A/V technology and technical terms explained

gain - Measures the light-reflecting ability of a projection screen. The higher the number, the greater the amount of light reflected back to the viewer.

Geek box - CNET's way of providing at-a-glance Labs results for TV reviews.

geometric distortion - Unnatural bowing of straight lines or other distortion of shapes, especially at the sides and corners in a TV picture.

geometric linearity - Ability of a television to reproduce lines, shapes, and sizes accurately.

ghosting - Multiple overlaid TV images noticeable around the edges of objects; occurs when an antenna picks up the original TV signal along with duplicate signals reflected by tall buildings and other similar obstacles. DTV broadcasts can suffer from ghosting, which is sometimes called multipath.

grayscale - Range of gray at different intensities from completely black to completely white. Since color information is overlaid atop black-and-white information in a composite, S-Video, and component-video signal, the ideal is to set the entire range of the grayscale as close to the standard of 6,500K as possible to preserve color fidelity.

grayscale variation - Geek box term. The average variation above or below 6,500K, measured on the grayscale from 20 to 100 IRE in 10-IRE increments.