Author Archives: Stephen Dawson

Video bitrates for digital TV stations – October 2010

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Back in March this year I set out a list of the video and audio bitrates for digital TV. Since then new channels have been added and some of the stations have reallocated the balance of their available bandwidth. To … Continue reading →

Posted in Codecs, DTV, HDTV | 5 Comments

Quality TV

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The recent proliferation of second and third TV stations for the major broadcasters has brought some interesting material back to our TV screens. There are a lot of broadcast hours to fill up, and low cost content must be especially … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV, HDTV | 1 Comment

Undisclosed Bass

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I’m reviewing a shiny new Denon home theatre receiver that, amongst other things, features the ability to play Internet radio. Making sure I cover everything, I explore its menus and confirm that it also plays podcasts. To test, I usually … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Giveaway | 3 Comments

Just what you want to see on parcel tracking

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

My youngest daughter is waiting for a new iPod Nano, ordered on-line. This is the tracking page for the item from TNT International: SZ1 is somewhere in China. It took one day to get from there to Hong Kong. Three … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Rant | Leave a comment

Audio Return Channel – a complication too far?

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The latest version of HDMI — 1.4 — provides for, amongst other things the Audio Return Channel. You have a HDMI cable from your home theatre receiver to feed video to the TV. ARC allows this very same cable to … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, HDMI | 3 Comments

More government crap

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has selected me to undertake its ‘Economic Activity Survey 2009-10’. Bugger it. That means I have to fill it its twenty page form. Have to. Or do I? I have been carefully ignoring it for … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Rant | 3 Comments

20 Years of IMDB

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I just noticed that the Internet Movie Database is claiming that it will be celebrating its 20th anniversary on 17 October this year. That surprised me. Back then, the Web was still some ten months in the future. Anyway, it … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema, Computer | 1 Comment

Porting complete

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Finally, I’ve finished porting all the posts in my old, hand-marked-up blog, into this one, all the way back to July 2003. WordPress tells me that this will be the 703rd post. Here’s one of interest: an analysis of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin | Leave a comment

New Theme

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Now that, I think, is a nicer look. It would be totally happy if only I could: replace the ‘tags’ with ‘categories’, and insert the posting time. Unfortunately, editing these things eludes me. I search the entire theme for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin | Leave a comment

DVD Audio lives on!

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Because I bought a King Crimson CD from Amazon once, today I got an email from them advising that In the Wake of Poseidon, KC’s second album, is due to be released in mid October. Of course, it was actually … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, DVD, Music | 4 Comments