Author Archives: Stephen Dawson

Paternalistic Protection Partially Averted, but high sensitivity earphones a’comin

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In December it was widely reported that the European Union is to require that MP3 players have a default maximum level of 85dB. Whatever the hell that means. 85dB average? Peak? A-weighted? C-weighted? Apparently some kind of over-ride will be … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Portable | Leave a comment

More Blu-ray action

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Go all the way back to 1939. Can a movie so old look better on Blu-ray than on DVD? Sure can: see my Wizard of Oz Blu-ray vs DVD comparison. Here’s a sample: Also, I’ve added my Australian HI-FI reviews … Continue reading →

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Pulp Fiction on Blu-ray

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Last night I uploaded my Blu-ray vs DVD comparison for Pulp Fiction. See it here. It presented a few difficulties, discussed in the comparison, but primarily because the Australian DVD is such a shockly bad transfer. Here, for example, is … Continue reading →

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Toshiba releases its first Blu-ray player in Australia

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Yes, the inventor of HD DVD has finally decided to join in with Blu-ray. Its BDX2000 is available today. Price: $329. Feature list: BD-Live DivX HD and AVCHD Playback Toshiba REGZA-LINK® (HDMI-CEC) Support for enhanced audio formats of Dolby® TrueHD … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Equipment, HD DVD | Leave a comment

BBC says that it’s all in your head

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Over on the AVS Forum Blu-ray Audio and Video Specifications Thread, we whinge, rightly, about average video bitrates of less than 20Mbps, sometimes even less than 15Mbps, on Blu-ray. Still we should keep things in perspective. Apparently the BBC HD … Continue reading →

Posted in Compression, Rant, Video | Leave a comment

Lord of the Rings coming to Blu-ray

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

This was an announcement I received today from Roadshow Entertainment. I shall feed through more info as it becomes available, but it seems that we’ll see LOTR on Blu-ray in April 2010: I may be silly, but I suspect that … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Disc details | Leave a comment

Busy, busy, busy!

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

As the title implies, I’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks. Still am. But here’s one thing that I reckon is interesting: an Audio Engineering Society Convention Paper from 2004, entitled ‘DVD-Audio versus SACD: Perceptual Discrimination of Digital … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Audio, Blu-ray | Leave a comment

Heat discs won by clever readers

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

 I have posted three copies of Heat on Blu-ray to three readers who undertook my Blu-ray picture quality survey. They were: Shane from the Gold Coast, Des from Queensland, and Simon Hewlett from Calwell, ACT, not far from where I … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Compression, Disc details, Giveaway | Leave a comment

Correction on Yamaha RX-V465 review

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

I reviewed a bunch of reasonably low cost home theatre receivers a little while back, and this was published in Sound and Image magazine. Despite them all costing well under a thousand dollars, the feature sets and performance of all … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Equipment | Leave a comment

Pride and Prejudice

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Some months ago Scott Fitzgerald, the Gadget Guy’s Web Master, mentioned to me a ‘jarring “dual quality” of image’ on this wonderful two disc Blu-ray release of the 1995 TV mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice. It’s taken me awhile … Continue reading →

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