John Archer

John Archer covers consumer home entertainment technology with an unusually narrow and sustained focus on how TVs, projectors and sound systems behave in real-world use. He works as a freelance technology writer and has spent more than twenty-five years testing televisions, projectors, soundbars and related AV gear for specialist and mainstream outlets, including regular contributions to Forbes. His work is anchored in picture and sound performance, long-term reliability and practical setup, rather than general gadget news or corporate technology trends.

Home Entertainment Hardware And Picture Quality

Archer’s core subject is television and projection hardware, where he treats each screen as a system to be tuned rather than a simple product to be listed.

Across reviews of flagship and mid-range TVs from major brands, he weighs brightness, contrast and processing, and connects those characteristics directly to film viewing, sports and gaming performance. Long-running buying guides such as his rankings of the best LG TVs and broader “best TVs we’ve tested” roundups show him comparing sets at multiple price points and steering readers toward specific models that balance performance with value. His coverage of sets like Sony’s A90J OLED highlights technical advances such as significant brightness boosts, next‑generation processing and console-ready features, but always in terms of the gains they deliver on screen.

He also follows new television platforms, including budget-oriented designs like Sky’s Glass models, assessing how integrated hardware and content services change the experience for heavy TV viewers. When issues arise, such as mounting evidence of OLED screen burn, Archer treats them as long-term risks for ordinary owners and interrogates how panel technology and usage patterns could turn into a “ticking time bomb” for this category.

Immersive Audio And Video Formats Beyond The Living Room

Beyond hardware, Archer tracks how advanced audio and video formats spread across devices and environments, treating standards such as Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ as living technologies rather than labels.

His Forbes piece on Dolby Atmos coming to Android Auto follows the format from cinemas and home setups into the car, explaining how its integration into Google’s in-car platform could make immersive sound a routine part of everyday driving. In that story he ties Dolby’s move to concrete developments, such as support for full HD video at 60Hz in compatible vehicles and rollouts across brands including Mercedes-Benz, Skoda, Tata, Volvo and BMW’s 7 Series, and he maps those announcements against Android Auto’s scale in millions of vehicles.

On other platforms he regularly reports when streaming services and TV makers adopt new HDR formats, for example covering Samsung’s confirmation that HDR10+ Advanced will go live on Prime Video and Hisense’s introduction of Dolby Vision 2 on its TVs. His coverage of 4K Blu-ray releases extends this format focus to physical media, picking out details such as high-capacity 100GB discs for major titles and linking disc authoring choices to picture and sound gains. Across these pieces, the consistent thread is that he treats formats as practical tools for better viewing and listening, and stresses where consumers will actually notice the difference.

Hands-On Testing And Consumer-Focused Guidance

Archer’s method is built on intensive hands-on testing and a deliberately consumer-oriented perspective, a stance he describes as spending years watching movies and reviewing hardware almost non-stop. He specialises in home theatre setups, covering not only televisions and projectors but also disc players, surround sound systems, soundbars and streaming devices as parts of a single ecosystem. Many of his pieces take the form of practical guides, such as articles on common mistakes people make with Samsung TVs and the settings changes that unlock better picture quality, or comparative reviews that explain how to get the most from mid-range and high-end sets without specialist knowledge.

His long tenure across AV-focused titles means he draws on a large back catalogue of technologies he has seen rise and fall, which he uses to contextualise current claims about new display and audio standards. As a freelancer he writes for a broad mix of specialist AV magazines and larger consumer tech outlets, including work for brands such as Forbes, T3, TechRadar, Trusted Reviews, Expert Reviews, What Hi-Fi, AVForums and Sound Advice, but across these platforms the focus stays tightly on home entertainment hardware and formats rather than general technology.

The result is coverage that combines lab-like scrutiny of TVs and AV gear with plain-language explanations and buying advice that reflect how people actually watch and listen at home.