Category Archives: How Things Work

Site News

Posted on July 19, 2008 by Stephen Dawson

For a while I’ve been writing review of Blu-ray discs for Sound and Image magazine. I’ve started loading them onto this site at ‘Blu-ray Reviews‘. I expect to have quite a few up over the next couple of weeks. Some … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Blu-ray, How Things Work, Video | Leave a comment

1080p24 – is it worth it?

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

Reader Peter Greed emailed me recently, drawing my attention to a Highdefdigest forum discussion on the value of 1080p24. This thread hangs off a pretty good article on 1080p24 from Joshua Zyber on the subject, entitled ‘What’s the Big Deal … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, How Things Work, Video | 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 →

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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 →

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Flicker

Posted on June 5, 2007 by Stephen Dawson

In my Canberra Times column this week I discussed 1080p24 as the ideal delivery standard for Blu-ray and HD DVD. Today I received an email on this, thus: I had never heard of 1080p24 or even conceived that it might … Continue reading →

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Does Blu-ray deliver five times, or ten times, the resolution of DVD?

Posted on November 22, 2006 by Stephen Dawson

I received an email today, originating from Panasonic, in which polite issue was taken with a statement I had made in a review I had written of the Panasonic DMP-BD100 Blu-ray player. The statement was: ‘there is five times as … Continue reading →

Posted in BD-Live, Equipment, How Things Work | Leave a comment

Blu-ray, HD DVD and frame rates

Posted on November 2, 2006 by Stephen Dawson

On Monday I drove up to Sydney for the launch of HD DVD by Toshiba and Castel Electronics, Toshiba’s Australian distributor. Toshiba will be releasing two HD DVD players in the near future. First, on 10 December 2006, there will … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, HD DVD, How Things Work | Leave a comment

To Interlace or De-interlace

Posted on April 9, 2006 by Stephen Dawson

Interlacing is becoming an important matter these days. Why? Because our TV screens are getting bigger, so the problems it can cause are becoming far more obvious. So what is interlacing? Back in the early days of TV, the engineers … Continue reading →

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