The World of Home Theater abbreviations

After years of wanting a large-screen high-definition television (HDTV), we recently purchased an HDTV, a receiver/DVD/speaker system, and a media center computer. As I did the product and technology research, I was amazed at how many acronyms and abbreviations I encountered.

Here's a tour of some of the most common ones I ran across, from electronics, the TV/HDTV world, and the Sony-specific ones related to the equipment I got.

Television, computers, and general: CATV, DVD, DVI, DVR, FCC, JPEG, LCD, MP3, NTSC, OSD, PAL, PC, PCM, QAM, RGB, SAP, VESA

HDTV, Home Theater, and audio: BD, DBFB, DRC, DTS, HD-DVD, HDCP, HDMI, HDTV, HTIB, HTPC, PBC

Sony specific: ACE, DCAC

Although I work with acronyms and abbreviations all day, I wasn't familiar with many of these! Fortunately, Acronym Finder knew what they meant!

The Times Online mentions Acronym Finder

Ben Macintyre, a columnist for The Times Online UK Edition, mentions Acronym Finder in an article about acronyms and abbreviations.

With just the right touch of both seriousness and humor, he asks,

"Why do we shorten world wide web to double-you double-you double-you, which has three times as many syllables?"

Good question! :-)

We used to list the extremely long Soviet acronym he mentions at the end of the article, but we were told by a Russian translator we trust that it's almost certainly made-up, so we "delisted it" (even though it's apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records).

Thanks, Ben.