Category Archives: Blu-ray

Disastrous Giveaway

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In 2008 a spoof too far was released. Called Disaster Movie, it now resides at #22 of the Internet Movie Database ‘Bottom 100‘. Now you, too, can share in the joy of this movie (not having seen any of them, … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Giveaway | 3 Comments

The Same Encode, But Different

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

While coverting old posts to the new blog, I happened to re-read one I did on Superman Returns, back in July 2008, called ‘Wasting Digital Real-estate‘. In this I theorised that ‘it looks like an identical encode was used on … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Compression, Disc details, HD DVD, Video | 1 Comment

More bitrates

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In my post below I noted that The Box has both DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD encodes. I added The Broken as well. In both cases, the TrueHD encode seemed more efficient space wise: significantly in the case of a … Continue reading →

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The Box – Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio?

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

… or both. The latest Richard Kelly movie, The Box, will be appearing on Blu-ray in Australia from Icon Film Distribution on 10 March 2010. Last night I examined the disc and found it to be the first disc I … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Blu-ray, Disc details | 8 Comments

No excuses not to go Blu-ray

Posted on February 3, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

My reviews of several different Blu-ray players will be appearing in the next Sound and Image magazine. Included are a couple of the Sony Blu-ray players. The editor, Jez Ford, tells me that the prices have plummetted since I wrote … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Equipment, Value | 2 Comments

How’s the Ticker going?

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Recent Universal Blu-ray discs have a ‘Ticker’ feature on their menu system. Sort of. The ticker is a bar of text in the top right part of the screen and it is supposed to display some messages that came with … Continue reading →

Posted in BD-Live, Blu-ray, Disc details | 1 Comment

Badge Engineering

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Well, it turns out that high-end brand Lexicon has released a Blu-ray player which is really the Oppo BDP-83 with Lexicon cosmetics. Audioholics makes a pretty convincing case here. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, except that Lexicon insists that it … Continue reading →

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More Blu-ray action

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Go all the way back to 1939. Can a movie so old look better on Blu-ray than on DVD? Sure can: see my Wizard of Oz Blu-ray vs DVD comparison. Here’s a sample: Also, I’ve added my Australian HI-FI reviews … Continue reading →

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Pulp Fiction on Blu-ray

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Last night I uploaded my Blu-ray vs DVD comparison for Pulp Fiction. See it here. It presented a few difficulties, discussed in the comparison, but primarily because the Australian DVD is such a shockly bad transfer. Here, for example, is … Continue reading →

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Toshiba releases its first Blu-ray player in Australia

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Yes, the inventor of HD DVD has finally decided to join in with Blu-ray. Its BDX2000 is available today. Price: $329. Feature list: BD-Live DivX HD and AVCHD Playback Toshiba REGZA-LINK® (HDMI-CEC) Support for enhanced audio formats of Dolby® TrueHD … Continue reading →

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