Category Archives: Video

Is This Really It?

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In a comment to an earlier post, Craig makes some astute observations about the insertion of apparent SD material into Michael Jackson’s This Is It. I have now belatedly watched the movie and have been trying to work out what … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Video | 1 Comment

How Does 3D look?

Posted on April 21, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

In a comment to the previous post Nick asks ‘how did the 3d actually look?’ Tricky to describe, in large part because I haven’t yet seen a 3D flick at the cinema in 3D, so I can’t compare it to … Continue reading →

Posted in 3D, Video | Leave a comment

VHS vs DVD vs Blu-ray

Posted on April 19, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The current issue of Sound and Image magazine carries an article by me called ‘Gettin’ Better all the time’, and it’s primarily concerned with a comparison between the VHS, DVD and Blu-ray versions of movies. It covers Independence Day, Chicago … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, DVD, Video, Video tape | 1 Comment

24 vs 23.976 frames per second

Posted on April 16, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

On the AV Science Forum on the ‘NEW Unofficial Blu-ray Audio and Video Specifications Thread’ a question was raised as to why so many Australian Blu-ray discs are precisely 24fps, rather than 23.976fps. I responded as follows: Originally Posted by … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Video | Leave a comment

‘I’ frame rate

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

MPEG2, VC1 and MPEG4 AVC are all video compression systems that work both intra-frame, and inter-frame. Intra-frame is like JPEG (or like DV for that matter). Each frame of the video is treated as its own independent entity and compressed … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, Codecs, Compression, How Things Work, Video | 4 Comments

Don’t Crush at the White End

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Crushing is what happens when you have the ‘brightness’ control of your TV turned down too low, or the ‘contrast’ control turned up too high. Ignore the names. The brightness control does control the brightness … of the black levels. The … Continue reading →

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

Video bitrates for digital TV stations

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Rather than doing my usual mini-review for The Canberra Times for this coming Monday, I’ve done a piece on digital TV. Primarily, what it now offers. In preparing for it, I’ve gathered and calculated the basic technical specs for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Codecs, DTV, HDTV, Video | 6 Comments

Video vs PC settings

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

As a comment to this post, Victor suggests: You made some recommendations on settings in your S&I artical which I found useful, at least to confirm my own observations and assumptions. There was another setting I changed which was not … Continue reading →

Posted in BD-Live, HDMI, How Things Work, Video | 2 Comments

Anamorphic revisited

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I have a little bit of sympathy for DVD distributors who used pan and scan for some of their titles, at least in the early days. Back then the vast majority of TVs were still 4:3, and that was what … Continue reading →

Posted in Compression, DTV, DVD, Video | Leave a comment

Pan and Scan again

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

About nine years ago I published an article in which I suggested that so-called ‘Pan and Scan’ isn’t always as bad as feared. Pan and Scan is a technique by which a widescreen movie is reformatted to full frame display … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, DVD, Video, Video tape | 3 Comments