Author Archives: Stephen Dawson

‘Heroes’: To BD-Live or Not To BD-Live

Posted on October 11, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Reader James has been very kind to me. First he found and sent down some VHS tapes for me to use in a comparison (still coming). Now he has sent down Seasons 1 and 2 of ‘Heroes‘ on Blu-ray. Now … Continue reading →

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Iron Man succeeds

Posted on October 10, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Well, that explains things. A couple of posts ago I mentioned that US watchers of Iron Man on Blu-ray were having their Playstation 3s seize up on loading the disc. No wonder. It seems that the Blu-ray version of this … Continue reading →

Posted in BD-Live, Blu-ray | Leave a comment

Piracy

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

The other day one of my daughters announced that she had borrowed from a friend the entire ten season series of ‘Friends‘ on DVD. When she showed me the box, a slim, professional looking, cardboard affair containing only five DVDs, … Continue reading →

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Has Iron Man recovered?

Posted on October 2, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

This morning I checked ‘The Iron Man Blu-ray Ferro-Thread‘ and found that overnight the problems seem to have disappeared and people were getting onto BD-Live fine with the Iron Man Blu-ray. As compared to my discussion in the post before … Continue reading →

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Will BD-Live ever be any good?

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Eventually, I reckon. While I was writing the previous post a possible answer to a conundrum occurred to me. Consumer technology is not built upon an assumption of endless consumer patience. If you provide some feature in your equipment, consumers … Continue reading →

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BD-Live problems

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

The other day Sony kindly sent me its new BDP-S550 Blu-ray player, due for release in Australia in November. Aside from some other virtues, this is a BD-Live player. That is, it can support the Web-enabled content becoming increasingly available … Continue reading →

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Sony launches new Blu-ray Players, sets feline loose amongst avian rats

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

Well, Sony has done two launches in two days. Yesterday it unveiled a whole bunch of stuff including a 200Hz LCD TV (apparently it interpolates three new frames between each incoming real picture frame). Another new LCD TV uses hundreds … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Equipment, Value | Leave a comment

At last: Universal Pictures (Australasia) Pty Ltd goes Blu-ray

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

I’ve been nagging Universal’s PR company on and off over the last couple of months about when the company will be going Blu-ray. Yesterday I received a press release headed: ‘Heroes: Season 2 DVD Release – October 1’. Great for … Continue reading →

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Toshiba continues to provide HD DVD support

Posted on September 8, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

I am impressed. This afternoon I turned on my Toshiba HD-XE1 HD DVD player for the first time in a month or so. Aside from playing my collection of fifty or so HD DVDs, I find it useful to check … Continue reading →

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Deinterlacing Demo

Posted on September 5, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

In the previous post I mentioned grabbing some video for a test clip. Here is a somewhat similar test clip I currently use. Use? Overuse! The clip is 3 minutes and 34.8 seconds long and I’ve watched bits of it … Continue reading →

Posted in DVD, Interlacing, Testing, Video | Leave a comment