The Rugby World Cup is coming
The Rugby World Cup is coming - are you ready?
The 2023 Rugby World Cup is almost upon us, so let’s take a quick look at how you can get set up to get the most enjoyment from it. It only comes around every 4 years so it’s worth making sure you’re prepared, plus once it’s over and we’ve packed the trophy away, you get to keep enjoying a great system that will be looking and sounding amazing for many years to come.
It makes sense to think about the picture first. It’s what everyone’s looking at and it’ll be the centre point of the room. Here you have two main options, TV or a projector.
TV’s
Tech has continued to evolve at a breakneck pace and TV’s are no exception. Our recommendation would be an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display. These offer several important advantages:
Picture Quality: OLED technology provides exceptional picture quality with deep blacks, high contrast ratios, and vibrant colors. This can enhance your viewing experience, making sports events appear more lifelike and engaging. The individual pixels on an OLED screen emit their own light, allowing for precise control and better color accuracy.
Motion Handling: OLED TVs generally have excellent motion handling capabilities, which is crucial for watching fast-paced sports action. The response time of OLED pixels is very fast, reducing motion blur and ensuring that fast-moving scenes appear smooth and clear.
Wide Viewing Angles: OLED TVs tend to have wider viewing angles compared to many LCD-based TVs. This means that even if you're not sitting directly in front of the screen, you can still enjoy accurate colors and good picture quality, which is useful when watching sports with a group of people.
Uniformity: OLED panels have better uniformity compared to some other TV technologies, such as LCD with edge-lit backlighting. This means that large uniform areas, like sports fields or arenas, are less likely to exhibit variations in brightness or colour across the screen.
Projectors
Modern TV’s are offered in some pretty large sizes with 65” to 80” or even larger now available. However if that’s still not enough, you have the option to move to a projector. These will easily produce picture sizes of well over 100”.
When it comes to projectors, we suggest looking for a laser based unit which offer several benefits:
Large Screen and Immersion: Laser projectors can create massive screen sizes, much larger than what traditional TVs can offer. This can provide a more immersive experience for watching sports, making you feel like you're right in the middle of the action, similar to being in a stadium.
High Brightness and Vibrant Colors: Laser projectors typically produce high levels of brightness, which is important when watching sports in rooms with ambient light or during daytime. This ensures that the images remain clear and vibrant, even in well-lit environments. Additionally, laser projectors can offer a wide color gamut, enhancing the realism and vibrancy of sports content.
Excellent Motion Handling: Many laser projectors have fast response times, minimal input lag, and smooth motion interpolation capabilities. This is crucial for watching fast-paced sports action without motion blur or stuttering, providing a smoother and more enjoyable viewing experience.
Flexible Placement: Laser projectors offer greater flexibility in terms of placement compared to traditional TVs. You can place the projector at different distances from the screen and achieve various screen sizes without compromising picture quality. This can be advantageous if you have a unique room layout or space constraints.
Longevity and Low Maintenance: Laser projectors typically have longer lifespans and require less maintenance compared to traditional lamp-based projectors. This can result in cost savings over time, as you won't need to replace lamps as frequently.
If you opt for a projector remember that you should also factor in a screen. Using a wall or sheet just won't cut it and you'll be losing image quality in a big way. Talk to us about a screen that's custom built to your room for maximum sharpness and brightness. You can learn more about projector screens in this article.
Sound
Having a great screen that gives a large, bright image is certainly important for a great viewing experience, but don’t forget the sound. It’s less obvious than the picture you’re looking at it but good sound will make a massive difference to your enjoyment.
If there’s one thing to be sure of, it’s that your TV will have less than great audio. Modern TV’s are just too thin and margins too tight to allow for great sound, so what ore the options? We’ve written a whole article on this, so if you want all the details click here. But here are the basics.
Soundbar
A soundbar is a popular audio accessory that can significantly improve the sound quality of your TV. Soundbars will provide a small improvement over your TV's speakers, but we'd highly recommend taking up a notch and adding some dedicated speakers.
Amplifier and speakers
The next step up from a soundbar, external speakers can significantly improve the sound quality of your TV by providing enhanced audio clarity, depth, and a more immersive listening experience. External speakers are designed with larger drivers and better audio components than the built-in speakers of most TVs. This allows them to reproduce a wider range of frequencies more accurately, resulting in clearer commentary, better referee calls, and more detail in the bone crunching tackles.
Home Theatre
Beyond adding a couple of quality speakers, we’re into home theatre territory. Two front speakers, two rears, a centre speaker and a subwoofer to provide more bass is the most common configuration, also known as 5.1. There are plenty of benefits to moving to a multi-speaker setup. Here are a few.
Enhanced Atmosphere: Sports events are often accompanied by crowd noise, commentary, on-field action, and stadium ambiance. A 5.1 sound system can reproduce these sounds with greater detail and spatial accuracy, creating a more authentic and immersive atmosphere. You'll feel like you're right in the stadium, surrounded by the excitement of the game.
Depth and Realism: The rear speakers in a 5.1 system contribute to the sense of depth in the audio. You'll be able to hear the echo of the crowd, the distant cheers, or the reverberation of the ball hitting the ground, enhancing the realism of the sports event.
Commentary and Analysis: A 5.1 sound system allows you to separate the commentary from the main audio track, enabling you to adjust the volume of the commentary independently. This can be especially useful if you want to focus more on the game sounds or if you prefer a quieter commentary.
Entertainment Value: Beyond sports, a 5.1 sound system can elevate your overall entertainment experience. It's ideal for watching movies, playing video games, and enjoying music with spatial accuracy and rich sound quality.
So plenty of options if you feel like upgrading your entertainment system before the September 8th kickoff. Talk to us now to make sure you’ve got a system that matches both your needs and budget. We’ve got years of experience building systems of all levels and carry some of the best brands in the world when it comes to home entertainment. So talk to us now and get set for what promises to be a sensational tournament.
