Category Archives: Video

Plasma advice

Posted on August 27, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Neil writes: … making sense of the plasma thing. We are getting conflicting messages from different hifi magazines. The last online review we found sang the praises of the Hitachi 32 pd3000. The size is right for our room. Any … Continue reading →

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It’s about time: the perfect projector for PAL DVDs?

Posted on August 12, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

In September InFocus will release its ScreenPlay 5700 projector in Australia. Could this be the perfect home theatre projector? It uses what is apparently Texas Instrument’s newest DMD, the Matterhorn. I say apparently because TI has seen fit not to … Continue reading →

Posted in DVD, Equipment, Video | 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 →

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Something actually new in home theatre projection

Posted on July 24, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

NEC’s press release on its new WT600 projector had me puzzled. Claiming an ultra-short-throw, it said that a 100 inch picture could be produced at a range of just 65cm, and a 40 inch picture at 6cm. My eye skipped lightly … Continue reading →

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Higher resolution CRT TVs appearing

Posted on July 17, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Sony will shortly (September 2003 in Australia) be introducing an 86cm widescreen CRT TV (model KVHR36M31) which it says will increase the number of slits in its grill by 65%, ‘making this the aperture grill with the highest number of … Continue reading →

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Hurry up Digital Video Interface!

Posted on July 13, 2003 by Stephen Dawson

Did you know that the picture quality available from DVD is crippled? And it’s all thanks to the analogue connections. It doesn’t matter whether your DVD player puts out progressive scan or interlaced video, you are not getting all the … Continue reading →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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