Category Archives: Equipment

Samsung delivers BD-Live

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

When Samsung released its BD-P1500 Blu-ray player a few months ago, it delivered a BonusView player with a promise of a future upgrade to BD-Live. Earlier this month it delivered on that promise with new firmware available from Samsung’s website. … Continue reading →

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Batman Begins menu: sliding or snappy

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

As is Warner Bros’ habit, the Blu-ray of Batman Begins doesn’t really have a main menu. When you insert the disc, the player shows an FBI warning, then the Warner Bros logo, then reads off some BD-Java code and then … Continue reading →

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

Panasonic Makes Me Happy

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

When I reviewed the Panasonic DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player back in May this year, I wrote: On PAL DVDs, you can set the deinterlacing mode via the ‘Display’ on-screen menu. Unfortunately, while some older Panasonic products had a ‘Film’ mode option, … Continue reading →

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

Careful of your fingers

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

This is just sad. This comes from page 3 of the manual of the Marantz AV8003 home theatre preamplifier/tuner. This is a wonder of technology and high-end performance that costs $4,499. Yet it has to have a notice in the … Continue reading →

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Sony Playstation 3 Audio Handling

Posted on October 17, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

A couple of months ago Sony Computer Entertainment kindly loaned to me a Sony PS3 for use as a Blu-ray player. I sought this so that I could explore the new advanced features of Blu-ray: BonusView PIP material and BD-Live … Continue reading →

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Regulations got around, as usual

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

A while back some or other agency of the Australian government was talking about banning TVs that were threatening to destroy the planet. Something about using too much power, and therefore causing too much carbon dioxide to be generated. As … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, Power consumption, Video | Leave a comment

Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player going BD-Live

Posted on October 12, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

The other day Samsung made available a Version 2 firmware for its BD-P1500 Blu-ray player. As delivered the player was BonusView (ie. PIP) capable, and ‘BD-Live ready’. That is, it had the hardware for BD-Live (principally, the ability to access … 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 →

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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 →

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

Program content or broken equipment?

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

I’m testing a whole batch of TVs at the moment, and have just reached the last of the six of them. One of the first things I do these days with a display is plug a Beyonwiz HDTV receiver into … Continue reading →

Posted in DTV, Equipment, Testing, Video | Leave a comment