Author Archives: Stephen Dawson

Greenery

Posted on November 23, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Recently I purchased a power meter. What with environmental concerns, and the Australian greenhouse agency making noises about banning certain TVs that fail to use sufficiently small amounts of power, I figured that it was something I really ought to … Continue reading →

Posted in Power consumption, Testing | Leave a comment

Blu-ray blows, or how to let the opposition win

Posted on November 21, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

I must confess that in the Blu-ray vs HD DVD stakes, I’ve been somewhat partial to Blu-ray. I think it has been because of the larger capacity of the disc than HD DVD, at least in their first incarnations (HD … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Firmware, HD DVD, Region Coding | Leave a comment

Hitachi, ALIS, 1080p and 1080i

Posted on November 14, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

In the post immediately below this one, as explained in the update at the foot of the post, I talk about 1080i and 1080p issues which are not particularly relevant to the current fuss involving Smarthouse and Hitachi. It turns … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, How Things Work, Interlacing | Leave a comment

Is 1080i true high definition?

Posted on November 12, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Over at Smarthouse, David Richards seems to have set the cat loose amongst the pigeons over the issue of Hitachi advertising its TVs as ‘Full HD’. Richards argues that because these TVs accept only a 1080i signal, not a 1080p … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, How Things Work, Interlacing | Leave a comment

What is moire?

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

From time to time I mention moire as an artefact of video systems, often due to poor deinterlacing of progressive scan material. See for example here, and here, and here (near Figure 2). Here’s a real world demonstration from my … Continue reading →

Posted in Video | Leave a comment

Scale once, not twice

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Your home entertainment display probably has a fixed physical resolution due to the pixel structure of its LCD, DLP or LCoS panel(s). Many modern DVD players and HD set top boxes can output the video with a vertical resolution of … Continue reading →

Posted in Scaling, Video | Leave a comment

Toshiba HD DVD goes 24 frames per second, oddly

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

UPDATE (Friday, 30 November 2007, 10:49 am): This item is incorrect in the section concerning resolution. I have now determined that the Toshiba HD-XE1 does not output 1,921 by 1,080 pixels in 1080p24 mode, but the proper 1,920 by 1080 … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, Firmware, HD DVD | Leave a comment

Pioneer Kuro TVs

Posted on September 24, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

The first plasma display I reviewed was the Pioneer PDP-V401E, way back in 1998. Then, this 640 by 480 pixel unit cost $17,000 and I thought it was pretty amazing. Since then, plasma TVs have got better and I’ve got … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment | Leave a comment

Even more on deinterlacing

Posted on September 12, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

I undertook on the Beyonwiz forum to explore further the output characteristics of the Beyonwiz video section. I have held off doing this for a few days because what I wanted to do was compare its 576p and 1080i output … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV, DVD, How Things Work, Interlacing | 2 Comments

More on deinterlacing

Posted on September 8, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Someone on the DTV Forums recently posted a snippet of an ABC test pattern that he’d captured from ABC 2 digital TV. It’s 38MB, but he also posted a shorter trimmed version coming to 8MB (link here). That snippet is … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV, How Things Work, Interlacing, Video | Leave a comment