Author Archives: Stephen Dawson

Mini Milestone reached

Posted on August 7, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Well, this afternoon I received in the mail a copy of Sound and Image (Aug/Sept 2003, v16, #6) which contains three of my articles: comparison review of five pairs of stereo speakers selling for under $AUS3,000 (surprise winner:JBL XTi-100 — you’re … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin | Leave a comment

High Definition programs

Posted on August 7, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Digital Broadcasting Australia has up a list of widescreen and high definition TV programs. Since 1 July 2003 the commercial stations have been required to broadcase 1,040 hours of HD per year (20 hours per week). So it’s interesting to see … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV, HDTV | Leave a comment

An interesting wrinkle on digital set top receivers

Posted on August 7, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Now here’s one I’d like to see: the Hauppauge DEC-2000 digital set top receiver. What makes this one unusual is the USB connection, by which it feeds the received signal to a computer for recording. Is there an Australian distributor?

Posted in DTV, Equipment | Leave a comment

Blush!

Posted on August 7, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

I shan’t make a habit of this, but this is the inaugural bit of hifi-writer.com correspondence. Ben Kwong writes: Hi Stephen,I recently just got back from the Sony Product Launch and did a search on the new KVHR36M31 Tv and … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Testing | Leave a comment

Eat Drink Clean Dirty

Posted on August 4, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

The interlacing plot thickens. While I have identified specific problems with frame misalignment in some PAL DVDs, some other DVDs have interlacing problems which are more difficult to diagnose. For example, Twentieth Century Fox has just sent me a number of … Continue reading →

Posted in DVD, Video | Leave a comment

Janice Joplin’s Bass noise

Posted on August 3, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

The audio producers of CDs and other music really do need the best possible monitoring equipment. Unfortunately, far too many (particulary those preparing stereo material) seem to rely on relatively small direct field monitors that, unfortunately, are somewhat bass deficient. … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, CD | Leave a comment

… but how much infrasonic do you want anyway?

Posted on August 3, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Just pondering my last post (‘Rumbling a Subwoofer with a Cartoon‘) and thinking about those high levels of infrasonic sound. If we posit that there were such a thing as a subwoofer that would deliver down to ten hertz or … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio | Leave a comment

Rumbling a Subwoofer with a Cartoon

Posted on July 31, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Do you like showing off your subwoofer? There are a number of DVDs that do the job fairly well, but my favourite is the otherwise forgettable Titan A.E.Fox animated movie. In particular, the first six minutes or so before the main … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, DVD | 2 Comments

DVD+R/+RW vs DVD-R/-RW compatibility

Posted on July 31, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

In a discussion of DVD-RAM, it says that it ‘is a standard for recording information through a RAM drive in a personal computer rather than a video recorder.’ This is not correct. Of the three major DVD Recorder manufacturers, Panasonic‘s lineup … Continue reading →

Posted in DVD, Recorders | Leave a comment

DVD Audio is not MPEG audio

Posted on July 31, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Ah, an Australian newspaper (which shall remain nameless) reports: The new [DVD Audio] standard, based on the MPEG-2 format used in DVD video, uses the extra storage to produce a high quality audio recording that more closely replicates the sound … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Codecs, DVD | Leave a comment