Patch Cable

A patch cable is a low-level connection cable used to transfer information in an electronic form between components in an audio/video system.

Parental Controls

Parental Controls is a feature that allows you to program your TV so that children can’t see certain programs or channels. You can block programs based on violence, sexual content or other content you do not want your children to watch.

Perceptual Coding

Perceptual coding is a method of reducing the amount of data in an audio or video signal by eliminating or reducing the data that human senses cannot perceive. Many compression techniques use perceptual coding to reduce signal size without loss of quality.

Persistence of Vision

When an image is flashed before our eyes, our brain holds it for a short time. If a second image follows close behind the first, our brain blends the two images. By flashing enough images in quick succession, the brain perceives the image stream as motion. This is the principle behind movies and television.

PAL

PAL is the television broadcast standard developed in England and Germany that is used in many South American, European and Asian countries. The PAL standard is not compatible with the NTSC standard of the United States or the SECAM standard of France, Russia and other countries.

PCM (Pulse Code Modulation)

PCM is a common form of transferring analog information into digital signals by representing analog waveforms with a stream of digital bits. The digital information can be manipulated and translated back into an analog signal with a digital-to-analog converter. Digital information can be manipulated more easily and with less distortion, but in order to recreate sound, digital signals must be converted back into an analog signal.

Phosphor

A phosphor is an element that emits light (red, green and blue light as used in video displays) when bombarded by electrons. Phosphors are placed on the backside of a cathode ray (picture) tube’s glass or plastic screen. The tube’s electron gun emits electrons, which are aimed at particular phosphors. The phosphors are excited by the electrons to glow, or give off light.

Picture Tube

A picture tube, also called a CRT, is a common type of video display. A picture tube is a large vacuum tube with a slightly curved glass surface at one end (the screen) and an emitter of electrons on the other. The emitter focuses and directs a stream of electrons to a coating of phosphors on the back side of the TV screen.

PIP (Picture-in-Picture)

PIP is a feature found in some televisions that lets the viewer to watch one program on the entire screen while displaying a different program in a small window superimposed over the base program.

Picture-in picture requires two video sources. Some PIP-equipped televisions come with two tuners (one for the PIP window and one for the main program filling the screen), while others rely on an external tuner from another component to supply programming to the picture-in-picture window.

PIP allows you to watch a particular program while also searching through other channels or content in the PIP window (or vice versa).

Pixel

Pixel is short for picture element. A pixel is the smallest individual unit or piece of a video image. A complete video image is formed by many thousands (sometimes millions) of pixels. Each pixel has its own color and brightness attributes.

The number of pixels in a display defines its resolution; higher resolutions have more pixels. The more pixels, the greater the resolution and quality of the image.