Here's a new term from a friend of mine who works for everyone's favorite cable company:

golden eye - someone who can notice very slight differences in picture quality

A quick search brings up this cite from an article on Comcast's switch to 3-to-1 HD compression:

"The testers are our engineers who we call 'golden eyes,' who have a proven track record of picking up subtle differences in picture quality," he said.

The reference is probably to the animal kingdom or the monetary value of good eyesight, and not to Perrin from the interminable Wheel of Time series.

I like golden eye — it has a narrower sense than eagle eye and it pushes back against the conflation of enthusiasm and perceptual ability that you sometimes get with videophile. And this is pretty cool:

golden eye : sight :: super taster : taste.

Now I just wish we had a similar term for people who can hear all the beeps.

Labels: semantics, vocab