Category Archives: Video

LED Projectors

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

My review of the Vivitek H9080FD LED home theatre projector shall be appear in The Canberra Times on Monday, and I’m hoping to look at a Runco LED projector next week. But I’ve been thinking: must LED projectors be limited … Continue reading →

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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

A Letter to a PR Company

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Today I sent an email in the following terms today to a PR company for a large TV manufacturer: Meanwhile, I know you guys have just started this account, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to make a suggestion. … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Equipment, Rant, Testing, Video | Leave a comment

Black to Grey

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Hmmm. Jez Ford has drawn my attention to this article on CNET, which says that the black levels of Panasonic plasma TVs become less black over time. It’s all a bit vague, but it seems to be saying that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, Testing, Video | 2 Comments

Upscaling – even the professionals get it wrong

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I was just clearing some old stuff off my computer and discovered a video clip that demonstrates that competent upscaling can be elusive even for professionals. The clip is six minutes long, which I recorded from the Prime TV HD service … Continue reading →

Posted in Interlacing, Video | Leave a comment

BBC says that it’s all in your head

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Over on the AVS Forum Blu-ray Audio and Video Specifications Thread, we whinge, rightly, about average video bitrates of less than 20Mbps, sometimes even less than 15Mbps, on Blu-ray. Still we should keep things in perspective. Apparently the BBC HD … Continue reading →

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Deinterlacing and Upscaling difficulty

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

I have just been looking at the second disc of the brilliant ‘Ultimate Collector’s Edition’ Blu-ray version of Woodstock: 3 days of peace and music. One of the extras on this disc is a five minute featurette called ‘The Museum … Continue reading →

Posted in Blu-ray, DVD, Interlacing, Video | Leave a comment

Possible reasons for differing video quality

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Regarding my earlier post (two down) on possible differences between US and Australian Blu-ray discs for quality, Sandra has written to me: I was also present the night John talks of. There is an alternate hypothesis to encoding variations or … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, How Things Work, Mysticism, Video | Leave a comment

‘Region A vs Region B on Blu-ray’

Posted on October 11, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

Yesterday I received a very interesting email from a reader, headed as shown above. The matters raised will be, I think, of interest to other readers on this Blog, so I’m answering it here. First, here’s the email (lighted edited … Continue reading →

Posted in Equipment, How Things Work, Mysticism, Video | Leave a comment

It’s Not Anamorphic

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Stephen Dawson

In my disc database I have tick boxes to describe the presentation of the main feature of the disc. These include ‘Pan and Scan’, ‘Widescreen Anamorphic’, ‘Widescreen Non-anamorphic’ and ‘Widescreen cropped’. Pretty much by habit I’ve been ticking the ‘Widescreen … Continue reading →

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