RAY REIDELL
Clairton

A: Sony and JVC are totally different companies with no common ownership, as different as Ford and GM. Maybe even more so!

Not only are Sony and JVC different companies, but also given their past, I imagine there is actual animosity lingering between the two. It was JVC's VHS format that drove Sony's beloved Betamax from the market. That cost Sony untold billions of dollars in licensing fees and royalties since then. Given that Beta was technically superior, it really had to be a sharp stick in Sony's eye -- not only losing, but losing to something inferior.

JVC stands for Japan Victor Corp. Record collectors will remember the RCA Victor record label. Victor came from the Victor Talking Machine Co., the leading producer of phonograph records in the early 1900s. If you have seen the famous picture of a dog looking into a phonograph horn with the tagline "His Master's Voice," that was originally used by Victor starting all the way back in 1900.

Victor was purchased by RCA in 1929, which created the RCA Victor label and the adopted the dog (named Nipper) as RCA's mascot. Nipper was an actual dog, by the way -- the original painting of the dog and the phonograph was created in 1898 by English artist Francis Barraud.

Victor also was the name used for RCA's business in Japan prior to World War II. At the outbreak of hostilities, the Japanese division, then called Victor Co. of Japan, broke off and never returned to RCA.

So in short, JVC was RCA of Japan, later separated and becoming a new entity -- and having nothing in common with Sony.

Now that the trivia lesson is over, we can get to the matter of your TV. My first suggestion is to not do business with whoever told you that JVC was a subdivision of Sony and that the JVC is the premium choice. They either do not know their stuff, or are deliberately misleading you because they have an agenda to sell JVC televisions. Either way, misinformed or misleading are not qualities you want in a retailer asking for many hundreds or thousands of dollars from you.

As for which TV is the better one, I advise you get the Sony. JVC makes some interesting products, some of them very good. But when it comes to televisions, Sony is the king.

This doesn't make the JVC a bad product; in fact, it tends to make a very good television. But better than Sony? Not to my eyes, and a lot of other educated eyes.

Q: You've run a couple columns about changing an audio setting in DVD players to equalize the soundtrack with the dialogue. Are there any brands/models of DVD players that are better at this than others?

MIKE RICHARDSON
Minneapolis

A: Not to my knowledge. All players should do this pretty much equally well, though small differences across brands and model lines are bound to exist.

If you have trouble hearing the dialogue over the soundtrack, the setting is contained in the DVD player's audio menu and is called something like "dynamic range," "DRC," "dialogue enhancer" or "midnight mode." Turn it on to raise the voices to match the volume of the soundtrack. If you have a sound system and listen at relatively loud or realistic volume levels, this isn't recommended.

First Published: February 18, 2006, 5:00 a.m.