Author Archives: Stephen Dawson

Screwing up PAL DVDs

Posted on July 11, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

PAL DVDs are better than NTSC DVDs in a couple of ways. One of those is higher resolution, and the other way is a cleaner sequence of frames — ones that do not produce interlacing artifacts. That is, of course, … Continue reading →

Posted in DVD, Video | Leave a comment

Dark Details in Plasma Displays

Posted on July 10, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

I recently received an email complaining about an LG Plasma display. My correspondent was very dissatisfied with the way dark levels in movies changed their brightness levels. This is taken from my response. I had actually reviewed the same model … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, Video | Leave a comment

Bose’s critics

Posted on July 9, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Here’s the introduction to a forthcoming review of mine to appear in The Canberra Times: If you look around the Internet you will find Web sites that aim to ‘tell the truth’ about particular businesses and products. So you will find … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Rant | Leave a comment

Telarc’s height

Posted on July 7, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Some Telarc DVD-Audio and SACD discs have a ‘height’ channel rather than an LFE. Personally, I think this is a rather poor idea. To see why, read this email I wrote to Telarc about it.

Posted in Audio, Rant | Leave a comment

Telarc’s cannons

Posted on July 7, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Way back in 1978 the American audiophile record label Telarc made a recording that can be truly regarded as legendary. Using then-new digital recording technology (although in the absence of a digital consumer format, the original release was on LP), Telarc … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, CD, Vinyl | 3 Comments

Strange happenings with DVD+R and Philips DVDR890

Posted on July 6, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

I’ve noticed something strange about the way Philips’ DVDR890 DVD recorder burns DVD+Rs. Here’s the first couple of lines of a DOS DIR /S command, when a duly finalised Verbatim DVD+R is in my computer’s DVD-ROM drive: Volume in drive F … Continue reading →

Posted in DVD, Recorders | Leave a comment

High Definition Camcorders on the way

Posted on July 4, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Canon, Sharp, Sony and JVC announced today that they’ve agreed on a high definition consumer digital video camera format. Likely to be called ‘HDV’, this will provide for recording 720p or 1080i on standard DV format cassettes. Both 50 and 60 … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, General Tech, Video | Leave a comment

Digital Set Top Box Review appears

Posted on July 3, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

I hear that my review of four Digital Set Top Boxes appeared in today’s ‘Livewire’ section in The Age. After two years of sluggish movement on digital TV, suddenly there are announcements of DSTBs from Panasonic and Toshiba, both of whom … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV | Leave a comment

Southern Cross Capital behind the times in the South

Posted on July 3, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Of Canberra, that is. Sure, it’s not the only one that has yet to provide Standard Definition Digital TV from its Tuggeranong retransmission tower (Prime and SBS are equally guilty), but as of last night SCCap had a promise for … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV, HDTV | Leave a comment