibrant to me than just about any art television I’ve tested recently. Sunset scenes looked incredibly vibrant, proof positive that the micro RGB tech is working overtime. However, OLED …

Hisense UR9 RGB MiniLED: An Affordable TV in Its Class

Hisense UR9 RGB MiniLED: An Affordable TV in Its Class

Published by Miika Tikkanen

RGB Mini-LED TVs have officially arrived, and Hisense’s UR9 was the first to hit the market, followed by Sony’s Bravia 7 Mark II and TCL’s RM9L. I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t jazzed to learn what the new display technology means, particularly if you were just getting used to terms like OLED, QLED, and art TV. Thankfully, understanding why the Hisense UR9 RGB MiniLED is a step up in picture quality compared to its competitors is more about the experience it provides than knowing the technical terms. Even so, the general function of mini RGB tech is not so difficult to understand: Traditional LED and QLED televisions achieve their bright and colorful images by shining white or blue LEDs through an LCD panel. The newer mini RGB works by emitting red, green, and blue lights, resulting in better color accuracy, excellent contrast and brightness, and finer control over color zones. LG and Samsung use new tech called micro RGB, claiming it to be more advanced than mini RGB thanks to smaller LEDs, although both …

Review: TCL RM9L RGB-Mini LED (2026)

Review: TCL RM9L RGB-Mini LED (2026)

Published by Miika Tikkanen

With the RM9L RGB-Mini, TCL doesn’t skimp on HDMI 2.1 ports. There are four total, and each one can support a 144Hz refresh rate for low latency PC gaming or whatever you want to throw at the television. One of the HDMI 2.1 ports is for eARC passthrough audio to powered speakers or a receiver. I added an Xbox Series X and a Google TV for testing and connected Klipsch the Nines II speakers. There are two USB ports (one coaxial), an Ethernet port for a wired connection, and a digital optical port. The TV uses Wi-Fi 6, which is fast and compatible. I liked the remote for the most part, since it is clean and easy to use. The brightness controls are on the right-hand side, which is a surprisingly brilliant design choice. For late-night gaming sessions you can crank down the brightness quickly or pump it up when the sunlight pours in. Tiny notches on the remote for volume and channels help you locate them without looking. The buttons for free television channels …

Only one of these art TVs actually fooled me into thinking it was a painting

Only one of these art TVs actually fooled me into thinking it was a painting

Published by Miika Tikkanen

I own three art TVs, and only one of them genuinely passes for a painting when I walk into the room. There’s a 32-inch Samsung Frame above a desk in our basement guest room, a 55-inch Frame over my office desk, and a 65-inch Hisense CanvasTV on the main wall of that same guest room. Most guests read all three as real artwork at a glance. I look at every one of them daily, though, which makes me a far tougher audience. After picking the Hisense over Samsung, I worked out why it fools me when the others only fool visitors. The answer has nothing to do with the wooden frame or the art library. It comes down to the screen finish. The matte finish does the heavy lifting, not the bezel Why a swappable wood frame isn’t what sells the illusion Shoppers obsess over the magnetic wood frame and the curated gallery of famous paintings. Those features are nice. They are also not what tricks your eye. A frame just borders a glowing rectangle, …